concerns with impression management already go back to the...

Deze scriptie is afkomstig van:

http://www.studentenonderzoek.com &

http://www.studiosus.nl, Online Scripties & Verslagen

Impression Management in Group Situations: Effects of Self-Presentations on the Formation of Positive Impressions and

Influence in Project Teams

Final thesisSjir UitdewilligenI099716Maastricht University Faculty of Economics and Business AdministrationAugust 2005Supervisor: Sara Safay

- 1 -

http://www.studiosus.nl/

http://www.studentenonderzoek.com/

Abstract

This thesis investigates the effects of impression management on the formation of positive impressions and influence in project teams. It does this by giving an overview of the literature on impression management and a research on the effects of impression management in group situations. Impression management theory has received increasing levels of attention by organizational scholars in the last 25 years. However, most researchers in this area have studied it as an isolated dyadic interaction; not taking into account that most impression management performances are given to more than one person at a time. This thesis adds to the existing literature by studying impression management in a group situation. It was hypothesised that the use of impression management tactics is positively related to liking and perceived competence and that these positive impressions in turn are positively related to influence in project groups. The results supported the relation between the positive impressions and influence. However, the relation between impression management tactics and positive impressions was only partially supported. Contrary to outcomes of some researches on impression management in dyadic interactions, it turned out that self-promotion is a more effective tactic on a group level than ingratiation.

Keywords: Impression management; Self-presentation; Ingratiation; Self-promotion; Project teams; Influence

- 3 -

Contents

1. Introduction.....................................................................................................12. Theoretical background..................................................................................4

2.1 Historical background of impression management...........................................................42.2 Deceptive activity or expression of the true self?.............................................................52.3 Definition and scope of impression management.............................................................72.4 The motivation to manage impressions............................................................................92.5 Impression construction..................................................................................................112.6 Types of impression management..................................................................................12

2.6.1 Non-verbal tactics....................................................................................................132.6.2 Verbal tactics...........................................................................................................142.6.3 Ingratiation...............................................................................................................162.6.4 Self-promotion.........................................................................................................17

2.7 Impression management measures and scales................................................................192.8 Success factors of impression management....................................................................252.9 Outcomes of impression management behaviour in organizations................................282.10 Impression management in groups...............................................................................30

3. Influence in groups........................................................................................353.1 From a passive to an active influencer............................................................................353.2 Structural power and behavioural power........................................................................373.3 The development of structural aspects of influence.......................................................383.4 The effect of impressions on structural development within a group.............................39

4. Hypotheses.....................................................................................................414.1 Model..............................................................................................................................46

5. Methods..........................................................................................................485.1 Sample.............................................................................................................................485.2 Method of data collection...............................................................................................495.3 Operationalization of concepts measured.......................................................................495.4 Inter-judge reliability of peer assessments......................................................................51

6. Results.............................................................................................................536.1 Descriptive statistics.......................................................................................................536.2 Comparison of samples...................................................................................................546.3 Hypotheses testing..........................................................................................................566.4 The moderating role of self-monitoring..........................................................................586.5 The mediating role of impressions..................................................................................616.6 Model..............................................................................................................................64

7. Discussion and limitations............................................................................667.1 Discussion of results and implications for future research.............................................667.2 Assumptions and limitations...........................................................................................70

8. Conclusion......................................................................................................749. References......................................................................................................7610. Appendix..................................................Fout! Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.

- 4 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 1. Introduction

1. Introduction

Concerns with impression management already go back to the time of the ancient Greeks. In

the fifth century B.C. the rhetoric professors, named Sophists, opened up schools in which

they educated young men to make a good impression in the young democracy. Plato

(Koolschijn, 1996) strongly disagreed with these practices. According to him, people should

be convinced by the real content of a message and not by the style in which it was brought.

He drew a distinction between people with real and people with perceived competence. The

first are those who convince others of their own worth and gain influence by displaying their

real skills and knowledge. The latter are those who attain these goals, not because of their

own merit but because they know how to play for and convince an audience. Plato saw this

kind of impression management as extremely detestable behaviour and strongly convicted the

rhetoric professors who taught the skills to engage in these tactics.

The sociologist Goffman (1959) was the first to look at impression management as an

objective field of study. He defined the concept of impression management as the idea that

people consciously manage the impressions they convey to others in interpersonal

interactions. He proposed a dramaturgical perspective of social interactions in which people

are seen as actors who engage in performances in various settings, before an audience, to form

a definition of the situation.

From the sociologists and social psychologist, the subject came under the attention of scholars

in organizational behaviour. In contemporary organizations, impressions play an important

role. For example: applicants try to make a good first impression at a job interview, salesmen

must make a trustable impression to sell their products, managers must look like they are in

control, boundary spanning personnel must represent their company, and consultants are

strongly concerned with an image of rationalism and professionalism. The importance of

impressions for different people in an organization, draws attention to the manageability of

these impressions. To what extent and with what tactics are people able to shape the images

other people have of them? Several researchers (Jones & Pittman, 1982; Wayne & Ferris,

1990) identified important tactics of impression management and demonstrated that the use of

these tactics can be beneficial to the actor in a wide variety of situations (Stevens & Kristof,

1995; Wayne & Ferris, 1990; Wayne & Liden, 1995; Higgins, Judge, & Ferris, 2003)

However, most of these studies investigated impression management directed at someone

higher in hierarchy, so called upward impression management. Research about the effects of

- 1 -


downward impression management, directed at a subordinate or lateral impression

management, directed at peers, is still scarce. Moreover, the use and effects of impression

management have mainly been studied at a dyadic level, although in most organizational

situations, self-presentations are not given in isolated one-to-one interactions but often to

different people at the same time. As the use of work groups and teams has become more and

more important in organizations (Cohen & Bailey, 1997), it is important to consider the use

and effects of impression management in group situations. This research therefore looks at the

different factors that play a role in self-presentations given for a group of people compared to

self-presentations in a dyadic situation and it will look at the outcomes of impression

management tactics in project teams.

As a measure of an interpersonal outcome of impression management in a group, this research

looks at the influence a group member has on group decisions. Influence is a real group level

measure that is not only the aggregate of impression management effects on the individual

members in the group. According to some theorists influence is the basic purpose of self-

presentations (Jones & Pittman, 1982; Gangestad & Snyder, 2000). Impression management

is expected to have an impact on influence in two ways. First of all, it is expected to have an

impact on the structural aspects of influence. According to expectation states theory (Berger,

Fisek, Norman, & Zelditch, 1977), the status of a group member is expected to be positively

related with the expectations the other group members have about the abilities of that person

to contribute to the group goals. Status characteristics are used as clues for forming these

performance expectations. By means of impression management, an actor is expected to

influence the status clues he1 gives of to his co-workers and thereby he can affect his level of

influence. Secondly, impression management is expected to function as behaviour that is

directly related to influence. Researchers on interpersonal influence have identified

behavioural tactics that lead to influence and some of these tactics show strong similarities

with impression management tactics (Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980; Yukl & Falbe,

1990; Schriesheim & Hinkin, 1990). Therefore, in this research it is investigated if impression

management tactics affect the amount of influence a group member has in a group.

To investigate the effects of impression management in a group, two samples are used,

consisting out of students working together in project teams. At the end of the project,

students were asked to fill in questionnaires about their own impression management

behaviour, about the impressions they had of their group members, and about the amount of

1 If ‘he’ is used in this article to refer to an actor, it may refer to a male as well as to a female person.

- 2 -


influence their group members had in group decisions. It is expected that higher levels of

impression management tactics are related with higher levels of positive impressions and

consequently with more influence.

- 3 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background

2. Theoretical background

2.1 Historical background of impression management

Before the 1970s impression management in organizations was mainly researched as a part of

organizational politics. The research done was sporadic and without an integrated theoretical

framework. However, the more popular management books had already recognized the

importance of impression management for organizational success (Rosenfeld, Giacalone, &

Riordan, 1995). In the 1980s more scientific studies applying the impression management

concept to organizational settings appeared (Kipnis, Schmidt, & Wilkinson, 1980; Pfeffer,

1981; Giacalone and Rosenfeld, 1986; Gardner and Martinko, 1988). By then, the foundation

of impression management theory was already firmly established by sociologists and social

psychologists. The area has been developing since its founding in 1959 (Goffman, 1959;

Leary, 1995) and several theorists have contributed to its development.

The sociologist Erving Goffman is often described as the founder of the theory of impression

management. In his book ‘The presentation of self in everyday life’ (1959) he uses the

metaphor of theatrical performance to illustrate how people manage the impressions they

communicate to others in everyday life. He sees impression management as essential for the

functioning of social interaction. When individuals meet, they will try to acquire information

about each other so that they will know what to expect of the other and what will be expected

of them. With this information they will form a definition of the situation which regulates

their conduct and their treatment of each other. By managing the impressions that are given

off to others, a person can influence their definition of the situation and thereby influence how

they will be treated by those others. A person in a social interaction is therefore seen as an

actor who gives a performance to an audience in a certain setting to form a definition of the

situation.

Goffman developed his theory in line with the view of symbolic interactionism. Symbolic

interactionists see the individual and society as inseparable and interdependent units. The

relationship between the individual and society is mediated by symbols, which are mental

representations of objects and events that have an agreed-upon collective meaning in a

society. According to this theory, our concept of self develops through social interaction

between the individual and society (Schlenker, 1980). For example, a police uniform

symbolizes that a person wearing it, holds a certain function in society. The self-concept of

- 4 -


the police officer depends on the symbols he gives off and the meaning these symbols have in

that society. These symbols give clues to the audience about how a situation should be

defined. Hence, the audience knows it should treat the person wearing the uniform according

to the way they should treat a police officer.

The symbols a person gives off may differ depending on the situation and the audience.

Goffman borrows from William James (1890) the concept of multiple selves. James states

that a person has ‘as many different social selves as there are distinct groups of persons about

whose opinion he cares’ (James, 1890, pp. 294). In one situation the police officer might wear

his uniform and act authoritatively when acting out his job, while in another situation he

might wear leisure clothes and behave himself nice and friendly when he is at home with his

wife and kids.

Script theory, developed by Abelson (1981), is a theory of social cognition that states that

people form cognitive scripts through experiences with situations. These cognitive scripts are

a coherent sequence of events expected by a person to happen in a situation in which the

person is or is not expected to act himself. Such a script is comparable to a script for a scene

in a movie. For example, when a person enters a room, he is expected to greet the people

inside the room and the people inside are expected to great him back. In such a situation a

person selects an appropriate script and takes a role to play within that script. Script theory

adds to impression management theory by giving an explanation of how impressions can

influence behaviour. The way a situation is defined and the role a person takes within the

script depend in part on the impressions he has of the other actors and the impressions he

gives off himself.

At about the same time as Goffman’s development of the dramaturgical approach, Edward

Jones started his investigation into ingratiation. He defined ingratiation as ‘those episodes of

social behaviour that are designed to increase the attractiveness of the actor to the target’

(Jones, 1964, pp.2). So it dealt with a more limited part of impression management,

specifically focused at increasing attractiveness. In subsequent theory ingratiation was

adopted as one of the basic tactics of impression management (Jones & Pittman, 1982).

2.2 Deceptive activity or expression of the true self?

It has been reasoned by some theorists that by managing and adapting the impressions they

give off, people hide their true selves and act in a deceptive way. The motivation to engage in

- 5 -


this behaviour would be to deceive and manipulate others in order to acquire personal gain.

Arkin and Shepperd (1989), for example, make a distinction between style and substance.

Substance is seen as the ‘real’ content of a message and style is the way the message is

packaged and delivered to the audience. They state that the more we know about how

powerful people orchestrate crucial events and account for their results, the better we will be

able to prevent style from interfering with substance. Feldman, Forrest, and Happ (2002)

found in an experiment that subjects instructed to engage in impression management

behaviour were more likely to lie than people in a control condition. Jones (1964) calls

ingratiation illicit behaviour because it is directed towards objectives that are not contained in

the implicit contract which underlies social interaction. He sees the ingratiator as hiding his

true motives and presenting himself as attractive to the target in order to reap some future

benefits. Schlenker and Weigold (1992) named the view, in which impression management is

seen as a kind of deceptive behaviour used by only a certain kind of people to reach some

interpersonal goals, the restrictive view. They opposed it against the expansive view, which

sees impression management as a ubiquitous feature of social behaviour.

Although Goffman (1959) points to the fact that the original Latin meaning of the word

‘person’ is a mask, he sees impression management as a necessary element for smooth social

interaction. It makes clear what we can expect of others and what others can expect of us. He

also mentions that sometimes conscious effort is needed in order to ensure that the

impressions others have of us are correct. Zuckerman, Hall, DeFrank, and Rosenthal (1976)

demonstrated that sometimes, when a person deliberately displays expressions of internal

states which he not actually experiences, these expressions can be interpreted more easily by

an observer than the ‘natural’ expression of such an internal state. So, it can be useful to

engage in some impression management if people want others to know their actual internal

experiences. It can also happen that people get the ‘wrong’ impression and some effort is

needed to set it right. So, impression management can also be directed at the goal of

displaying an accurate image of oneself.

Most contemporary theorists share the view that impression management is a normal aspect

of social interaction. Schlenker and Weigold (1992) state that to ask if impression

management is going on in social interaction, is the same as asking if cognition is going on in

social interaction; no content of a message can ever be delivered without a certain form of

packaging for that message.

In most situations people cannot go about displaying all the impressions they would like to

display. The range of impressions they can display is limited by a number of factors. First of

- 6 -


all, they are controlled by their believability. If self-presentations are too self-glorificating,

this can lead to numerous problems for the actor. It can lead to extremely high expectations,

as well as, to anxiety caused by concerns of the ability to live up to these expectations

(Schlenker & Weigold, 1992). Leary and Kowalski (1990) add to this that most people have

internalised an ethic against lying which holds them from making too deceitful claims and

gives them feelings of guilt if they have done so. Another drawback of making unrealistic

impressions is that they can backfire and create the image of a conceited person or a

sycophant (Turnley & Bolino, 2001).

Also people’s beliefs about their own identities, moderates their self-presentations. Schlenker

and Weigold (1992) mention three explanations for this moderating effect. First of all, strong

self-beliefs are more accessible in memory and more likely to be activated across situations

and audiences. Consequently, people will be more inclined to behave in accordance with their

beliefs about themselves, because this will cost less conscious cognitive activity than creating

unrealistic images about themselves. Secondly, people usually have a quite high regard of

their own attributes relative to those of others. Because people tend to overestimate the value

of their own attributes, they might be more inclined to use them to create a good impression

on others. Finally, people who lack certain qualities usually doubt their ability to uphold the

claim that they have these qualities.

In short, although some impression management may be deceptive, certainly not all

impression management is. People often display images of themselves representing their most

favourable qualities but these images are kept in check by their believability and by the self-

beliefs and the identity of the actor. People can therefore more often be expected to edit their

expressive behaviour, de-emphasising negative qualities and emphasising positive qualities,

than to fabricate completely unrealistic impressions (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992).

2.3 Definition and scope of impression management

Impression management is defined in the literature as: the process by which individuals

attempt to control the impressions others form of them (Leary & Kowalski, 1990; Rosenfeld,

Giacalone, & Riordan, 1995). Schlenker (1980) distinguishes it from self-presentation by

stating that self-presentation deals with impressions about the actor himself, while impression

management can also be aimed at controlling the images of objects or events that are only

indirectly self-relevant. An example of this would be a public relations expert representing a

- 7 -


company. Schlenker and Britt (1999) found evidence that students managed the impressions

of their friends when these friends were considered to be in need for promotion or protection

of their identities. Hence, a form of impression management exists that is not directly aimed

at controlling the image of the actor himself. However, even in these cases impression

management often does have some self-relevance and it can therefore be seen as an indirect

form of self-presentation. The images of our friends and more generally the things we are

connected with, are also relevant to our own self-concept. Schlenker (1980) uses the term

positive generalization to indicate that people who are linked to positive identities will also be

evaluated more positively. Finch and Cialdini (1989) discovered a phenomenon, they called

boosting, which refers to the tendency of an individual to rate a negative other more

favourably if he is somehow connected with this other person. This connection can even be

very superficial. They demonstrated this effect in an experiment in which they supplied

subjects with negative information about the Russian monk Rasputin and told some subjects

that they had the same birthday as Rasputin. Respondents who were told that they had the

same birthday as the Russian monk, evaluated him more favourably than respondents who

had not been told this. So, the line between impression management and self-presentation is

as good as impossible to draw and therefore these terms will be used interchangeably in this

article.

Tedeschi and Reiss (1981) draw attention to the deliberateness of controlling impressions. All

behaviour of individuals has the potential of having effect on the impressions others form of

them. This means that, in a very broad way all behaviour can be seen as impression

management. At the other extreme it can be assumed that the actor must have intended to

create the relevant impression and is aware of engaging in this process. Tedeschi and Reiss

(1981) argue that for a behaviour to be labelled as impression management, it should have the

purpose of influencing impressions, but the actor does not have to be aware of this purpose. A

person could for example go to work wearing a fancy business suit without realizing that he

wears it with the purpose of displaying an impression of competence and professionalism.

Jones and Pittman (1982) mention some situations in which impression management does not

play a role. Examples of these are: purely expressive behaviour such as anger or joy, routine

transactions, occasion where people are concerned with displaying their authentic selves such

as therapy sessions, and behaviour of high task-involvement. Csikszentmihalyi (1999) defines

the state of flow as a particular kind of enjoyable experience that people get when they engage

in activities for which their competence is just enough for what is needed for that activity.

