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When modesty prevails: differential favorability of self-presentation to friends and strangers
- Source :
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Dec, 1995, Vol. 69 Issue 6, p1120, 21 p.
- Publication Year :
- 1995
-
Abstract
- Although most interpersonal interactions take place between people who know each other, most self-presentation research has focused on self-presentation to strangers. Five studies showed that self-presentational favorability differed as a function of whether the interaction partner was a friend or a stranger. Studies 1 and 2 found that self-presentations to friends were consistently more modest than self-presentations to strangers. In Studies 3 and 4, self-presentations were manipulated by instructing participants to present themselves in either a self-enhancing or modest manner. Modesty with strangers and self-enhancement with friends both resulted in impaired recall for the interaction, consistent with the view that those strategies contradict familiar, overlearned patterns. Study 5 distinguished self-deprecation from modesty. Taken together, the results indicate that people habitually use different self-presentation strategies with different audiences, relying on favorable self-enhancement with strangers but shifting toward modesty when among friends.
Details
- ISSN :
- 00223514
- Volume :
- 69
- Issue :
- 6
- Database :
- Gale General OneFile
- Journal :
- Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- edsgcl.17798597