- 8 -


Such an activity is so demanding that no surplus attention is left to monitor any stimuli

irrelevant to the task. So, no spare attention is left to dedicate to impression management.

Most of the time people are unconscious of the impressions they make on others. Only when

certain stimuli are detected, conscious attention may shift to those stimuli (Leary & Kowalski,

1990). We might, for example, be only marginally aware of ourselves when we are engaging

in an activity but this will change drastically if we find out that people around us are staring at

us. Schlenker (1980) uses the concepts of objective and subjective self-awareness to

distinguish the states in which much and few conscious impression management is used. The

theory of self-awareness (Wicklund, 1980) states that in a state of objective self-awareness a

person is the object of his own thoughts. In the state of subjective self-awareness the attention

of the person is directed at something else. Attention can shift rapidly between these two

states and particularly if someone perceives a symbol of the self, attention tends to turn

inward onto some aspect of the self. Such symbols can be mirrors, tape recordings of a

person’s voice, or being watched by others. People are more aware of the impressions they

make on others in such a state of objective self-awareness. Consequently, the actions of

people in this state are more often the outcome of conscious thought about how others will

perceive them. However, even in a subjective state of self-awareness we can engage in

impression management, because some behaviour, which was originally designed to manage

impressions, can become routine behaviour that is displayed without the actor even being

aware of it himself (Schlenker, 1980).

In sum, the level of impression management in which a person engages, can be seen as a

continuum. On the one hand, there are situations of extreme public self-awareness in which

people attend consciously to all the aspects of themselves that others can observe. On the

other hand, there are situations in which people do not hold themselves as the object of their

own thought and consequently are not engaging in conscious self-presentations (Leary &

Kowalski, 1990).

2.4 The motivation to manage impressions

The fact that the level of impression management in which people engage varies, draws

attention to the motives a person can have to engage in this behaviour. In Goffman’s view

(1959), impression management is seen as externally caused behaviour, resulting from the

social system the actor is a part of. In this view, actors internalised the norms of the system

- 9 -


and respond to the demands of others. This view, however, gives no specific reason why

people would internally be motivated to engage in this behaviour (Schneider, 1981).

Subsequent theorists have proposed several reasons for this motivation.

Leary and Kowalski (1990) identified three interrelated but distinct goals of impression

management. First of all, people want to maximize their reward-cost ratio in social relations.

Self-presentation can increase the probability of reaching desired outcomes. These can be

material outcomes, like for example, being accepted for a job interview. They can also be

interpersonal, like gaining approval or friendship. The motivation to engage in impression

management will depend on the value the goal has for the person and the relevance of the

impressions for reaching that goal. This relevance will depend on the dependency of the

individual on the target. Jones (1964) argues that, the more favourable outcomes a person can

bestow on an individual, the more ingratiatory tactics the individual will display towards this

person. This can lead to the self-presenter’s dilemma: the more important it is for an

individual to impress a target, the more likely the target is to be sceptical of the truthfulness of

the individual’s self-presentations (Leary, 1995). Consequently, the more difficult it is to

display believable self-presentations.

The second goal Leary and Kowalski (1990) mention is enhancing one’s self-esteem. In most

theories of social behaviour it is accepted that people often act to restore and maximize their

self-esteem (Swann, 1996). Self-esteem partly depends on being regarded favourably by

significant others. People put effort in enhancing and supporting their self-images by seeking

verification for these enhanced images from others (Sedikides, 1993). So, expressing a

positive view of oneself indirectly enhances self-esteem (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992).

The third goal is facilitating the development of desired identities. According to symbolic

interactionists, our identity and consequently our concept of self develops through interaction

with society. Stryker (1980) argues, in line with the concept of multiple selves from William

James (1890) that a person holds several identities. Some of these identities are more

important for the self-concept of the person than others. Therefore, the more important an

identity is for a person, the higher the motivation to act in terms of that identity in a certain

situation and to create situations that are consistent with that identity. Markus and Nurius

(1986) used the concept of ‘possible selves’ as the images individuals have of what they like

to become and what they are afraid of becoming. These images motivate a person to act in

such a way as to make the desired identity possible. For example, a management student, who

desires becoming a self-confident powerful businessman, will try to display images that are in

line with this desired identity and avoid behaviour that is not compatible with it.

- 10 -


So, there are several possible motives for people to engage in impression management. The

tendency of a person to engage in self-presentations will probably also be influenced by

personality factors. The personality construct of Machiavellianism developed by Christie and

Geis (1970) differentiates between people with a high and people with a low need for power.

High and low scores on this scale represent two alternative strategies for social conduct. The

high scorer on the scale represents an exploitative social strategy while the low scorer

represents a social strategy based on reciprocity and cooperation. The high scorer can

therefore be expected to use more strategic impression management in order to gain more

from interpersonal interactions. The personality scale of self-monitoring seems to be directly

related to impression management; people scoring high on this scale have a tendency to

engage more in self-presentations than people scoring low on this scale (Snyder, 1974; Snyder

& Gangestad, 1986). Kristoff-Brown, Barrick, and Franke (2002) found that extraverted job-

applicants made greater use of self-promotion in job-interviews and applicants’ agreeableness

was correlated with non-verbal impression management. Furthermore, several other

personality factors, like social anxiety and need for approval, are also expected have an

influence on the motivation to engage in impression management (Gardner & Martinko,

1988). To summarize: a combination of situational factors and personality factors will

influence the motivation of a person to engage in impression management in a particular

situation.

2.5 Impression construction

Leary and Kowalski (1990) differentiated impression construction from impression

motivation. Impression motivation is associated with the desire to create particular

impressions in others, while impression construction is the process of selecting an image to

create, and deciding how to go about doing so. The concepts of motivation and construction

are intermingled. The self-concept and desired and undesired identities are factors that

influence impression motivation but they also set limitations and constitute a framework for

impression construction. Other factors influencing impression construction are role

constraints and the target’s values.

Roles are expected patterns of behaviour originating from occupying a certain position in a

social unit (Schlenker, 1980). A distinction can be made between formal roles and implicit

roles (Hare, 1994). An example of a formal role would be a police officer who, by the

- 11 -


description of his function, is obliged to act reputable. An example of an implicit role is a

person in a group who is expected by the others to make important decisions but is not

formally appointed as the leader of the group. If somebody identifies or wants to identify

himself with a certain role he can display images that are congruent with that role in order to

make others belief that the role belongs to his identity. Roles can restrict the behaviour a

person is able to display when role incongruent behaviour is harmful for enacting that role.

For example, Bill Clinton got into role trouble when the publicity about his extramarital

affaire was inconsistent with his model-function of a good family member, which is expected

from an American president.

The target’s values comprise another factor that shape the images a person will display. A

specific tactic of ingratiation is displaying values that are consistent with the target’s values

(Jones, 1964). According to the similarity-attraction hypothesis (Byrne, 1971), attraction and

liking between people is positively correlated with similarity of the values of those people.

Hence, displaying similar values to the target person is a direct way of increasing

attractiveness to that person.

It can also be expected that the images an actor displays will be consistent with the values of

an audience if the opinion of that audience matters to the actor (Leary, 1995). Some values are

assumed only by specific targets while others are generally accepted in a society. For

example, the attributes of physical attractiveness likeability and competence are thought to be

considered important in the ‘western society’ and people are willing to put a lot of effort to

obtain these attributes.

2.6 Types of impression management

Impression management covers an extremely broad range of behaviour, ranging from small

things like choosing the music one listens, to straightforward bragging about one’s

performances. Research and theorizing into the use and effect of impression management

behaviour has largely dealt with only a part of the whole range of possible behaviours. In

organizational settings, especially a limited number of verbal impression management

behaviours have been researched. In order to be able to isolate and investigate specific forms

of impression management behaviour, several distinctions and taxonomies have been made. A

first distinction can be made between verbal and non-verbal behaviour.

- 12 -


2.6.1 Non-verbal tactics

Non-verbal impression management can be split up between the displaying of artefacts and

expressive behaviours (Schneider, 1981). Artefacts can be explicitly designed to represent a

certain status or past performance. Examples of these are uniforms and medals. They can also

implicitly hint at values a person has, or social categories a person belongs to. For example,

offices and even bedrooms can be decorated to display a certain image to visitors (Gosling,

Ko, Mannarelli, & Morris, 2002) and many commercials are based on the implicit link people

have between certain products and a desired image.

Handshaking, frowns, eye contact, and smiles are examples of expressive behaviour. They are

demonstrated to be perceived by others at least as momentary moods and feelings of the actor

and they may even be taken as evidence of personal dispositions (Schneider, 1981).

Therefore, they can also be used by people to create impressions in others. Non-verbal

expressions are often associated with the expressions of emotion. However, these behaviours

can convey a wide range of information, such as: information relevant to opinions, moods,

values, personality dispositions, psychopathologies, physical states such as fatigue, and

cognitive states such as comprehension or befuddlement (DePaulo, 1992).

Non-verbal behaviours have several characteristics that distinguish them from verbal

behaviours for the use of self-presentation. DePaulo (1992) mentions the following

characteristics:

Non-verbal behaviour is irrepressible. There is always some non-verbal behaviour. Even if

people try to be as passive as possible, they are perceived as inexpressive, inhibited,

withdrawn, or uptight.

Non-verbal behaviour is linked to emotion. As opposed to verbal behaviours, there seems to

be certain automatic links between the elicitation of emotion and the triggering of facial

muscles.

Non-verbal behaviour is less accessible to actors than to observers. Actors do not see their

facial and postural behaviours and they don not hear their tone of voice, as observers do.

Non-verbal behaviour is off-the-record. As opposed to verbal expressions, it is often very

difficult to describe a facial expression or tone of voice.

Non-verbal behaviour can communicate unique meanings. Certain impressions can only be

communicated non-verbally.

- 13 -


Non-verbal behaviour occurs quickly. Many non-verbal expressions occur instantly after an

event has taken place, while people often need some time to formulate and convey verbal

reactions.

Impression management behaviour often is a mix of verbal as well as non-verbal behaviour.

A client, entering a professionally decorated office of a business partner, may encounter a

person wearing an expensive business suit who smilingly shakes his hand while making him a

compliment. Because of the characteristics of expressive non-verbal behaviours, they can

have unique effects on impression management tactics. Goffman (1959) noted that people,

when attempting to form realistic impressions of others, often look at less controllable

behaviour, like facial expressions or body posture, to check for clues about the truthfulness of

a displayed impression. Verbal impression management is often backed up by non-verbal

behaviour. For example, when a compliment is accompanied by a smile. However, non-verbal

behaviour can also give signals that are contradictory to verbal impression management

statements. For example, by rolling once eyes or putting on a funny face an actor can try to

distance himself of what he just said (Leary, 1995). Schneider (1981) hinted that skilful

impression management probably depends on creating a good mix of different kinds of

impression management behaviour. To conclude, although most research on impression

management focuses at verbal behaviour, it is important to keep in mind that it often consists

of a subtle combination of verbal and non-verbal behaviour which together influence the

formation of an impression by an audience.

2.6.2 Verbal tactics

Verbal impression management has often been split up between protective tactics and

acquisitive tactics. Protective tactics are used in response to poor performances, while

acquisitive tactics have the purpose of establishing a certain identity (Tedeschi & Melburg,

1984). Protective tactics are usually applied following predicaments. These are: ‘situations in

which events have undesirable implications for the identity-relevant images actors have

claimed or desire to claim in front of real or imagined audiences’ (Schlenker, 1980, pp.125).

Examples of predicaments are mistakes and blunders. They induce in people feelings of

discomfort with the situation and a tendency to restore their hurt self-image. In such cases,

remedial tactics, called accounts, can be used to reduce the negative impact of such an identity

- 14 -


failure (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). With an excuse, the person admits that the action was wrong

but the responsibility for the action is denied. With a justification, on the other hand, the

person accepts the responsibility but gives reason for why the action is not so bad.

Acquisitive impression management differs from protective tactics in that it is not only aimed

at ‘saving face’ after predicaments but at actively creating a specific image. Acquisitive

tactics have mainly been distinguished by the purpose they serve. A first distinction has been

made between ingratiation on the one hand and self-promotion on the other. The ingratiator

has the purpose of being liked or seen as attractive while the self-promoter wants to be seen as

competent (Godfrey, Jones, & Lord, 1986; Jones & Pittman, 1982). Godfrey et al. (1986)

showed that these purposes are not always compatible. In a research on the differences

between self-promotion and ingratiation, they found that self-promotion can lead to a decrease

of liking for the self-promoter by the target. Rudman (1998) also found that for women, it is

not always possible to create the images of competence and likeability at the same time. They

found that, for women engaging in self-promotion may be instrumental for managing a

competent impression, but this may come at the cost of social reprisals for violating the

gender stereotype to be modest. A perceived consequence of self-promotion was that they

were seen as less socially attractive, especially by other women.

Jones and Pittman (1982) were the first to develop a taxonomy of impression management

tactics based on the kind of images they intended to create. They developed a taxonomy of

impression management behaviour, in which they tried to include the wide variety of

impression management behaviours identified by preceding researchers. The tactics they

include are: (1) Ingratiation, which has the purpose of being seen as likeable; (2) Self-

promotion, which aims at creating an image of competence; (3) Exemplification, which refers

to people who manage the impressions of self-sacrifice and going beyond the call of duty in

order to gain the attributes of moral worthiness and dedication; (4) Intimidation, which are

tactics of signalling power or the potential to punish others, with the purpose of being seen as

dangerous; (5) Supplication, which refers to tactics aimed at creating a needy or pitiful image

by means of demonstrating weakness and incompetence. Of these tactics ingratiation and self-

promotion have the richest research and theoretical history.

- 15 -


2.6.3 Ingratiation

Jones (1964) identified four ingratiation tactics, namely: complimentary other-enhancement,

conformity, self-presentation, and rendering favours. Complimentary other-enhancement

comes close to the everyday term of flattery. The ingratiator shows the target person that he

views him positively and compliments him on his various strengths and virtuous. He may pay

attention to the positive attributes of the target while not mentioning his more negative

impressions of the person. Vonk (2002) found some convincing evidence for the success of

this tactic in an experiment in which she demonstrated that flattery induced more favourable

judgements of the flatterer by the target compared to the judgements of an observer. The

underlying reasoning of this tactic is that a person will find it hard not to like somebody who

likes him. Strong evidence for this reasoning was supplied by an experiment of Curtis and

Miller (1986) in which they led subjects to believe that they were liked or disliked by others.

They found out that these subjects reciprocated this perceived liking with attitudes and

behaviour towards those others.

The second ingratiation tactic Jones mentioned is conformity. People tend to conform with

others on several dimensions. Sociological research demonstrated that social influence can

induce conforming behaviour. As Asch (1955) and Janis (1971) demonstrated, under social

pressure people tend to conform to group statements, norms, and opinions. Conformity can

take place by means of verbal statements of agreement and converging values, but it can also

take place on the level of physical behaviour (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999; van Baaren, Holland,

Steenaert, & van Knippenberg, 2003) and even with moods and emotions (Neumann &

Strack, 2000). Research on social mimicry shows that people tend to mimic the behaviour of

others with which they are in social interaction and this has a positive effect on liking.

Chartrand and Bargh (1999) concluded from an experiment that, mimicking the behaviour of

others facilitates smooth interaction and increases liking between interaction partners. Van

Baaren et al. (2003) conducted an experiment in which a waitress mimicked half her

customers and did not mimic the other half. The results indicated that people who were

mimicked gave bigger tips than the control group. So, mimicking has the effect of making

people more generous towards the imitator. Deutsch and Gerard (1955) already recognized

that attraction seeking or attraction maintenance was one of the reasons to engage in opinion

conformity. The similarity-attraction hypothesis of Byrne (1971) states that people are more

tended to like those others who have similar values. Bohra and Pandey (1984) showed that

people express opinions or acts that are consistent with another person’s attitudes, beliefs, and

- 16 -


values in order to increase liking. To conclude, research from a wide variety of perspectives

demonstrated that conformity, either used consciously or unconsciously, seems to be a highly

effective way of making an actor more attractive to important others.

Jones (1964) argues that self-presentation can be a tactic of ingratiation if it involves the

explicit presentation or description of one’s own attributes to increase the likelihood of being

judged as attractive. As the research of Godfrey et al. (1986) and Rudman (1998)

demonstrated, not all self-presentation can be seen as ingratiation. Excessive self-promotion

will usually have more negative than positive effects on liking. However, presenting oneself

in a way that is valued by the target is expected to increase attractiveness by that target.

Baumeister (1989) calls this form of impression management ‘pleasing the audience’ and

makes the link with the tactic of conformity because it involves conforming to the audience’s

preferences. A common example of this tactic is the employee who presents himself in the

way he thinks his boss would like to see him. Exemplification is a tactic that involves self-

presentations that convey an impression of integrity and moral worthiness (Jones & Pittman,

1982). They are most likely to be used if the target values those virtues (Leary, 1995). Zanna

and Pack (1975) found out that women, when they were asked to present themselves to a

desirable male partner, were inclined to adjust their own self-presentations to what they

believed the male admired in a woman. In conclusion, although certain self-presentations can

be in conflict with the purpose of ingratiation, some self-presentations can be used to increase

liking and attractiveness.

The fourth tactic of ingratiation is rendering favours. The rational for this tactics lies in the

norm of reciprocity posited by Gouldner (1960), which states that we should repay others if

they have favoured us in some way. Favour doing, especially when it is not requested, is

expected to create liking for the favour doer and a feeling of obligation to repay the favour.

2.6.4 Self-promotion

The self-promoter wants to be seen as competent. This can either be on general ability

dimensions, for example intelligence, or on specific skills, like playing the piano (Rosenfeld

et al., 1995). Godfrey et al. (1986) found that self-promotion is a more proactive process than

ingratiation which is relatively reactive. Ingratiators make more use of listening skills and

react to the responses of the target by means of nodding, smiling and agreeing. Self-promoters

on the other hand, cannot afford to be too reactive because they must make claims about their

- 17 -


own competence or find ways to somehow display their competence to the target. Godfrey et

al. (1986) found that in a conversation, reaching the goal of being seen as competent turned

out to be more difficult for the subjects than reaching the goal of being seen as likeable.

There are several tactics that people can use to promote their selves. The most straightforward

way of creating an image of competence is by a demonstration of this competence. Social

facilitation theory has shown that the mere presence of other people can increase the effort

they put into a certain task (Kent, 1994). Evaluation apprehension theory (Myers, 2002)

argues that this increase in effort arises because people have the socially learned expectation

that they will be evaluated by others. Baumeister (1989) therefore argues that an important

reason why people try to do a good job is because of the impression that will make on others.

Goffman (1959) uses the concept of dramatic realization to indicate that just doing an action

is not always enough to make others aware of the action one intends to demonstrate.

Sometimes an actor wants to emphasize that an action is being done or show that he is linked

to the action. Some actions, like prize fighting or playing the violin, may have dramatic value

by themselves. However, many other actions need some dramatizing to become salient for an

audience. An example Goffman mentions, is the service industry where it is often not

immediately clear what is being done for clients because the client is not able to see where the

overhead costs go to. Therefore some dramatizing, like communicating and demonstrating

what gets done and displaying artefacts that represent the process, is needed to demonstrate

the value of the service to the client. Especially after a successful performance, people will

tend to highlight or exaggerate their relationship to the successful outcome (Schlenker, 1980).

As accounting tactics are used to reduce the negative effect of predicaments by distancing

oneself from a negative event or downplaying the event, on the other hand, acclaiming tactics

are used to explain a desirable event in a way that maximizes the desirable implications for

the actor (Schlenker, 1980). In sum, to engage in an action is not always sufficient to

demonstrate ones competence in it, the attention of the audience also has to be drawn and it

must be assured that the audience realizes the full value of the action. The two forms of

acclaiming Schlenker (1980) mentions are entitlements and enhancements. Entitlements are

attempts to maximize responsibility for an event and enhancements are attempts to maximize

the perceived value of the event.

Another way of promoting oneself is by making self-enhancing public announcements. These

announcements can be claims of attributes that the actor actually possesses, but of which he is

uncertain if his audience will recognize them in him, if he does not mention hem. They can

also be self-glorificating statements, incongruent with reality, which the actor wants his

- 18 -


audience to think he possesses. Schlenker (1975) found out that subjects presented themselves

as quite competent when results about tests they made were kept anonymous, while they

presented themselves more realistically when information about their performance was

expected to become public. Jones and Pitman (1982) noticed that self-promoters sometimes

face the so called self-promoter’s paradox. According to this paradox, people who are really

good at something, often do not need to explicitly present themselves as competent.

Therefore, the audience could reason that people who engage in self-promotion may actually

be incompetent, otherwise they would not have to promote themselves. Self-promotion may

therefore paradoxically be seen as covering a lack of competence instead of as evidence for

competence.

2.7 Impression management measures and scales

In order to be able to engage in quantitative research on impression management,

measurement devices and scales have to be constructed that objectively measure and

discriminate between different impression management behaviours. A distinction can be made

between two methods (Bolino & Turley, 1999). The first method is observing and recording

impression management behaviour in an experimental or natural setting. This method has the

benefit that a broad range of behaviours can be studied and situation specific impression

management techniques can be taken into account. Also, because it doesn’t rely on self-

reports, social desirability is not a problem. An example of this method is the experiment of

Godfrey et al. (1986), in which they asked raters to analyse the videotaped impression

management behaviour of ingratiating and of self-promoting subjects. In this study, the raters

were asked to make frequency counts of the verbal as well as the non-verbal behaviour that

subjects displayed during a conversation. A drawback of this method is that different

strategies cannot be easily differentiated because it is not always clear with what purpose an

action is undertaken (Godfrey et al., 1986). This makes it difficult to divide the displayed

behaviour of subjects over traditional impression management categories, as these categories

are often based on the purposes the tactics serve. Furthermore, observation is a time

consuming activity and it’s often difficult to get permission in a natural situation, like for

example an organization, to observe people (Bolino & Turnley, 1999).

The other approach taken by researchers to measure impression management is by means of

asking subjects to answer questions on the frequency of their impression management

- 19 -


behaviour. This method has the benefit that it is easy to administer; it costs relatively little

time to develop a questionnaire and make subjects fill it in, as opposed to observing and

analysing their behaviour. Furthermore, it’s often easier to get permission and find people

willing to fill in a questionnaire. Several questionnaires attempting to measure impression

management behaviour, have been developed by researchers.

Social Desirability

As impression management deals with controlling the impressions that are formed in others,

subjects filling in an impression management questionnaire may try to control the impressions

the researcher forms of them. They can do this by filling in the questionnaire in such a way

that they will be seen as likeable or competent. A drawback of questionnaires therefore, is that

they can suffer from social desirability errors. Social desirability refers to the tendency, to

answer items of a questionnaire in such a way as to come across as socially attractive or

likeable. There are two views regarding the interpretation of social desirability (Larsen &

Buss, 2002). Social desirability can be seen as a distortion or error in research questionnaires

that should be minimized or eliminated. To control for this error, Crowne and Marlowe

(1960) developed the Social Desirability Scale. This scale measures the tendency of

respondents to answer in a socially desirable way. It contains items like ‘I’m always willing to

admit it when I make a mistake’. If a subject answers affirmative on these kinds of questions,

he is expected to be more concerned with his image than with the correct answers. These

subjects are therefore often dropped from a research.

Social desirability can also be seen as a desirable trait (Larsen & Buss, 2002). It has been

argued that being mentally healthy may entail having an exaggerated positive view of oneself

and one’s abilities. So, social desirable responding can be seen as healthy adaptive behaviour

that people display to protect their self-images and their social positions. In this way, social

desirability is seen as a form of impression management aimed at creating an impression of

socially attractive or likeable.

- 20 -


Attributive versus Repudiative Tactics

The Self-Presentation Scale of Roth, Harris, and Snyder (1988) measures the tendency

towards attributive versus repudiative tactics of self-presentation. This distinction relates to

the difference between assertive and defensive impression management of Tedeschi and

Melburg (1984).

People having an attributive impression management style, try to create a favourable identity

by claiming positive traits about themselves. To measure this, respondents have to fill in if

they consider 30 unrealistically positive statements about themselves true or false. The higher

the ‘true’ scores, the higher the person is rated in attributive impression management.

People using a repudiative style are putting effort in trying to refute their unfavourable

characteristics. To measure this, respondents indicate if 30 statements, that describe

commonly occurring undesirable characteristics, are true or false for them. The higher the

‘false’ scores on this measure, the higher a person is rated in repudiative impression

management.

Although the scale measures an important difference in self-presentational style and the

tendency to engage in self-presentations, it is not clear what specific images people scoring

high on this scale will try to create in others. An advantage of the scale is that it does not

measure impression management behaviour directly by asking respondents if they use certain

tactics, but instead it indirectly deduces a persons tendency to manage the impressions he

creates in others. In this way, social desirable responding can be reduced because respondents

will not be able to directly influence the outcomes of the questionnaires. Even more, social

desirability is incorporated into the scale.

Subordinate Influence Tactics

Wayne and Ferris (1990) developed a 24-item impression management scale in order to

measure subordinate influence tactics. Subordinates were asked to report how often they

engaged in a certain kind of behaviour. They distinguished between how often a subordinate

engaged in supervisor-focused, self-focused, and job-focused impression management

behaviours. However, the primary focus of Wayne and Ferris was not to develop an

impression management measure. Here fore, they did not design their questionnaire according

to statistically valid procedures for designing questionnaires. consequently, this scale appears

- 21 -


to have some psychometric problems and ambiguity on the classification of some items over

different strategies. This can be a serious problem if one wants to test hypotheses about causes

and consequences of these different strategies (Bolino & Turnley, 1999).

The Impression Management Scale of Bolino and Turnley

In order to facilitate research on impression management and to establish a widely accepted

measurement scale, Bolino and Turnley (1999) created, and extensively tested, an impression

management scale. They generated items by investigating the existing literature and scales on

impression management and modifying or rewriting these items to ensure face validity and

establish consistency in tone and perspective. Based on the Jones and Pittman taxonomy

(1982) they divided the items into the five strategies of self-promotion, ingratiation,

exemplification, intimidation, and supplication. Respondents are asked to indicate on a scale,

how often they engage in a certain kind of behaviour. From their answers it can be deduced

how high they score on the five different behavioural categories.

The Jones and Pittman taxonomy is a useful tool for research because of it’s breadth relative

to other scales, it’s focus on specific behaviours, and it’s firm grounding in theory (Bolino &

Turnley, 1999). Moreover it has been extensively tested and refined by Bolino and Turnley

(1999), so that it can be used as an appropriate measurement scale for research on impression

management. However, it covers only a part of the whole range of impression management

behaviours. For the sake of consistency it is impossible to take into account all behaviour

relevant to impression management. The concept is so wide that not all kinds of behaviour

can be included in a taxonomy. A limitation of a questionnaire like the one of Bolino and

Turnley (1999) is that with such a questionnaire it is not possible to cover specific non-verbal

impression management behaviour, because like DePaulo (1992) wrote, they are often off the

record. This is a drawback, especially because these non-verbal behaviours are expected to be

highly interrelated with the verbal tactics and the successful outcomes of these tactics.

Furthermore, because the scale distinguishes impression management tactics by their intended

outcomes, it is limited to the five impressions of: likeability, competence, virtue, danger, and

pitiful. However, there are a lot more impressions that a person could like to display in social

situations. For example, people could want others to see them as tough, conscientious, or

open-minded. To conclude, although the scale is statistically designed and relatively broad

compared to others scales, a drawback is that it is not all compassing.

- 22 -


Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding

Paulhus’ (1984) Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding measures two different aspects

of impression management. The ‘self-deceptive enhancement’ subscale measures self-

deceptive overconfidence; it measures the tendency of individuals to systematically evaluate

themselves overtly positive. The ‘impression management’ subscale measures the tendency to

present oneself deliberately favourable to others. In short, the questionnaire makes a

distinction between overtly favourable self-reports that an individual actually believes and

self-reports of which the individual knows that they are too good to be true.

Self-monitoring

The self-monitoring scale of Snyder (1974) can also be seen as a measure of impression

management (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). This scale measures the difference in the extent to

which people can and do observe and control their expressive behaviour. Hence, it not only

focuses on the tendency to engage in impression management behaviour, but also on how

skilful a person is in it. The scale can be seen as existing out of two layers (Snyder &

Gangestad, 1986). On one level, the scale measures the underlying personality construct of

self-monitoring, which even might have a genetic base. On the other level, the scale consists

out of three factors that represent distinct but interrelated constructs. The first factor,

expressive control, concerns the ability to actively control expressive behaviour. The second,

social stage presence, measures the propensity to perform in social situations and attract

attention to oneself. The third, other-directed self-presentation, measures in how far a person

acts the way he is expected to act by others. So, the scale measures the tendency of people to

engage in impression management behaviour. More explicitly, Bolino and Turnley (2003)

demonstrated that high self-monitors have a tendency to apply positive impression

management tactics, aimed at creating a desired image. Positive images such as ingratiation,

self-promotion, and exemplification are used to make a positive impression on others. They

can be opposed to the tactics of intimidation and supplication which have the purpose of

creating the often negatively evaluated impressions of needy and intimidating. Furthermore

the scale measures how successful a person is expected to be in presenting himself, but it does

- 23 -


not distinguish between the different kinds of strategies and tactics that this behaviour can

exist of.

The self-monitoring scale has been strongly criticized by several theorists. There seems to be

evidence that the different components do not correlate and sometimes even correlate

negatively with each other (Briggs & Cheek, 1988). Furthermore, the components have been

shown to correlate in different directions with external concepts. The factors of expressive

control and social stage presence correlated positively with a measure of self-confidence

while the other-directedness factor correlated negatively with the same measure (Cheek &

Buss, 1981). Because of these findings, the critics put into doubt the existence of the

underlying concept of self-monitoring. Snyder and Gangestad (1986) reacted to this critique

by demonstrating that still a mayor portion of the items of the scale loaded positively on the

general self-monitoring construct. In order to increase the strength of this general factor they

decided to drop 7 of the 25 items, so that only those items, with a factor loading of higher

than 0,15 on the general construct, were retained.

Briggs and Cheek (1988) argued that the dropped items mainly represented the other-

directedness factor of the scale. Consequently the emphasis of the revised scale is more on the

other two factors. Because these two other factors correlate strongly with other personality

measures like self-confidence, social surgency, and extraversion, the uniqueness of the

concept was cast into doubt. John, Cheek, and Klohnen (1996) even claimed that the revised

self-monitoring scale measures extraversion. They asked Snyder to define self-monitoring by

means of positive and negative correlations with items out of a standard item pole. They

found that the construct created in this way covaried more with a construct of extraversion

than with the revised self-monitoring scale. However, it is questionable in how far this

artificially created construct really represents the self-monitoring construct.

Gangestad and Snyder (2000) defended their construct with an extensive investigation of the

relations between the self-monitoring construct and external concepts. They concluded that

the relationship of self-monitoring with external constructs was sufficiently unique for self-

monitoring to be seen as a unique construct. The relations between self-monitoring and other

constructs were different than the relation of extraversion with those others constructs.

Furthermore they concluded that the emphasis on attention and responsiveness to others had

been weakened in the new 18-item scale as opposed to the old 25-item scale. Because of this,

the negative relation with self-confidence is weakened and they state that the self-monitoring

construct will be more strongly related to acquisitive as opposed to protective impression

management. The role of reactiveness and the strong tendency to assess appropriate behaviour

- 24 -


from cues from the audience is de-emphasised. Instead the revised self-monitoring scale can

be seen a measure of the personal disposition to engage in impression management aimed at

the active construction of public selves, designed to achieve social ends (Snyder & Gangestad,

2000).

2.8 Success factors of impression management

Of course, the frequency of a certain kind of behaviour is not enough to predict the success of

the intended outcome of that behaviour. Creating a desired impression in others often depends

on a thorough assessment of a situation and the skilful application of a broad range of

impression management techniques. The success of an attempt to establish a certain image

can depend, as well on the situation, as on an actor’s personal skills in presenting himself. An

example of such a situation factor becomes evident by the ingratiator’s dilemma. This predicts

that it is more difficult to succeed in an ingratiation attempt, the more dependent an actor is on

the target, because the target will be more inclined to look for hidden reasons for the actor’s

behaviour. An example of a personal factor that influences impression management success is

demonstrated by the findings of Godfrey et al. (1986). They found that successful presenters

seemed to be more natural and at home with the tactic they used than unsuccessful presenters.

Schneider (1981) makes a distinction between the impressions that a person wants others to

have of him and the additional impressions he creates in others unintentionally. The former,

he calls the primary or calculated impressions while the later are the secondary impression.

The secondary impressions are not necessarily undesirable, they are just not intended. For

example, Godfrey et al. (1986) found that subjects using ingratiation tactics also were

perceived as more competent, even though they did not specifically intend to be seen as

competent. In this case, the secondary impression was competence, which is under most

circumstances a desired impression.

An actor may happily accept inferences from his behaviour as long as these are consistent

with the actually desired impression. However, the probability exists that the audience will

draw inferences that are inconsistent with the desired image (Schneider, 1981). An additional

problem with these secondary impressions is that because of their unintentional nature, they

are by definition not manageable. Because the same behaviour can be interpreted in different

ways, a target can draw inferences that are different than intended by the actor. It is also

possible that the credibility of the calculated impressions are called into doubt; the audience

- 25 -


may infer that the presentation does not mean what it seems. Several aspects have an impact

on how successful an actor is expected to be in his impression management behaviour.

Combinations of verbal and nonverbal expressions. As Goffman (1959) already noticed: The

audience may use, what are considered to be the ungovernable aspects of expressive

behaviour, as a check upon the validity of what is conveyed by the governable aspects.

Because of their direct link with emotions, their immediateness, and their irrepressibility, it is

as good as impossible to control all expressive behaviours (DePaulo, 1992). Even an

extremely skilled actor will not be able to minutely control all muscles of his face, his body

posture, breathing, and all the extra information that might come to the availability of his

audience. Therefore all the uncontrolled or uncontrollable behaviour can give cues to the

audience that can lead to far from intended images. A lie detector is a typical device to check

for such, as good as uncontrollable, behaviour that can lead to a completely different image of

a person.

Knowledge of attributional styles. Schneider (1981) acknowledges that a skilful impression

manager must not only be a skilled actor, he must also have sophisticated knowledge of how

his audience will perceive and interprete his actions. In other words, the actor must try to

gauge what processes his audience uses to come to conclusions about his behaviour. Some

insight into the attributional style of the target is at least necessary to deduce what effect a

certain impression management tactic will have on the audience. Attribution theory deals with

how people explain the behaviour of others; for example by attributing it either to internal

dispositions or to external situations (Myers, 2002). Fletcher, Danilovics, Fernandez,

Peterson, and Reeder (1986) found that people differ in the complexity of the process in

which they engage when they form attributions about others. They found that some people are

disposed to engage in an elaborate process of thoroughly investigating the causes of the

behaviour before making attributions. Other people, on the other hand, are inclined to make

relatively simple attributions without putting much effort into this process. A target with a

simple attributional style may for example, attribute an ingratiatory compliment to the

kindness of the actor, while a target with a more complex attributional style may deduce that

the reasons for making the compliment are more complex and probably involve some ulterior

motives on the part of the actor.

Self-monitoring. Turnley and Bolino (2001) reasoned that the impression management

techniques of the Jones and Pittman (1982) taxonomy could lead to positive as well as to

negative images. For example ingratiation could lead to being seen as likeable but also to

being seen as a sycophant. Self-promotion could lead to the image of competent but also to

- 26 -


the image of conceited. They conducted a study to find out if high self-monitors were better at

impression management than low self-monitors. Because high self-monitors are sensitive to

the image they display, act like social chameleons, are more sensitive to social clues, and have

more experience in managing impressions, they were expected to score higher on the positive

images and lower on the negative images. The results partly supported this proposition. For

ingratiation, high self-monitors scored higher on likeability and lower on sycophant. For self-

promotion, high self-monitors scored higher on competence but not really significantly lower

on conceited. Also for exemplification, the results were more or less as expected, but not for

supplication and intimidation. It seems that self-monitoring at least has some relevance for

predicting the success of impression management behaviour.

Self-efficacy. Another questionnaire that intends to give some insight into a factor that impacts

the success of self presentations is the questionnaire of efficacy of self-presentation of Mielke

(1990). Bandura (1997) invented the concept of self-efficacy as an optimistic belief about

one’s own abilities. It entails the sense that one is competent and effective in completing a

certain task. Mielke (1990) developed a questionnaire to measure the self-efficacy of self-

presentations in social situations. So, the questionnaire of Mielke measures the degree to

which people see themselves as competent and effective in presenting desired images to

others. This scale is divided into three factors: the first factor measures the self-efficacy of

attaining emotional attention from others (like sympathy or interest), the second measures the

sense of competence and effectiveness in attaining intellectual recognition, and the last factor

measures the self-efficacy in reaching material goals through self-presentation.

Self-efficacy will influence the tactics and styles of self-presentations and is expected to be

positively correlated with the successful outcomes of self-presentations (Mielke, 1990).

However, other factors like a person’s ability to assess the way others reason about him, will

also play a role in the success of an impression management attempt (Schneider, 1981). A

person can for example consider himself as very competent at managing impressions, while

this sense of self-efficacy is in reality caused by an overtly optimistic view of how others see

him. DePaulo, Hoover, Webb, Kenny, and Oliver (1987) found that although people have

some accuracy in predicting how they are perceived by others, this accuracy can be limited in

some cases. In an experiment, they found that subjects believed that they made consistent

impressions on different others while in reality they made very different impressions on

different people. So, although self-efficacy is expected to influence the success of self-

presentational tactics, empirical research should be undertaken to investigate the strength of

this influence.

- 27 -


A drawback of the scale of Mielke is the specificity of the items. Some items are specifically

related to academic scholars, others to male subjects. For example ‘In seminars I can act so

that others think of me as a smart person’ or ‘I’m convinced that I can come across, on

women, as self-confident and superior’. This makes it necessary to rewrite some items if the

questionnaire is to be used in a more general context.

Self-regulation. Another factor that has been proven to have an important effect on the

successful outcomes of impression management is the ability of an actor to regulate his own

thoughts and behaviours. If a person engages in self-regulatory behaviour, he draws from a

limited pool of cognitive resources (Vohs, Baumeister, & Ciarocco, 2005). These same

resources are used for a wide variety of regulatory tasks, such as regulation of cognition and

thought, emotion, and impulsive behaviour. Vohs et al. (2005) demonstrated, in a number of

experiments, that when a person engages in challenging or counter normative self-

presentation, this person draws from these self-regulatory resources. They demonstrated that

subjects, who first engaged in challenging or counter normative self-presentations performed

worse and quit earlier on a subsequent self-regulatory task, than persons who had not engaged

in these self-presentations. The other way around, subjects performed worse on self-

presentational tasks if they beforehand had to engage in other tasks that entailed self-

regulation. This indicates that the availability of sufficient self-regulatory resources is an

important condition for the successful outcomes of challenging and counter-normative self-

presentations.

2.9 Outcomes of impression management behaviour in organizations

Organizational behaviour deals with the systematic study of the actions and attitudes that

people exhibit within organizations (Robbins, 2003). Because in organizations, people

continuously are in social interaction with each other and social interaction is characterized by

interdependence (Schlenker, 1980), impression management plays a major role in

organizational behaviour. In their organizational lives, people depend on others, try to

influence each other, evaluate each other, and just simply work together. These are all social

processes in which it can be important for people to control the images they present to others.

Several researchers have examined the outcomes of impression management tactics on

organizational outcomes, such as: job interview outcomes, performance appraisals,

promotions, salaries, and exchange quality.

- 28 -


Most of these researches investigated the outcomes of the tactics of ingratiation and self-

promotion. Stevens and Kristof (1995) investigated which impression management tactics

applicants used during actual job-interviews and whether there is a relationship between the

used tactics and interview outcomes. With respect to the first research question, they found

that self-promotion was used more often than ingratiation. When ingratiation was used, it

focused on the job or organization rather than on the interviewer. With respect to the second

question they concluded that higher levels of tactics were related to more positive outcomes in

the form of interviewers’ evaluations, and invitations to visit the company.

Especially ingratiation seems to have significant positive outcomes for the actor while the

effects of self-promotion tactics seem to be more doubtful. Wayne and Liden (1995) found

that ingratiatory impression management aimed at a supervisor was positively related to the

supervisor’s liking for a subordinate and perceptions of similarity with that subordinate.

Liking was positively linked to perceived similarity, which in turn was found to be positively

related to supervisor’s performance ratings of the subordinates. They, however, found that

self-focused impression management, which included both self-promotion and

exemplification, had a negative effect on the supervisor’s liking for and perceived similarity

with the subordinate. Wayne and Ferris (1990) found that ingratiatory supervisor focused

impression management had a positive effect on supervisor’s liking and performance

appraisal of the subordinate and exchange quality with the subordinate. On the other hand,

self-focused tactics had no such positive effects on performance ratings. For the self-

promoting tactics, they called job focused impression management tactics, they even found a

negative relationship with performance ratings. Gordon (1996) conducted a meta-analysis on

the effects of ingratiation on work outcomes. He found a small positive effect for the relation

between ingratiation and performance evaluations and a stronger effect for ingratiation and

liking. However, these outcomes were moderated by various variables, like the kind of the

ingratiation tactics used, the transparency of the ingratiation attempt, and the direction of the

influence attempt. Furthermore, it turned out that ingratiation produced more positive

evaluations in upward influence attempts than in downward or lateral attempts. Higgins,

Judge, and Ferris (2003) conducted a meta-analysis in which they found positive correlations

between ingratiation techniques, related to impression management, and work outcomes of

extrinsic success (e.g., salaries and promotion) and performance assessments. Self-promotion

again was found to have only a weak effect on performance assessments and extrinsic

success.

- 29 -


Blickle (2003) investigated the effect of lateral-impression management, and found that

impression management strategies have a positive relation with the evaluation of an actor’s

compliance-gaining success with a colleague. Although some research on impression

management in organizations has been done on downward and lateral tactics, most studies

investigate tactics directed at someone higher in hierarchy, so called upward impression

management. Research about the effects of downward impression management, directed at a

subordinate or lateral impression management, directed at peers is still scarce. This probably

because of the observation that impression management will be used more often in situations

where the audience is of high status and or power and the actor in some way is dependent on

the audience (Jones, 1964; Gardner & Martinko, 1988). However, in organizations, to reach

satisfactory work outcomes, people often have to work together and depend on their

colleagues, to reach satisfactory work outcomes. They will have to define situations, create a

good work atmosphere, divide work-roles, and influence each other to work towards common

goals. Hence, it is expected that impression management tactics will also play a mayor role in

social interaction between colleagues, especially when they depend on each other for reaching

relevant work outcomes.

2.10 Impression management in groups

Robinson (2003) defines a group as two or more individuals, interacting and interdependent,

who come together to achieve particular objectives. In a group situation several processes take

place in which impression management is expected to play a role. First of all, because of the

interactive and interdependent nature of the group process, the members of a group will have

to influence each other in order to reach their own personal goals and the goals of the group.

The impressions the others have of a group member are expected to be related to the amount

of influence the person has within the group. Second and related to the first point, if no formal

structure is provided, the members of a group will assume and assign roles within the group

(Hare, 1994). The process of dividing roles closely resembles Goffman’s (1959) concept of

creating a definition of a situation; the members communicate their expectations of the others

and what the others can expect of them in order to create a workable definition of the

situation. So, the division of roles can be seen as creating a jointly accepted definition of the

situation, which comes about through the impressions people have of the other members of

the group. In claiming and assigning roles, impression management is expected to play a role.

- 30 -


Third, impressions formed of the other members of the group will affect members liking of

each other and the willingness to work with other members of the group again on other

occasions.

Impression management on the group level differs from impression management on a one-to-

one level because the audience consists of two or more persons who have their own individual

attribution styles and their own individual values. Furthermore, group effects might influence

how impression management tactics are interpreted by others. Because of this, the impression

management behaviour of an actor as well as the outcomes of impression management

attempts will differ on a group level compared to in a dyadic situation. Several features of

groups are expected to play a role in these differences:

Diversity of attributional styles. To predict the effect, an impression management tactic will

have on the different members of an audience, an actor needs to have information about how

the different members in his audience will interprete his behaviour (Schneider, 1981).

Because people differ in the way they form attributions of others (Fletcher et al., 1986) a

certain behaviour can lead to different impressions in the different members of an audience.

For example, a group member who always speaks first at a group meeting can be seen as

intelligent by one person while another colleague might deduce from exactly the same

behaviour that he is a braggart. Because of these personal differences in attributional style it is

much more difficult for an actor to predict the impressions he will make on a group of people

than on an individual.

Diversity of audience values. The audience also plays an important role in shaping the

impression management behaviour of individuals (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992; Leary, 1995;

Gardner & Martinko, 1988). Self-presentations are adjusted to the perceived values and

preferences of the audience (Leary, 1995). Juvonen and Murdock (1993) found for example,

that students predicted that peers would attribute self-presentation strategies differently than

their teachers or parents would. Consequently those students indicated that they would vary

their explications for passing or failing an exam, according to the audience. Although there

are attributes that are valued by most people, such as kindness or helpfulness, there is a large

variation in the attributes people value in others. This can result in an awkward position for an

actor if he finds himself faced with an audience consisting out of individuals with different or

even competing values. For example, one group member might value the competence of a

colleague, because he wants to create a good final product, while another group member

might be afraid that a colleague is too competent because this can threaten his own position.

- 31 -


Therefore it can be difficult for an actor to tailor his self-presentations to the different values

of the people in his audience.

Leary (1995) calls the situation, in which a person wants to present different impressions to

two or more people in the same encounter, the multiple audience problem. One way to solve

this problem is by keeping audiences apart. Goffman (1959) used the term audience

segregation for the tactic by which an individual ensures that those before whom he plays one

of his parts will not be the same as the once to whom he plays a different part in a different

setting. However in practice, segregating the audience is often not possible. For example in a

group situation, group members often have to work together in the same space and time so

that only one performance can be given to the whole group.

Decreased impact of tactics. The impact of some tactics is predicted to be less in a group than

in a one-to-one situation (Latané, 1981; Guerin, 1991). To demonstrate this point, the

distinction should be made between self-oriented and other-oriented tactics (Schlenker, 1980;

Wayne & Ferris, 1990). The tactics of self-promotion and exemplification are not explicitly

targeted at specific others but at creating a general impression. With these tactics the actor

wants to create impressions of competence or virtue. To reach these goals he does not have to

aim his tactic at specific people in his audience but he can make statements about himself or

display behaviour that is in line with these impressions. The tactics of ingratiation and

intimidation, on the other hand, are often aimed at specific targets. Threats and compliments,

for example, are generally directed at specific persons. They can be directed at any number of

people reaching from only one person to the whole audience. However the effects are

expected to diminish as the number of persons, the tactic aims at increases. Guerin (1991)

argues for example, that the consequences of threats become diffused among different

members of a group. If a threat is directed at a single person, this person is expected to

become more afraid than if the same threat is uttered to a group of people.

Bystander effects. An actor can target some tactics at a part of the audience, in this way,

making the other people that are present bystanders. If such targeted impression management

tactics are used, they will also influence the bystanders which are not themselves the target of

the tactic. As Vonk (2002) demonstrated, the effects on the target of an ingratiation attempt

are quit different from the effects on an observer. Targets of an ingratiation attempt form

more favourable judgements of the ingratiator than observers do. One reason for this is that

people in general seem to like people who like and flatter them. This effect, which was

already proposed by Jones (1964), has been extensively demonstrated in the research on

ingratiation (Gordon, 1996; Vonk, 2002; Wayne & Ferris, 1995). Vonk (2002) also hints that

- 32 -


there may be an additional effect on the bystander. The ego of the observer may be at stake.

The person observing another person being flattered may feel resentment that the ingratiator is

not flattering him but someone else. Therfore, tactics directed at parts of an audience can have

effects on the observers of those tactics.

Another problem for an actor facing an audience of more than one person is that the effect of

some self-presentations depends on the uniqueness of the interaction between the performer

and the audience. As Goffman (1959) states it: the personal touch makes a difference in how

the performance is perceived. This is especially the case with ingratiation. If you compliment

somebody on something, the effect will probably be reduced if you also compliment

somebody else on the same thing, while the first person is still present.

Interaction effects of audience members. The members of an audience don’t form their

impressions of an actor in isolation. As Sherif (1935) noted, people tend to look at others in

order to form a definition of reality. Audience members can use clues of the others present,

like comments or laughing, in the process of forming an impression of an actor. People’s

judgements are often influenced by the judgements of others (Sherif, 1935; Asch, 1955). For

example, Rosenfeld, Giacalone, and Tedeschi (1983) demonstrated that people evaluated

cartoons as more funny when there was a laughing confederate present than when they were

alone or with a non-laughing confederate. Even the mere presence of others has been

demonstrated to have an effect on how impressions are formed of others. Thomas, Skitka,

Christen, and Jurgena (2002) conducted an experiment on social facilitation effects of

impression formation in which they found that participants, when they were in a group,

judged a negative experimenter more negatively and a positive experimenter more positively,

than when they were alone. Hence, when forming impressions of an actor, members of the

audience can be expected to be influenced by the other members of the audience.

In conclusion, managing impressions for a group of people might require a different appliance

of tactics than managing impressions for a single person. Creating the impression a person

wants to create in others already turned out to be difficult on the dyadic level (Godfrey et al.,

1986). On a group level it becomes extremely complicated. If an actor would want to

rationally tailor his self-presentations to the values of his audience, he should have knowledge

of the attributional styles of the members of his audience as well as of the value the different

members assign to a certain impression. Furthermore, he should take into account that tactics

aimed at one individual will also have effects on the other members of the audience. Because

of this complexity, rationally considering all the effects of a self-presentation tactic will often

- 33 -


be challenging and sometimes as good as possible. An actor is therefore likely to require a lot

of self-regulatory resources, and because of the limited amount of these resources, might not

be able to persevere in this kind of self-presentations for a large amount of time (Vohs,

Baumeister, & Ciarocco, 2005).

An actor can therefore apply different strategies when controlling the impression he makes on

a larger audience. For example, he could aim his tactics at specific individuals in the

audience, while only controlling for negative effects on other members. A person can, for

example, try to be seen as likeable by some colleagues while only trying not to be disliked by

others. Or he can decide that the impressions of only a part of the audience matter to him. For

example a child in high school may decide that only his classmates are important to him and

ignore the impressions the teacher forms of him. He might rebel against the teacher in order to

earn the respect of his classmates. Another strategy could be, only using tactics that are

generally attributed in the same way by the members of an audience, and that are generally

valued positively by the audience. An example would be a lecturer telling a joke in his

presentation. The joke will result in that most people will attribute a sense of humour to the

lecturer at least as long as the joke is not offending to them. And a sense of humour is

generally valued in the western world. The similarity of attributions made about jokes and the

value attached to it by most people might explain the large amount of jokes that are used in

presentations. Not much research has been done yet on the tactics of impression management,

actors apply at a group level. So, here lies a challenging field of interest for future research.

- 34 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 3. Influence in groups

3. Influence in groups

3.1 From a passive to an active influencer

Research on influence in groups has historically evolved, from considering the influencer as a

passive factor in the influencing process, towards recognizing that people actively influence

others. This stream of research mainly focused at the influencee without giving much

attention to the characteristics and behaviour of the influencer (Ng, 2001). The first theories

on group influence dealt with social facilitation, or the theory about the impact of the mere

presence of others on performance. Social facilitation theory can be traced back to Triplett,

who was the first to demonstrate that the mere presence of others could have a powerful

impact on people’s behaviour (Crano, 2000). Triplett (1898) demonstrated that when others

were present in a research context, participants worked harder and faster than when they were

alone. In one experiment for example he showed that children who were told to wind a string

on a fishing reel as rapidly as possible, wound faster when they worked together with others

than when they were alone. Subsequent research however, demonstrated that the presence of

others does not always increases, but also in some cases, decreases performance (Myers,

2002). This led Zajonc (1965) to formalize his drive theory of social facilitation. According to

this theory, people find the mere presence of others emotionally arousing. He then

distinguishes between dominant and non-dominant responses. Dominant responses are those

that are learned and with which someone has had considerable past experience. For example

playing the piano would be a dominant response for a professional piano player. Non-

dominant responses are behaviours, we haven’t learned and have little experience with. When

people are emotionally aroused, the tendency towards dominant responses will be enhanced.

therefore, the performance of the experienced piano player is expected to be enhanced in the

presence of an audience while the performance of a piano player without experience is

expected to decrease. Because this theory still takes the mere presence of others as the factor

that influences behaviour, it can be categorized as a theory of passive group influence.

Sherif (1935) gave the influencer a little more active role in his research on social influence.

He set up an experiment in which naive subjects were placed in a dark room with only a small

pinpoint of light. After focusing on the light for some time, people come under the illusion

that the light appears to move. Subjects were asked to judge the distance the light had moved.

It turned out that participants influenced each other in their judgements. This influence was

- 35 -


more than the influence of mere presence, because the judgements of the participants tended

to diverge towards the judgements of the others after a number of trials. This indicated that

they used one another as a model for reality, creating a mutually accepted response norm.

Even if they were subsequently paired with a new partner they maintained the response norm

they formed in the first group, indicating that they had internalised this norm.

Deutsch and Gerard (1955) made the distinction between normative and informational

influence. Normative influence takes place when people exhibit behaviour that conforms with

the expectations of others in order to avoid rejection or gain approval. In this case the person

does not privately accept the norm but displays behaviour that makes it seem that he does so.

Informational influence on the other hand, occurs when people actually accept evidence about

reality from others. In the experiment of Sherif, the fact that the participants stuck with the

beliefs they formed while working with their first partner even when they were paired with a

new partner, suggests that informational influence took place.

The famous experiment of Solomon Asch (1955) is a good example of the effects of

normative influence. Asch devised a very simple task in which participants had to judge

which of three presented lines matched a stimulus line. The task was so simple that subjects in

isolation scored perfectly in more than 99 percent of the trials. However, in his experimental

condition, subjects were seated among a number of other people who acted to be subjects but

in reality were confederates of the experimenter. When the other subjects around him all gave

the same wrong answer, the subjects conformed to this wrong answer, 36.8 percent of the

time. Some participants who went along with the majority told afterwards that they suspected

that the majority were ‘sheep’ followers of the first respondent or that the majority was under

an optical illusion. However this did not free them from the influence of the majority,

indicating that normative influence had taken place.

Janis (1971), in his influential article on groupthink, demonstrated the negative effects that

normative influence can have on the effective functioning of a group. He analysed groups of

high-level governmental decision-makers and found that some disastrous decisions were the

result of deterioration in mental efficiency, reality testing and moral judgements as a result of

group pressure. For example, the in-group of President Johnson kept believing that they could

win the escalating Vietnam war despite of repeated setbacks and failures. Janis therefore

introduced the term groupthink as ‘the mode of thinking that persons engage in when

concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override

realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action’ (Janis, 1971, pp. 378). Hence, normative

- 36 -


influence can become so strong, especially in a highly cohesive group, that the functioning of

the group can be drastically impaired.

In contrast to these theories which focus on the influence of the majority, Moscovici (1985)

decided to look at how a minority can influence the majority. People do not only passively

react to the group norms but also, now and than, actively try to influence these norms.

Moscovici’s model is concerned with the factors that affect the power of a minority group to

influence the majority. Three main factors seem to play a role. First of all, the minority has to

be consistent; the opinion or standpoint must not change and must stay stable over time.

Second, influence attempts must appear to be based on argumentation and new information,

not only on rigidly sticking to the standpoint. Third, the social context plays an important

role; if a minority position is backed up by general trends in the social environment, it is more

likely to be accepted by the majority. Moscovici’s model differs from the models of majority

influence in that it draws attention to the characteristics and behaviour of the influencer on the

effect of the influence attempts. The influencer is not only seen as a passive factor anymore

but gets the role of an active actor.

3.2 Structural power and behavioural power

In research and theorizing on the role of the influencer in the influencing process, two

different lines of research have evolved. On the one hand there are theories that focus on the

stable structural aspects of influence, on the other hand there are theories that direct attention

to the actual behaviour of the influencer (Brass & Burkhardt, 1993). Brass and Burkhardt

(1993) define structure as representing relatively stable patterns of behaviour, interaction, and

interpretation that emerge over time and form predictable social regularities. Structural power

lies in the properties of a social system, rather than in specific behaviour of the influencer.

A clear example of structural power is demonstrated in an experiment of Torrance (1955), in

which he drew attention to the effect of the status of individuals in a group on the amount of

influence they have within that group. He studied a three-person crew, consisting out of a

pilot, a navigator, and a gunner who had to solve some problems. He found, that if one of the

group members knew the correct answer, it depended on the status of that person, if the others

would accept his answer. The gunners, when they knew the correct answer to the problem,

could influence the other members to accept it only in 63 percent of the cases. The navigators

succeeded in convincing the others of the correct answer in 80 percent of the cases and the

- 37 -


high status pilots succeeded in convincing the others in 94 percent of the cases. This leads to

the conclusion that, the higher the status of a group member is, the bigger the chance is that

the idea of the group member will be accepted.

In line with a structural power perspective, French and Raven (1959) identified five bases of

potential power. These are, first of all, coercive power or the power to punish others or take

away a valued good. Secondly reward power, in which the power holder has the ability to

bestow a valued good onto the target person. The third base of power is legitimate power,

which stems from an appointed or elected formal position. The fourth is referent power which

originates from the target person being attracted to the power holder or wanting to be like

him. The last base is expert power which stems from the valued special skills or abilities a

person has relative to others.

A structural view of power focuses on the stable underlying aspects of influence. In contrast,

a behavioural view looks at the tactics individuals use in order to influence others. This part

of influence research has been studied mainly through the development of influence

questionnaires (Kipnis et al., 1980; Yukl & Falbe, 1990; Schriesheim & Hinkin, 1990). These

are self-report questionnaires, on which respondents fill in how often they use certain

influence tactics. For example, on the questionnaire of Schriesheim and Hinkin (1990),

respondents are asked to indicate how often they use the tactics of: exchange, ingratiation,

rationality, assertiveness, upward appeal, and coalitions.

Structural power and behavioural power are no distinct concepts (Brass & Burkhard, 1993).

Structure arises from the actions of people; people can use several behaviour techniques to

control the structure that arises in a group. For example, a group member can make use of

several tactics in order to become accepted as the group leader. The actions of people in turn,

are also shaped by the underlying structure. For example, the amount of coercive and reward

power that a person can use will depend on the persons ability to bestow rewards or

punishments on others which will depend on his structural power position.

3.3 The development of structural aspects of influence

The research of Torrance (1955) demonstrates the structural aspects of influence, but not how

such structure comes about in a group. Bales (1956) researched newly formed groups

consisting out of unacquainted persons with similar backgrounds. He found that power

differentiations within those groups corresponded with how much the different members of

- 38 -


the group talked. The members, who talked more, were more likely to emerge as group

leaders than those who talked less.

Several theories try to explain how unstructured groups develop stable patterns of behaviour,

interaction, and interpretation over time. Some evidence indicates that group structures can

develop quickly after a group has formed. Rosa and Mazur (1979) demonstrated that status

hierarchies can develop rapidly in a group of people. They found that eye glancing behaviour

at the initial meeting of the group members was a good predictor of status hierarchies during

interactions.

Lifecycle theories have been developed that posit that groups pass through a number of stages

characterized by different structural patterns. According to these models, the sequence of

stages follows from an internal drive within the group that makes it pass from one stage to

another (Arrow, 1997; Tuckman, 1965; Remmerswaal, 1998). The most famous lifecycle

theory is probably Tuckman’s (1965) group lifecycle model. This model contains four stages

that groups go trough in their development. Namely: forming, storming, norming, performing,

and adjourning. In the first two stages, the structure of the group is still fluid and unstable, in

the norming stage structural patterns become increasingly stable and at the end of the norming

stage it reaches its definite form. It will keep this structure during the performing stage while

completing its tasks, until the group is disbanded in the adjourning stage.

This life-cycle theory of structure development has been challenged by non-sequential

theories of group-development (Arrow, 1997). Life-cycle theories assume that the structural

development of a group is caused by forces internal to the group. Researchers of non-

sequential group development have drawn attention to external causes that might influence

group-structure. Changes in for example the task or technological environment are expected

to have an impact on the group development path. For example, Gersick (1988) found

evidence for a punctuated equilibrium model in which periods of relative stability are

alternated with revolutionary change triggered by the member’s awareness of time and

deadlines.

3.4 The effect of impressions on structural development within a group

According to expectation states theory (Berger et al., 1977), when people first come together

to form a group, members use easily observable characteristics as clues for establishing the

initial relationships that make up the group structure. On the basis of these clues, the group

- 39 -


members develop expectations about the abilities of the other people in the group to

contribute to the group goals. Positive expectations relative to other group members are

expected to endow the members more opportunities to make contributions to the group task,

receive positive evaluations, and influence group decisions (de Gilder, 1991). So, expectation

states theory predicts that in a newly formed group of people, a status-organizing process will

take place in which the members use observable characteristics as clues for forming

performance expectations of the other members. On the basis of these performance

expectations a status hierarchy will be formed.

According to this theory, the competence of a group-member will be derived from either

diffuse or specific status characteristics. Diffuse characteristics are characteristics that are

culturally associated with high or low ability and are not particularly related to a certain task,

examples are race and gender. Specific characteristics are characteristics that are related to the

group task (de Gilder, 1991). The theory predicts that the more relevant the characteristic is

for the task at hand, the more profound will be its effect on the interaction patterns. However,

this does not always hold. It has been demonstrated that diffuse characteristics can also have

an impact on formed expectations. For example, men are generally judged more competent

than women and are more often elected as leaders (Eagly & Karau, 1991). Also, the

characteristic of military status was shown by Torrance to have an influence on expectations

even though it was not relevant for the task at hand. This indicates that the forming of

influence patterns within a group is not always based on rational considerations of reaching

optimal group outcomes. Group members use a variety of cues to assess their co-workers.

Because impression management deals with controlling the cues a person gives off to others,

it is expected to have an influence on the structural development of a group.

- 40 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses

4. Hypotheses

There are several motives people can have to engage in impression management (Leary &

Kowalski, 1990; Schlenker, 1992). These can be motives of self-esteem, development of

desired identities, or maximization of reward-cost ratios in social situations. No matter what

the particular motive is, Jones and Pittman (1982) state that most, if not all the reasons to

engage in self-presentation can be subsumed under an interest in augmenting or maintaining

one’s power in relationships. By influencing the impressions others form of him, an actor can

influence the behaviours of those others.

Gangestad and Snyder (2000) write that although their revised self-monitoring scale does not

contain explicit items on motives to engage in impression management, they expect that it is

related to status-oriented impression management motives. They expect that people scoring

high on this scale, may attempt to cultivate public images that create appearances that

represent social status. Those high-scorers on the self-monitoring scale may strive to construct

social worlds that function as effective instruments of status enhancements. So, when they are

engaged in social interactions they can be expected to use their impression management skills

to gain influence and status on the people they interact with. In accordance with this view

Kilduff and Day (1994) found that high self-monitors obtained more promotions than low

self-monitors and several researchers found that high self-monitors are more likely to emerge

as group leaders than do low self-monitors (Kent & Moss, 1990; Zaccaro, Foti, & Kenny,

1991; Kolb, 1998).

The self-monitoring scale contains both items related to the tendency to engage in self-

presentations, as items on a person’s ability to control expressive behaviours (Snyder &

Gangestad, 1986). So, it does not only measure the frequency in which a person engages in

self-presentational behaviour but also the success the person is expected to have in reaching

intended outcomes. The research of Turnley and Bolino (2001) seems to support the view that

self-monitoring is related to successful acquisitive self-presentations. Because the revised

self-monitoring scale seems to measure the tendency of a person to engage in and be

successful in self-presentations aimed at increasing his social status, scores on this scale are

expected to be positively related with the amount of influence a person has in group decisions.

H1: Scores of a group member on the revised self-monitoring scale will be positively related

with the influence of that member on group decisions.

- 41 -


Because the self-monitoring scale contains items on the tendency of individuals to engage in

self-presentations (Snyder & Gangestad, 1986), individuals scoring high on this measure are

also expected to score high on measures of impression management tactics. Rosenfeld et al.

(1995) therefore considered the scale to be a scale of impression management. Moreover,

Bolino and Turnley (2003) demonstrated that high self-monitors have a tendency to apply

positive impression management techniques, aimed at creating a favourable image. As the

tactics of self-promotion and ingratiation are considered positive impression management

techniques, they are expected to be positively related to self-monitoring.

H2: Scores of a group member on the revised self-monitoring scale will be positively related

with scores on the ingratiation and self-promotion scale.

Several researchers have demonstrated that there exists a positive relationship between

ingratiation and the target’s liking for the ingratiator (Jones, 1964; Godfrey et al., 1986;

Wayne & Liden, 1995; Gordon, 1996; Turnley & Bolino, 2001; Vonk, 2002; Higgins et al.,

2003). Of these researches, only the research of Turnley and Bolino (2001) measured

ingratiation tactics used in a group. However, even they used a dyadic approach to measure

impression management outcomes. Other researches mainly investigated the effects of

ingratiation on a dyadic level. Because ingratiation is often targeted at specific individuals,

and not at a group as a whole, it is expected that higher levels of skill on the part of the actor

are necessary to create favourable impressions on a group level. Different members of the

audience can have different attributional styles, values, and expectations. Furthermore

impression management tactics are expected to be less effective on a group level than on a

dyadic level, and bystander effects are likely to occur. Therefore, deliberately creating an

impression of liking in a group situation can be expected to be more difficult than in a dyadic

situation.

Turnley and Bolino (2001) did not find a significant direct correlation between ingratiation

and liking on a group level. However, they found a significant negative correlation of -.22 for

low self-monitors and a significant positive correlation of .23 for high self-monitors between

ingratiation and liking. The fact that they did not find a direct result indicates that ingratiation

- 42 -


may require more skill at a group level than at a dyadic level. Furthermore, the difference in

the success of the outcomes for low and high self-monitors indicate that self-monitoring

turned out to be a good predictor for these ingratiation skills. Therefore it is predicted that

self-monitoring functions as a moderator on the relationship between ingratiation and liking.

H3: There will be a positive relation between ingratiation and liking on a group level.

H4: Self-monitoring will work as a moderator with a positive effect on the relation between

ingratiation and liking on a group level.

The relationship between self-promotion and perceived competence has turned out to be quite

ambiguous. Higgins et al. (2003) found only a very weak effect of self-promotion on

performance assessments in a meta-analysis. Several researchers found non-significant or

negative outcomes for self-promotion (Godfrey et al., 1986; Wayne & Ferris, 1990; Wayne &

Liden, 1995). However, like with ingratiation, reaching successful outcomes of self-

promotion may strongly depend on the impression management skills of the actor. Godfrey et

al. (1986) observed that successful self-promoters seem to be more ‘natural, more at home

with the tactics they used’.

Turnley and Bolino (2001) did not find a significant direct correlation between self-promotion

and perceived competence on a group level. Neither did they find a significant correlation for

low self-monitors, but they found a significant correlation of .29 for high self-monitors

between self-promotion and competence. The fact that no significant outcome was found for

low self-monitors and a significant outcome was found for high self-monitors indicates that

self-monitoring can be a good predictor for self-promotion skills. Therefore it is predicted that

self-monitoring functions as a moderator on the relationship between self-promotion and

perceived competence.

H5: There will be a positive relation between self-promotion and perceived competence on a

group level.

H6: Self-monitoring will work as a moderator with a positive effect on the relation between

self-promotion and perceived competence on a group level.

- 43 -


In the literature on influence tactics (Kipnis et al., 1980; Yukl & Falbe, 1990; Yukl & Tracey,

1992), ingratiation is seen as one of the mayor influence tactics that are used in organizations.

The reasoning behind this is that a person can use ingratiation to get his target in a good mood

or think favourable of him, so that the target will be inclined to comply with a request. Yukl

and Tracey (1992) found that the effects of ingratiation were moderately effective for

influencing subordinates and peers.

Because ingratiation is an impression management tactic aimed at creating an image of

likeable, its effect on influence is expected to be mediated by likening. Consequently liking is

expected to be associated with influence. Jones (1964) already noticed that a gain in

attractiveness indicates an enhanced ability to control a target person. This is also predicted by

the concept of referent power of French and Raven (1959). This concept states that if person

A is attracted towards person B, person B has a structural source of power over person A.

When people are liked by others, the options of those others to punish and control them are

limited (Rosenfeld et al., 1995). On a group level, liking can affect the ability of a group

member to gain cooperation and agreement from others as well as the ability of group

members to form coalitions with others. This is in line with the research findings of Carli,

LaFleur, & Loeber (1995) that likeableness is a predictive factor for influence. Therefore it is

hypothesised that the more a person uses ingratiation within a group, the more influence that

person has within that group and this relationship is expected to be mediated by liking.

H7: There will be a positive relation between ingratiation and influence in a group.

H8: There will be a positive relation between liking on a group level and influence in that

group.

H9: Liking on a group level will function as a mediator with a positive effect in the relation

between ingratiation and influence in a group.

Group members can use impressions management tactics to create impressions of competence

in others directly by means of self-promotion, but they can also be created indirectly by

- 44 -


means of ingratiation. Godfrey et al. (1986) found that if subjects were able to increase liking

by a target, perceived competence was also increased. Furthermore, people are more inclined

to attribute successes and positive events internally for people they like while they are more

inclined to attribute the same acts to external causes for people they dislike (Avison, 1980).

Hence, liking for a group member is expected to be positively related to perceived

competence of that group member.

H10: There will be a positive relation between liking on a group level and perceived

competence on that group level.

Expectation states theory predicts that: the status a group member will have in a group, is

expected to be positively related with the expectations of the other group members about the

abilities of that person to contribute to the group goals. Status characteristics are used as clues

for forming these performance expectations (Berger et al., 1977; de Gilder, 1991). Combining

this theory with impression management theory, one would predict that the amount of

influence a group member has in a group will be influenced by the impressions of competence

he is able to give off to his group members. In sum, according to this theory, as far as a group

member is able to control the clues he gives off within a group, he is able to control his

amount of influence within that group.

In a group task in which the members are task oriented and the group outcome is important to

them, it is in the best interest of each member to search for information regarding the

capabilities of the other members. If one member perceives another member to be more

capable at a certain task, he is expected to accept influence from this other person because

group performance is expected to be highest if the most capable group members have the

most influence on group decisions. Bonner (2004) found in a laboratory experiment, that the

group member, who was recognized as having the highest expertise in solving a problem, had

twice the amount of influence as the other group members. This is also in line with the

findings of Carli et al. (1995) that perceived competence is a predictive factor for influence.

In the study of Bonner, information on the competence of the different group members was

made available to the subjects. In most real life situations, however, assessing the competence

of co-workers at a certain task is a difficult process. Research results on peer’s abilities to

assess the competence of their co-workers have been mixed. On the one hand, it has been

- 45 -


claimed that peer evaluations can be reliable indicators of individual performances in the

future (Kane & Lawler, 1978). On the other hand, some researches have shown that group

members are not always able to identify the best performer in their group (Libby, Trotman, &

Zimmer, 1987; Littlepage, Schmidt, Whisler, & Frost, 1995). So, the expertise power

identified by French and Raven (1959) can sometimes be based on impressions of expertise or

competence instead of real objective competence. Therefore it is hypothesised that self-

promotion will affect the level of influence a person has within a group.

H11: There will be a positive relation between self-promotion and influence in a group.

H12: There will be a positive relation between perceived competence in a group and

influence in that group.

H13: Perceived competence will function as a mediator with a positive effect in the relation

between self-promotion and influence in a group.

4.1 Model

To give a clear overview of the predictions made in the hypotheses, model 4.1 demonstrates

the linkages between the different variables and their expected directions. The relations are all

expected to be positive and therefore the hypotheses carry the ‘+’ sign. In addition to the

stated hypotheses and to answer the main question of this research, ‘Do impression

management tactics affect the amount of influence a group member has in a group?’, an

additional regression analysis will be run to investigate the amount of influence that can be

explained by the independent variables.

Model 4.1 Relations between the variables as tested by the hypotheses

- 46 -


- 47 -

Perceived competence

Self-promotion

InfluenceSelf-monitoring

H1 +

H2 +

H4 +

H5 +

H10 +

H13 + (Med.)

H6 +H12 +

H11 +

Ingratiation Liking

H2 +

H3 +H9 + (Med.)

H8 +

H7 +

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 5. Methods

5. Methods

5.1 Sample

This study consisted out of two groups of participants. One group of 25 first year students

following the study of Technical Business Management at the Hogeschool Zuyd and a group

of 41 students of the study of Knowledge Engineering at the University of Maastricht. The

students were selected because they had worked intensively in project groups, ranging from 4

to 6 students. The grade the students received for the projects depended on the outcome of the

projects which was submitted in the form of a paper and a final presentation. The final grades

were equal for all the members of a project group. During the block, time and location was

reserved so that the students could work with their groups on the project. There was no prior

hierarchical structure imposed on the groups, however, the students were encouraged to

appoint group roles. In order to complete the project, students had to work together

intensively and divide the work of the project among them. The groups could therefore be

defined as project teams in the definition of Cohen and Bailey (1997).

The mean age of the respondents was 20.4 years with a minimum of 17 and a maximum of

28. The majority of the participants were male, only 3 were female. 53 of the respondents

were of Dutch origin, while 11 were non-Dutch.

Participants from the study of Technical Business Management worked on a project in which

they had to evaluate and improve the system that was used to communicate grades to students.

The project consisted out of a quantitative research, and the design of a communication

system. The results of the research and the rationale behind the system were explained in a

paper and presented at the end of the project. The projects took place in a time span of 10

weeks.

Participants from the study of Knowledge Engineering at the University of Maastricht worked

on an optimalization problem for which they had to build a computer program simulating a

logistical problem. They had to write down their proceedings, outcomes, and rationale behind

their decisions in a paper and present this at the end of the project. The project took place in a

time span of 12 weeks.

- 48 -


5.2 Method of data collection

At the end of the project, students were asked to fill in a questionnaire containing general

demographical questions, questions about their impression management behaviour, and

questions about the impressions they had of their group members. The questionnaires were

handed to the students by their teachers and they were asked to fill them in privately without

discussing them with their co-workers. They were told that if they had any question

concerning the questionnaire, they could ask it to the researcher. After they filled in the

questionnaires, they could hand them in to the researcher. Students who hadn’t filled in the

questionnaire yet were given the possibility to fill in the same questionnaire in an on-line

form. It was guaranteed to the students, verbally as well as in the written introduction to the

questionnaire, that the data of the questionnaires would be treated confidentially. Students’

participation in the group projects was a mandatory requirement for their study, however,

participation in this research was voluntary.

5.3 Operationalization of concepts measured

Self-monitoring was measured using the revised self-monitoring scale of Snyder and

Gangestad (1986) consisting out of 18 items. The scale was revised from Snyder’s (1974) 25

item self-monitoring scale, so that the 7 items that loaded less than 0.15 on the general factor

were dropped from the scale.

Respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed with a statement about themselves

on a 5 point scale ranging from “totally disagree” to “totally agree”. Two slight adjustments

were made to the scale in order to make it more understandable for the students: In item 4 the

word ‘impromptu’ was changed into ‘instant’ and in item 13 ‘charades’ was changed into

‘word guessing games’. This was done because a pilot study demonstrated that not all

students seem to be familiar with these words. Cronbach’s for the test was 0.72. Factor

analysis did not support the two factor structure proposed by Gangestad and Snyder (2000); 6

factors had an eigenvalue higher than 1 and the first two factors together only explained 36

percent of the variance. Consequently, the scale was taken to measure only the underlying

concept of self-monitoring and not the proposed separate components of expressive control

and social stage presence.

- 49 -


Ingratiation was measured, using the 4 ingratiation items of the impression management scale

of Bolino and Turnley (2003). This scale was designed and extensively tested (Bolino &

Turnley, 1999) to measure the impression management tactics identified by Jones and Pittman

(1982). Respondents were asked how accurate statements were in describing their behaviour

during the group project. They could indicate their answer on a 5 point scale, ranging from

“very inaccurate” to “very accurate”. Cronbach’s for the test was 0.68.

Self-promotion was measured, using the 4 self-promotion items of the impression

management scale of Bolino and Turnley (2003). This scale was devised and extensively

tested (Bolino & Turnley, 1999) to measure the impression management tactics identified by

Jones and Pittman (1982). Respondents were asked how accurate statements were in

describing their behaviour during the group project. They could indicate their answer on a 5

point scale, ranging from “very inaccurate” to “very accurate”. Cronbach’s for the test was

0.54, which makes the reliability of this scale critical and therefore further results including

this scale should be treated with caution.

Perceptions of competence of a group member were measured by 2 questions answered by the

co-workers of the individual. Respondents were asked to indicate on a 5 point scale, ranging

from “totally disagree” to “totally agree”, how much they agreed with statements about their

group members. The items correlated 0.74 with each other. The mean of the 2 questions on

each variable was taken to measure the perceived competence of a group member. The mean

of all the group members who answered questions about a co-worker was taken to measure

perceptions of competence on a group level. So, this variable was measured by two items for

every group member who rated the individual. A participant was only included into the

sample if he had been rated by at least 50% of his group members. Because of this

requirement, 2 respondents were excluded from the analysis.

Liking of a group member was measured by 2 questions answered by the co-workers of the

individual. Respondents were asked to indicate on a 5 point scale, ranging from “totally

disagree” to “totally agree”, how much they agreed with statements about their group

members. The items correlated 0.64 with each other. The mean of the 2 questions on each

variable was taken to measure a person’s Liking of a group member. The mean of all the

group members who answered questions about a co-worker was taken to measure liking of a

group level. So, this variable was measured by two items for every group member who rated

- 50 -


the individual. A participant was only included into the sample if he had been rated by at least

50% of his group members. Because of this requirement, 2 respondents were excluded from

the analysis.

Influence was measured by 2 questions answered by the co-workers of the individual.

Respondents were asked to indicate on a 5 point scale, ranging from “totally disagree” to

“totally agree”, how much they agreed with statements about their group members. The items

correlated 0.73 with each other. The mean of the 2 questions on each variable was taken to

measure a person’s impression of a group member. The mean of all the group members who

answered questions about a co-worker was taken to measure influence. So, that this variable

was measured by two items for every group member who rated the individual. A participant

was only included into the sample if he had been rated by at least 50% of his group members.

Because of this requirement, 2 respondents were excluded from the analysis.

5.4 Inter-judge reliability of peer assessments

Because the variable ‘influence’ relates to an objective concept; that is to say, the influence a

person has in reality, the consistency in ratings by peers on this concept is expected to be

higher than the consistency for ‘liking’ and ‘perceived competence’. Furthermore the

consistency in answers for ‘perceived competence’ is expected to be higher than the

consistency for ‘liking’ because the latter refers to a subjective attitude towards a person

while ‘perceived competence’ relates to a person’s estimation of real competence of a group

member.

To measure the inter-judge reliability of the peer assessment measures, Cronbach’s ’s on

liking, competence, and influence was measured for the 22 cases in which a respondent was

assessed by exactly 4 group members. These cases were chosen because the number of group

members that assessed a respondent differed and the number of items has to be equal to be

able to calculate the Cronbach’s . Inter-judge reliability for liking was = 0.72, for

competence = 0.86, and for influence = 0.91. These outcomes support the view that

influence can be seen as a relatively objective measure as group members seem to agree on

the amount of influence their co workers have. Furthermore, liking, as expected, seems to be

more subjective than perceived competence as it has a higher . These outcomes seem to give

- 51 -


some evidence that the scales used seem to measure the concepts they were supposed to

measure.

- 52 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results

6. Results

6.1 Descriptive statistics

Tables of correlates, means and standard deviations, for the two samples separately as well as

the joined sample, are used to demonstrate the basic statistics. Nationality is coded as a

dummy variable with a ‘0’ for persons with the Dutch nationality and a ‘1’ for persons with a

nationality other than Dutch. Gender is coded as a dummy variable with a ‘0’ for male and ‘1’

for female. Table 6.1, 6.2 and 6.3 display the means and standard deviations of the variables

and their correlations for respectively: The Knowledge Engineering sample, the Hogeschool

Zuyd sample, and the complete sample in which the two previously mentioned samples have

been joined together.

Table 6.1 Pearson correlations, means and standard deviations for the Knowledge Engineering sample

Variable Mean S.d 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 81. Age 20.44 2.382. Nationality 0.36*3. Gender -.097 -.0974. Self-monitoring 53.73 7.38 0.31 0.07 -.189

5. Self-promotion 3.23 0.50 -0.04 0.03 -.152 0.25

6. Ingratiation 3.24 0.58 -0.01 0.03 -.136 0.04 0.38*7. Liking 3.68 0.55 -0.29 0.00 .044 0.09 0.13 -0.118. Competence 3.69 0.72 -0.48 -0.09 .107 0.10 0.23 -0.09 0.78**9. Influence 3.40 0.66 -0.25 0.06 -.057 0.15 0.26 -0.05 0.65** 0.84**

N = 41** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).

- 53 -


Table 6.2 Pearson correlations, means and standard deviations for the Hogeschool Zuyd sample

Variable Mean S.d 1 2 3 4 5 6 71. Age 20.52 2.042. Gender -0.213. Self-monitoring 54.40 9.29 0.15 -0.15

4. Self-promotion 3.46 0.40 0.37 0.14 0.16

5. Ingratiation 3.16 0.68 0.04 0.25 0.08 -0.016. Liking 4.18 0.41 -0.04 0.53* 0.33 0.17 0.317. Competence 3.87 0.63 0.25 0.37 0.44* 0.22 0.28 0.49*8. Influence 3.80 0.66 0.31 0.39 0.09 0.09 0.17 0.60** 0.72**


Table 6.3 Pearson correlations, means and standard deviations for the joined sample

Variable Mean S.d 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 81. Age 20.42 2.252. Nationality 0.28*3. Gender -0.14 -0.104. Self-monitoring 54.11 8.07 0.24 0.02 -0.155. Self-promotion 3.30 0.48 0.07 -0.05 0.01 0.226. Ingratiation 3.19 0.61 -0.02 0.06 0.05 0.07 0.197. Liking 3.85 0.56 -0.21 -0.14 0.27* 0.20 0.22 -0.038. Competence 3.75 0.70 -0.26* -0.11 0.23 0.25 0.25* 0.03 0.68**9. Influence 3.54 0.69 -0.08 -0.05 0.20 0.14 0.25* -0.01 0.66** 0.80**


6.2 Comparison of samples

Because data were collected from two different samples, it has to be controlled, in how far

differences in the variables measured and in the relation between the variables measured can

be ascribed to the respondents belonging to one of the two samples. Although, both samples

show considerable similarities in the type of group project and the procedures that were

followed, the actual assignments differed and the different educational systems might have an

influence on the amount and kind of impression management tactics used in a group and on

how group members react to these tactics.

- 54 -


Independent sample t-tests are run on the dependent and independent variables in the two

different groups to search for differences in ratings of self-monitoring, impression

management behaviour, and group member ratings. The independent sample t-tests (table 6.4)

only show significant differences between the two samples on the variables ‘Liking’ and

‘Influence’. The means of these variables indicate that on average, the students at the

Hogeschool Zuyd rated their co-workers higher on these variables than the students of

Knowledge Engineering.

Table 6.4 Independent sample t-test results on the two samples.Age Mean Std.deviation SignificanceKnowledge Engineering 20.44 2.377 .936

Hogeschool Zuyd 20.39 2.061 Self-monitoringKnowledge Engineering 53.73 7.382 .621

Hogeschool Zuyd 54.78 9.298Self-promotionKnowledge Engineering 3.226 .499 .077

Hogeschool Zuyd 3.446 .413IngratiationKnowledge Engineering 3.244 .582 .365

Hogeschool Zuyd 3.098 .669LikingKnowledge Engineering 3.681 .550 .001

Hogeschool Zuyd 4.163 .426CompetenceKnowledge Engineering 3.688 .718 .340

Hogeschool Zuyd 3.862 .653InfluenceKnowledge Engineering 3.400 .660 .035

Hogeschool Zuyd 3.775 .681

To test if differences in the relation between two variables can be ascribed to the respondents

belonging to one of the two samples, a dummy variable is created for the Hogeschool Zuyd

sample. This variable assigns the value ‘0’ to the knowledge engineering sample and the value

‘1’ to the Hogeschool Zuyd sample. Whenever the relationship between a dependent and an

- 55 -


independent variable is tested by means of a regression, the dummy variable is entered into

the equation as a correction term.

In the cases in which hypotheses are tested by means of correlations between the variables,

partial correlations are used in which the variable ‘Sample’ has been entered as a control

variable. A partial correlation is a correlation between two variables in which the effect of

another variable is held constant (Field, 2000). So, in the correlations used, the effect of

belonging to one of the two samples has been controlled for.

6.3 Hypotheses testing

Hypotheses 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, and 12 will be tested by looking at the partial correlations

between the variables. Because the hypotheses all specify the direction in which the

correlation is expected, significance is calculated on a 1-tailed level. Hypotheses 4 and 6 will

be tested using 2 regression models as proposed by Baron and Kenny (1986) to check for

moderating effects. Hypotheses 9 and 13 will be tested using 3 regression models as proposed

by Baron and Kenny (1986) to check for mediating effects.

Finally, to test the problem statement of the research ‘Do impression management tactics

affect the amount of influence a group member has in a group?’, a regression on influence

will be run with the control, variables entered first and subsequently the independent

variables.

Table 6.51-tailed partial correlations for the joined sample with ‘Sample’ as a control variable

Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 81. Age2. Nationality 0.30**3. Gender -0.14 -0.064. Self-monitoring 0.25* 0.05 -0.165. Self-promotion 0.07 0.03 -0.19 .021*6. Ingratiation -0.02 0.02 0.07 0.08 0.23*7. Liking -0.23* 0.00 0.23* 0.19° 0.14 0.028. Competence -0.26* -0.07 0.22* 0.24* 0.23* 0.05 0.69**9. Influence -0.08 0.04 0.17° 0.13 0.20° 0.02 0.63** 0.80**

N = 64** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).° Correlation is significant at the 0.10 level (1-tailed).

- 56 -


Hypothesis 1 predicts that: scores of a group member on the revised self-monitoring scale will

be positively related with the influence of that member on group decisions. The Partial

correlation between self-monitoring and influence is not significant at the 5% level, so the

hypothesis does not hold. However, with a significance of 0.152, and a positive correlation

coefficient of 0.13, it shows a slight trend towards significance.

Hypothesis 2 predicts a positive relation between self-monitoring and the impression

management tactics of self-promotion and ingratiation. The Partial correlation between self-

monitoring and self-promotion is 0.21 and significant at a 5% level. The Partial correlation

between self-monitoring and ingratiation is not significant. This leads to the conclusion that

hypothesis 2 is partially supported; self-monitoring seems to be related to the impression

management tactic of self-promotion, however self-monitoring seems not to be related the

tactic of ingratiation in a group situation.

Hypothesis 3 predicts a positive relation between ingratiation and liking on a group level. The

Partial correlation turned out not to be significant and consequently there was no evidence for

this relation.

Hypothesis 5 states that there will be a positive relation between self-promotion and perceived

competence on a group level. The Partial correlation coefficient between these variables is

0.23 and significant at the 5% level indicating that there is a positive relation between self-

promotion and perceived competence.

Hypothesis 7 predicts a positive relation between ingratiation and influence in a group.

However, the Partial correlation between the two variables is not significant, indicating no

relationship between ingratiation and influence.

Hypothesis 8 states that there will be a positive relation between liking on a group level and

influence in that group. The Partial correlation between these variables seems to support this;

with a correlation coefficient of 0.66, significant at the 1% level there appears to be a strong

relationship between how much a person is liked within a group and how much influence that

person has within that group.

- 57 -


Hypothesis 10 predicts a positive relation between liking on a group level and perceived

competence on that group level. The Partial correlation between these variables seems to

support this; with a correlation coefficient of 0.68, significant at the 1% level there appears to

be a strong relationship between how much a person is liked within a group and how

competent his co-workers think he is.

Hypothesis 11 states that there will be a positive relation between self-promotion and

influence in a group. With a Partial correlation of 0.20, which is not significant at the 5%

level, this hypothesis is not supported. However because the correlation has a significance of

0.058, there seems to be a strong trend towards significance.

Hypothesis 12 predicts that there will be a relation between perceived competence in a group

and influence in that group. The Partial correlation between these variables seems to support

this; with a correlation coefficient of 0.80, significant at the 1% level there appears to be a

strong relationship between how competent a group member is perceived to be by his co-

workers and how much influence he has within that group.

6.4 The moderating role of self-monitoring

Hypotheses 4 and 6 deal with the moderating role of self-monitoring on the relation between

impression management tactics and impressions made on a group level. Hypothesis 4 predicts

the moderating role of self-monitoring on the relationship between ingratiation and liking on a

group level. Hypothesis 6 predicts the moderating role of self-monitoring on the relationship

between self-promotion and perceived competence.

According to Baron and Kenny (1986), a moderator is a variable that affects the direction

and/or strength of the relation between an independent and a dependent variable. In other

words, there is a moderator effect if there exists an interaction effect of the independent

variable and the moderator variable on the dependent variable. The effect of a moderator,

under the assumption that it linearly affects the relationship between the dependent and the

independent variable, can be measured by adding the product of the moderator and the

independent variable to the regression equation. The moderator effect is measured by the

effect of the product of the moderator and the independent variable.

- 58 -


To test hypothesis 4, two regressions are run:

Model 1:

Liking = 0 + Ingratiation 1+ Self-monitoring 2

Model 2:

Liking = 0 + Ingratiation 1+ Self-monitoring 2 + (Ingratiation * Self-monitoring) 3

Here 3 represents the product of the moderator and the independent variable. Therefore if the

coefficient of 3 has a significant p-value, self-monitoring can be said to be a moderator in

the relationship between ingratiation and liking. Because self-monitoring is expected to have a

positive effect on this relation, hypothesis 4 predicts that the direction coefficient of 3 should

be positive. The results of the regressions are shown in table 6.6.

Table 6.6Regressions to test for the moderating effect of self-monitoring in the relation between ingratiation and liking

Model R² Adj. R² Significance Dep.

variable Ind. variable Stand. Beta p-value

Ingratiation .008 .945

1 .206 .166 .003 Liking Self-monitoring .173 .139

Sample .409 .001Ingratiation -.682 .108Self-monitoring -.336 .294

2 .244 .192 .002 LikingIngratiation* Self-monitoring

.907 .091

Sample .401 .001

The regression demonstrates that model 1 and model 2 are significant at the 5% level.

However the p-values for the variables ‘Ingratiation’ and ‘Self-monitoring’ are not

significant, indicating that only the control variable ‘Sample’ is responsible for making the

model significant. This is not totally unexpected because the t-tests already demonstrated a

significant difference between the means for ‘Liking’ of the two samples. The interaction

term ‘Ingratiation*Self-monitoring’ is significant at the 10% level. So, there seems to be some

support for the moderating effect of self-monitoring on the relation between ingratiation and

- 59 -


liking despite the fact that ingratiation and self-monitoring don’t have significant simple

effects.

To test hypothesis 6, two regressions are run:

Model 1:

Competence = 0 + Self-promotion 1+ Self-monitoring 2

Model 2:

Competence = 0 + Self-promotion 1+ Self-monitoring 2 + (Self-promotion * Self-monitoring) 3

Here 3 represents the product of the moderator and the independent variable. Therefore if the

coefficient of 3 has a significant p-value, self-monitoring can be said to be a moderator in

the relationship between self-promotion and perceived competence. Because self-monitoring

is expected to have a positive effect on this relation, hypothesis 6 predicts that the direction

coefficient of 3 should be positive. The results of the regression are shown in table 6.7

Table 6.7Regressions to test for the moderating effect of self-monitoring in the relation between self-promotion and perceived competence

Model R² Adj. R² Significance Ind. variable

Dep. variable Stand. Beta p-value

Self-promotion .188 .148

1 .103 .059 .085 Competence Self-monitoring .200 .116

Sample .067 .596Self-promotion -.432 .305

Self-monitoring -.419 .318

2 .139 .081 .062 Competence

Self-promotion*Self-monitoring

.984 .124

Sample .073 .556

The regression demonstrates that the first model is only significant at the 10% level. The

coefficients for the independent variables seems to be insignificant. However, with a p-value

of 0.148 for self-promotion and a p-value of 0.116 for self-monitoring, there seems to be a

slight trend towards significance. The inclusion of the interaction term Self-promotion*Self-

- 60 -


monitoring makes the model slightly more significant but the parameter itself is not

significant with a p-value of 0.124. This indicates that the data does not give supporting

evidence that the relation between self-promotion and perceived competence is moderated by

self-monitoring.

6.5 The mediating role of impressions

Hypotheses 9 and 13 deal with the mediating roles of impressions in the relation between

impression management tactics and influence. Hypothesis 9 predicts that liking on a group

level will function as a mediator in the relation between ingratiation and influence in a group.

Hypothesis 13 predicts that perceived competence will function as a mediator in the relation

between self-promotion and influence in a group.

According to Baron and Kenny (1986) a variable functions as a mediator to the extent that it

accounts for the relation between the predictor and the criterion. For a variable to be a

mediator according to the article of Baron and Kenny (1986): (a) variations in levels of the

independent variable should significantly account for variations in the mediator, (b) variations

in the mediator should significantly account for variations in the dependent variable, and (c)

when the relationships mentioned under (a) and (b) are controlled for, a previously significant

relation between the independent and dependent variable decreases in significance or

preferably, is no longer significant. If it decreases in significance, this indicates the existence

of multiple mediators, if it is no longer significant it is the only mediator.

To investigate if a variable is a mediator, regression analysis can be used in which: (1) the

mediator should be regressed on the independent variable, (2) the dependent variable should

be regressed on the independent variable. (3) the dependent variable should be regressed on

the mediator and the independent variable simultaneously.

If the variable really is a mediator: the independent variable must affect the mediator (1), the

independent variable must affect the dependent variable (2), the significance of the relation

between the independent variable and the dependent variable must decrease if the dependent

variable is regressed on the independent variable and the mediator simultaneously.

- 61 -


To test hypothesis 9, three regressions are run:

Model 1:

Liking = 0 + Ingratiation 1

Model 2:

Influence = 0 + Ingratiation 1

Model 3:

Influence = 0 + Ingratiation 1+ Liking 2

If H9 is correct, both model 1 and model 2 should be significant. Furthermore, the

significance of the 1 coefficient should decrease in model 3 as compared to model 2. The

results of the regressions are shown in table 6.8.

Table 6.8Regressions to test for the mediating effect of liking in the relation between ingratiation and influence


Dep. variable

Stand. Beta p-value

1 .176 .149 .003 Liking Ingratiation .022 .851Sample .421 .001

2 .265 .070 .109 Influence Ingratiation .019 .880Sample .266 .036Ingratiation .004 .966

3 .662 .438 .000 Influence Liking .668 .000Sample -.015 .887

As can be seen from the data, model 1 is significant at the 5% level. However, the model

seems to be significant because of the predictive value of the control variable ‘Sample’. This

could be expected because the t-tests already demonstrated a significant difference between

the means for ‘Liking’ of the two samples. Model three turns out to be significant because of

the strong relation between liking and influence. Ingratiation does not seem to be a good

predictor for either liking or influence. It must therefore be concluded that because the

relationship between ingratiation and influence does not seem to exist, there is no use in

controlling if liking mediates this relationship.

- 62 -


To test hypothesis 13, three regressions are run:

Model 1:

Competence = 0 + Self-promotion 1

Model 2:

Influence = 0 + Self-promotion 1

Model 3:

Influence = 0 + Self-promotion 1+ Competence 2

If H13 is correct, both model 1 and model 2 should be significant. Furthermore, the

significance of the 1 coefficient should decrease in model 3 as compared to model 2. The

results of the regression are shown in table 6.9.

Table 6.9Regressions to test for the mediating effect of perceived competence in the relation between self-promotion and influence


Dep.variable

Stand.Beta p-value

1 .065 .035 .127 Competence Self-promotion .231 .074Sample .070 .584

2 .107 .078 .032 Influence Self-promotion .198 .117Sample .220 .081Self-promotion .019 .808

3 .663 .646 .000 Influence Competence .772 .000Sample .166 .035

The data indicates that the first regression model has a p-value of 0.127 which is not

significant at the 10% level. However, in model 1, the p-value of self-promotion is .074 which

is significant at the 10% level. The second- and the third model are significant at the 5% level.

The significance of the 1 coefficient (self-promotion) decreases from model 2, with a p-

value of 0.117, to model 3 with a p-value of 0.808. This indicates that perceived competence

can be seen as a mediating variable in the relation between self-promotion and influence.

However, because model 1 is not significant at the 10% level, no solid conclusion can be

drawn from this analysis.

- 63 -


6.6 Model

To test the problem statement of the research, if impression management tactics used in a

group can lead to increased influence in that group, 3 regressions were run. The first

regression, which is used as a comparison model, only includes the control variables: sample,

age, nationality (Dutch or non-Dutch), and gender. In the second model the impressions of

liking and competence were included. In the third regression the impression management

tactics of self-promotion and ingratiation were included.

Table 6.10 shows the results of the three regressions.

Table 6.10Regression analysis of the dependent variable influence against the control variables, impressions, and impression management tactics.

Model R² Adj. R² F-value Significancedependent variable

Standardized Beta p-value

1 .103 .042 1.696 .163 Constant .000Sample .268 .048Age -.073 .577Nationality .078 .572Gender .156 .220

2 .695 .663 21.611 .000 Constant .295Sample .133 .142Age .125 .123Nationality .059 .475Gender -.007 .924Liking .162 .160Competence .711 .000

3 .695 .651 15.658 .000 Constant .379 Sample .130 .168 Age .124 .136 Nationality .060 .479 Gender -.006 .940 Liking .161 .169 Competence .710 .000

Self-promotion .006 .945

Ingratiation -.016 .835

Model 1 is not significant at the 5% level and with a low R² adjusted, indicating the fit of the

model, it appears that the model could be improved by adding the other independent

variables. The inclusion of the variables ‘Liking’ and ‘Competence’ significantly improves

the model. Especially perceived competence, with a p-value of 0.000 seems to have a strong

- 64 -


predictive value for the amount of influence a person is expected to have in a group. Finally,

the inclusion of the variables ‘Self-promotion’ and ‘Ingratiation’ does not seem to improve

the model; The Adjusted R² decreases from 663 to 651 and the F-value decreases from 21.611

to 15.658. This indicates that self-promotion and ingratiation have no predictive value on the

influence a person has in a group over and above the predictive value of perceived

competence and liking.

Model 6.1 Relations between the variables as tested by the hypotheses

= significant at the 5% level

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).° Correlation is significant at the 0.10 level (1-tailed).

- 65 -

Perceived competence

Self-promotion

InfluenceSelf-monitoring

+0.21*

+ 0.23*

+0.69**

+0.80**

+0.20°

Ingratiation Liking

+0.63**

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations

7. Discussion and limitations

7.1 Discussion of results and implications for future research

The present research examined the effects of impression management behaviour in a group

and especially the effect of impression management tactics on the amount of influence a

group member has within a project team. This effect was hypothesised to be mediated by the

favourable impressions of perceived competence and liking.

As hypothesised, the impressions of liking and competence were found to be strongly related.

In line with the results of Godfrey et al. (1986) it seems probable that if subjects are able to

increase liking by a target, perceived competence will also increase. However, because both

variables were measured at the same time in this research, it is not possible to make a causal

link between the two variables. The effect can therefore be in both directions; it could also be

that the more competent a person is perceived to be, by his co-workers, the more those co-

workers will like that person.

Notwithstanding the causal link between the variables, the two samples separately, as well as,

the joined sample show strongly significant relations between the impressions group members

have of a co-worker and the amount of influence that person has within the group. In line with

the results of the research of Bonner (2004), it seems that the amount of influence a person

has within a group is positively related with the expectations of the other group members

about the abilities of that person to contribute to the group goals. In line with the research of

Carli et al. (1995) and the concept of referent power of French and Raven (1959), liking also

turned out to be strongly related to influence.

Although the partial correlations showed some limited evidence for the relation between self-

promotion and influence, the regression analysis, run on the dependent variable ‘Influence’,

indicated that self-promotion and ingratiation have no predictive value on the influence a

person has in a group over and above the predictive value of perceived competence and

liking. From these results, it must be concluded that no evidence was found that impression

management tactics can lead to increased influence in a work group. Several explanations are

possible to explain this unexpected result.

First of all, because the groups worked intensively together for a considerable amount of time,

it is possible that the members got to know the relative contributions and strengths of their co-

- 66 -


workers to such an extent that the role of impression management in forming impressions was

so marginal that it became insignificant. Research results on the ability of peers to asses the

competences of their co-workers have been mixed. Some studies seem to support the view

that peers are accurate in assessing the ‘real’ competence of their colleagues (Kane & Lawler,

1978; Henry, Strickland, Yorges, & Ladd, 1996). In other researches, significant gaps were

found between objective performance and perceived competence (Libby, Trotman, &

Zimmer, 1987; Littlepage et al., 1995). It seems that the accurateness of perceptions of

competence is a function of the complexity of the task and the amount of information the

group members have on the performance of their colleagues. The amount of information on

the performance of their co-workers can be expected to increase the longer they have worked

together. If ambiguity over ‘real’ performance decreases over time, the influence of self-

presentations on perceived competence may also decrease over time.

Expectation states theory (Berger et al., 1977) predicts that members of a group use easily

observable characteristics for establishing the initial relations that make up the group

structure. Some researches indicate that the initial status that develops in this way remains

relatively stable (Rosa & Mazur, 1979). The hypotheses about the relation between

impression management tactics and influence were partly based on this concept; it was

expected that people scoring high on self-presentation, would actively manipulate the cues

they gave off in order to create a favorable initial position for themselves and they would hold

this position during the whole project. However, it may be that the division of influence

within a group does not remain stable. Life-cycle theories (Arrow, 1997; Tuckman, 1965;

Remmerswaal, 1998) and theories of non-sequential group development (Arrow, 1997;

Gersick, 1997) give a more dynamic view of relationship patterns within groups. Lifecycle

theories posit that groups go through a sequence of stages which make the initially formed

patterns susceptible to change. After the initial forming stage follows a storming stage in

which the initial group structure is challenged and changed before it stabilizes in the norming

stage. Researchers of non-sequential theories of group development draw attention to causes

from the environment of the group that can influence group-structure. Self-presentations may

therefore have a stronger effect on influence in the initial stage of the group process but this

effect can weaken as the group further develops due to internal and external causes and due to

increased information about the group members that becomes available during the project.

Here for, it would be interesting to look at the dynamic effects of impression management

over time and to investigate if the relation between the use of impression management tactics

and interpersonal outcomes declines over time.

- 67 -


Secondly, as Turnley and Bolino (2001) noticed, it is not only the amount of impression

management but also the skill of the actor in managing impressions, that plays a role in the

successful outcome of self-presentations. Because of different audience values, different

attribution styles, complexities in targeting self-presentation tactics, diffusion of effects, and

interaction effects of the audience, making successful self-presentations for a group of people

is expected to be even more difficult than it is in a one-to-one interaction. As Vohs et al.

(2005) demonstrated, challenging or counter normative self-presentations require self-

regulatory resources and these resources can be depleted if an individual engages in self-

regulatory tasks. Because the moderating effect of self-monitoring was not found to be

significant in this research, no measure was available to assess the impression management

skill of the individuals. It is therefore possible that a stronger relation would exist between

impression management tactics and outcomes for high-skilled impression managers and

impression managers high in self-regulation. More research would therefore be needed about

the specific skills that are necessary for actors to reach favorable outcomes in their impression

management attempts.

An interesting finding of this research is that there seems to be some evidence for a positive

relation between self-promotion and the impressions of competence and liking on a group

level, while there is no such evidence for the tactic of ingratiation. This result seems

contradictory to outcomes of researches on impression management on a dyadic level. In

researches on dyadic situations, there has generally been found a significant relation between

ingratiation and positive impressions, such as liking and competence, while often no relation

between self-promotion and such positive outcomes has been found (Godfrey et al., 1986;

Wayne, & Ferris, 1990; Wayne, & Liden, 1995; Gordon, 1996; Higgins et al., 2003).

Explanations for these contradictory results may be found, first, in the difference between the

use of self-presentations in a hierarchical equal level as opposed to the use of impression

management tactics in an upward direction, and second, in the difference between the dyadic

level and the group level.

Most previous researches in impression management tactics featured situations in which the

self-presenter was in someway dependent on the target. For instance, supervisor-subordinate

relations or applicant-interviewer relations were often studied. In such situations, the target

may be more critical of the actor’s self-promotion statements than in a situation in which the

targets are peers who interact with the actor on an equal ground. The research of Blickle

(2003) seems to support the idea that the longer an assessor has worked with a co-worker, the

more positive he is expected to evaluate this colleague. The research of Campbell and Fehr

- 68 -


(1990) indicates that outside observers are more critical than student peers, who interact with

an individual. As impression management was measured in a hierarchically equal situation,

this might explain the positive outcomes found for self-promotion in this research.

Unexpected was also that no relation was found between ingratiation and positive

impressions. On a group level, a distinction should be made between targeted and non-

targeted tactics. Ingratiation, as opposed to self-promotion, is generally used as a targeted

impression management tactic; it is aimed at one or more individuals in the audience and not

necessarily to the audience as a whole. Because of this, the other individuals in the audience

will become bystanders and bystander effects can arise, in which the people who are not

ingratiated, may feel resentment towards the ingratiator (Vonk, 2002). Furthermore, the effect

of targeted impression management tactics may diffuse, if used in a group, because their

effectiveness may lie in the personal touch between the actor and the target (Goffman, 1959).

Self-promotion on the other hand is a fairly straightforward tactic which is used in order to

create a favorable impression without the necessity and drawbacks of having to target it at

individual members of the group.

In this research, the impressions group members had of a target, were averaged to create

measures on a group level. Data on the effect of impression management tactics on specific

individuals have not been analyzed. Ingratiation and self-promotion have been measured as if

they were directed at the group as a whole and impressions were measured as if they were

formed by the group as a whole. In this way, it is not taken into account if an impression

management tactic is aimed at the group as a whole or if it is aimed at specific individuals and

there is no information about how the scores of impressions are divided between the group

members. An individual with an average score for ‘Liking’ could for example be liked a lot

by some members of the group and despised by others, while he could also be moderately

liked by all of them. To give a more accurate picture of reality, impression management and

the formed impressions in a group can better be depicted by a social relations model (SRM)

(Marcus, 1998). By using this model, it can be taken into account that in a group situation the

members of the group will all be actors, as well as, audience for the impression management

performances of others. In a SRM model a distinction is made between an actor effect, a

target effect, and a relationship effect. The actor effect is the general effect, an actor has on

his group-members; the way person A is generally seen by his group members. The target

effect covers how a target generally reacts to his group members. This effect would be

comparable to the attribution style of the target because it relates to the tendency of

individuals to attribute the behaviour of others in a specific way. The relationship effect

- 69 -


accounts for the unique perceptions, an individual target may have about an actor. This last

effect may account for the effects of impression management tactics, specifically targeted at

individual persons. In order to really measure the differential effects of targeted impression

management tactics, respondents should be asked, how often they applied a certain kind of

tactic with group member 1, how often with group member 2, etc... The drawback of this

method would, of course, be that the questionnaire would become very extensive.

There are practical implication of the findings of this research for individuals concerned with

managing their impressions and for organiziations working with project teams. Strong

evidence was found for the relation between positive impressions and influence, indicating the

possibility of a causal link between these impressions and influence. For individuals

participating in a group project, being positively evaluated by their collegues may have

beneficial implications.

If individuals engage in impression management in a group situation, different tactics seem to

be succesful than in a dyadic situation. As no significant outcomes were found on the relation

between ingratiation and positive interpersonal outcomes on a group level, this seems to

indicate that ingratiation seems to be not as an effective tactic as expected. It is expected to

only be effective if used with the necessary skill and with group factors, like bystander

effects, taken into account. A person using ingratiation will for example have to take into

account the effects of his ingratiation attempt on the other people present.

Self-promotion on the other hand appears to be a tactic that is relatively effective on a group

level for creating positive perceptions of competence and consequently influence. This might

have implications for organizations working with project teams as it still has to be

investigated if impression management behaviour can interfere with performance. It is

possible that non-realistic impressions created by means of self-promotion can lead to

increased influence for the self-promoter. A result of this can be that a disproportianate

amount of influence goes to individuals who are not the most competent for the job.

Furthermore, the time and resources used by individuals for impression management may go

at the cost of time and resources used for the project task.

7.2 Assumptions and limitations

The most important limitations of this research can be divided among the categories of

measurement difficulties and generalizability. Measurement difficulties refer to the limitations

of measuring the underlying constructs and variables with the methods that are used.

- 70 -


Generalizability refers to the degree to which the outcomes of the research retain their validity

across various contexts.

An important limitation of this research is that due to practical difficulties, the sample

consisted only out of 64 respondents. According to Cohen (1977), if an intermediate effect is

expected, at least 68 respondents would be needed, with an of 0.05, to obtain a power of

0.80. For a small effect, 618 respondents would be needed. For correlations, a large effect

represents a correlation of at least 0.50, for an intermediate effect it would be at least 0.30 and

a small effect would have a correlation coefficient of around 0.10. This means that due to the

limited size of the sample, intermediate and small effects could have been overseen in this

research.

The impression management tactics were measured by only 4 questions each. These questions

were stated not too specific, so that the respondents themselves could decide if specific

behaviours they displayed during the group project fell under the items, and they were stated

not too general, so that behaviours that would not fall under the specific impression

management tactic would not be measured by the items. However, because impression

management was measured as behaviour and not as a trait or tendency to engage in self-

presentations, it is possible that the questions are not extensive; it is possible that they do not

cover the whole range of behaviours that belong under an impression management tactic.

Especially lacking in the items is the use of non-verbal self-presentation behaviour; the items

almost exclusively refer to verbal behaviour. Non-verbal behaviours are an important aspect

of self-presentations that can have a profound impact on impressions. For example, Driskell,

Olmstead, and Salas (1993) found that non-verbal task cues such as verbal fluency, well-

modulated voice tone, body posture, and a rapid rate of speech were positively related with

perceived competence as well as with influence. Literature on social mimicry (Chartrand &

Bargh, 1999; van Baaren, Holland, Steenaert, & van Knippenberg, 2003) and on the link

between non-verbal behaviour and liking (Curtis & Miller, 1986) indicate that non-verbal

behaviour can also play a role in ingratiation. For example, a pleasant tone of voice and

matching body postures are predicted to increase liking. The questionnaire of Bolino and

Turnley (1999) was chosen because for now it seems to be the most statistically sound

impression management questionnaire that distinguishes between different tactics. However,

also this questionnaire has its imperfections and can be improved upon.

The self-monitoring concept and the impression management tactics of the participants were

measured using self-report questionnaires. Therefore they are vulnerable to all limitations and

weaknesses that are related with this method of data gathering. For self-report data to be

- 71 -


accurate, participants have to be both willing and able to answer the questions in a precise and

honest way (Larsen & Buss, 2002). It must be assumed that they have enough knowledge of

themselves and their behaviour to assess themselves on the items of the questionnaire.

Furthermore, it must be assumed that the respondents are willing to give an accurate picture

of themselves. Stevens and Kristof (1995) gave some empirical support for the validity of

applicants’ self reports of impression management behaviour. They collected impression

management ratings from applicants, interviewers, and observers and found that applicants’

ratings were more similar to the ratings of the observers than the interviewers’ ratings were.

An important complication with self-report measures of impression management is social

desirability. Social desirability refers to the tendency to answer items in such a way as to

come across as socially attractive or likable (Larsen & Buss, 2002). Because, impression

management can be seen as deceptive and illicit behaviour (Schlenker & Weigold, 1992;

Jones, 1964), it is possible that some participants might consider it as socially undesirable

behaviour, and consequently play down their scores of impression management tactics on the

items. This also applies to the self-monitoring construct which also contains several items that

can be understood as measuring so called ‘illicit’ forms of social behaviour. For example, an

item like ‘I would not change my opinion (or the way I do things) in order to please someone

or win their favour.’ might be at odds with the social value of displaying an accurate picture

of oneself. However, Snyder (1974) found that social desirability, as measured with the social

desirability scale of Crowne and Marlowe (1960), was not strongly related with the concept of

self-monitoring.

Another difficulty in this research was the operationalization of the variable ‘influence’.

Because, it was impossible to obtain objective measures of influence, a subjective method was

chosen in which the group members rated the influence of their co-workers on two questions

with a five point scale. Objectivity was increased because the influence scores of the different

group members who rated a person were averaged. However, it remains a subjective

measurement method and therefore it can be biased by the subjective interpretation of group

members’ assessment of the situation. It is questionable if group members are able to

accurately assess the relative influence of their co-workers. Levy, Collins, and Nail (1999)

identified 24 different types of influence in a review. Therefore, it is not clear if all

respondents would conceptualize influence in the same manner. However, Salancik and

Pfeffer (1977), based on studies of over 20 very different organizations, claim that individuals

agree with each other to a far extent and are able to rate themselves and peers on a scale of

- 72 -


influence or power. The Cronbach’s of 0.91 found for the scale, seems to support that the

raters considerably agreed with each other in assessing the influence of their co-workers.

Furthermore, in the light of impression management, a group member might cover up his

influence so that his group members see him as less influential than he really is. On the other

hand, a group member might try to be seen as more influential while in reality he only has

little influence in the group process.

Finally, the impressions of likeability and competence of the group members are rated by two

questions in the questionnaire. It is not certain if group members are willing to rate their co-

workers negatively if they have negative impressions of them. Even though anonymity was

guaranteed, respondents might be reluctant to give negative evaluations about their co-

workers.

Caution should also be used with generalizing the results of this research to other settings. As

a student sample was used, it is not straightforward that the same results would also be found

in a working environment. Here for, replication in different settings would be necessary to see

if similar effects would hold in different settings. Furthermore, the fact that the sample

consisted out of an almost exclusively male population, limits the generalizability of the

findings. First of all, because significant differences have been found in the use of impression

management tactics between males and females (Bolino & Turnley, 2003). Furthermore,

impression management tactics used by a female person can have a different effect than the

same tactic used by a male person. Kipnis and Schmidt (1988), for example, found that male

managers using high levels of ingratiation, received only moderate performance ratings, while

female ingratiators received higher performance ratings. Third, differences in the effect of

impression management can also depend on an interaction effect of the gender of the actor

and the gender of the audience. Carli, LaFleur, and Loeber (1995) found that likableness was

a more important determinant of influence for female than for male speakers when the

audience was male. Finally, in male dominated work group, different attitudes toward

impression management might exist than in groups with more gender diversity.

- 73 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 8. Conclusion

8. Conclusion

This research set out to investigate the effects of impression management on impressions and

influence on a group level. Impression management was studied at a group level because

previous research focused mainly at upward impression management at a dyadic level. In

organizations, however, impressions are often not given off in an isolated one-to-one

interaction and not only to people higher in hierarchy. Especially, as group and team work

becomes more and more important in contemporary organizations, it becomes important to

also study the effects of self-presentations in groups.

In line with previous results of research on impression management, it was hypothesised that

the use of ingratiation would be positively related to liking and consequently to influence in

group decisions. It was drawn from expectations states theory that the influence a group

member is expected to have, is positively related with the expectations of the other group

members about the abilities of that person to contribute to the group goals. As results on the

ability of group members to assess the actual performance of their co-workers were mixed, it

was expected that impression management behaviours would play a role in forming the

performance expectations of the group members. Therefore, self-promotion was expected to

be positively related to perceived competence and consequently to influence. Self-monitoring

was expected to be a predictor for the use of impression management tactics as well as for the

expected success of these tactics.

The research consisted out of two samples in which students worked together in project teams

to create a final project. By means of questionnaires, information was gathered about group

members’ impression management behaviour, about impressions group members had of their

co-workers, and on the influence of group members. Although evidence was found for a

positive relation between self-monitoring and self-promotion, no evidence was found that

self-monitoring moderated the success of the impression management tactics. It was found

that the use of impression management tactics did not significantly predict influence over and

above the impressions of liking and influence. However, some evidence was found that the

tactic of self-promotion was positively related to the positive impressions of perceived

competence and liking while ingratiation was not.

These findings were explained by pointing to the differences between impression

management tactics used in a dyadic as opposed to in a group situation. In a group, creating a

favourable impression is more complex than in a one-to-one situation. Self-presentations can

- 74 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 8. Conclusion

therefore be more difficult if given for a larger audience. Furthermore, different tactics may

be successful in a group situation than in a dyadic interaction.

The outcomes of this research and the explanations that were given, highlight some blank

spots in impression management research. First of all, impression management tactics are

expected to have different effects on different members of the audience, especially as some

tactic are targeted at specific individuals in the audience. Here fore, to study the effects of

impression management tactics in a group situation, a social relations model could be used in

order to investigate the different effects of tactics on the different group members.

Furthermore, for future research it might be interesting to take a dynamic approach in

studying the relation between impression management and its outcomes. Theories of group

development predict changing relations between co-workers during the development of a

group. Self-presentations might have different effects in different development stages and

therefore research on impression management in groups may benefit from a dynamic

approach to studying the effects of impression management.

- 75 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 9. References

9. References

Abelson, R.P. 1981. The psychological status of the script concept. American Psychologist, 36: 715-729.

Arkin, R.M., & Shepperd, J.A. 1989. Self-presentation styles in organizations. In Giacalone, R.A., Rosenfeld, P. (Eds.), Impression Management in the Organization, Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum associates, 125-139.

Arrow, H. 1997. Stability, bistability, and instability in small group influence patterns. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72: 75-85.

Asch, S.E. 1955. Opinions and social pressure. In Staw, B. (Ed.), 2004. Psychological Dimensions of Organizational Behavior, Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 261-267.

Avison, W.R. 1980. Liking and the attribution of causation for success and failure. Journal of General Psychology, 102: 197-209.

Bales, R.F. 1956. Task status and likeability as a function of talking and listening in decision making groups. In White, L.D. (Ed.), The State of Social Sciences, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 148-161.

Bandura, A. 1997. Self-efficacy: The Exercise of Control. New York: Freeman.

Baron, R.M., & Kenny, D.A., 1986. The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: concept, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51: 1173-1182.

Baumeister, R.F. 1989. Motives and costs of self-presentation in organizations. In Giacalone, R.A., & Rosenfeld, P. (Eds.), Impression Management in the Organization. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum associates, 57-71.

Berger, J., Fisek, M.H., Norman, R.Z., & Zelditch, M. 1977. Status Characteristics and Social Interaction: An Expectation-States Approach. New York: Elsevier Scientific Publishing Company, Inc.

Bohra, K.A., & Pandey, J. 1984. Ingratiation towards strangers, friends, and bosses. Journal of Social Psychology, 124: 217-222.

Bolino, M.C., & Turnley, W.H. 1999. Measuring impression management in organizations: a scale development based on the Jones and Pittman taxonomy. Organizational Research Methods, 2: 187-206.

Bolino, M.C., & Turnley, W.H. 2003. More than one way to make an impression: exploring profiles of impression management. Journal of Management, 29: 141-160.

Bonner, B.L. 2004. Expertise in group problem solving: recognition, social combination, and performance. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4: 277-290.

- 76 -


Byrne, D. 1971. The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press.

Brass, D.J., & Burkhardt, M.E. 1993. Potential power and power use: an investigation of structure and behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 36: 441-470.

Briggs, S.R., & Cheek, J.M. 1988. On the nature of self-monitoring: problems of assessment, problems with validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 54: 663-678.

Campbell, J.D., & Fehr, B.A. 1990. Self-esteem and perceptions of conveyed impressions: is negativity affectively associated with greater realism? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58: 122-123.

Carli, L.L., LaFleur, S.J., & Loeber, C.C. 1995. Nonverbal behavior, gender, and influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68: 1030-1041.

Chartrand, T.L., & Bargh, J.A. 1999. The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76: 893-910.

Cheek, J.M., & Buss, A.H. 1981. Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41: 330-339.

Christie, R., & Geis, F.L. 1970. Studies in Machiavellianism. New York: Academic Press.

Cohen, J. 1977. Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioural Sciences. New York: Academic Press.

Cohen, S.G., & Bailey, D.E. 1997. What makes teams work: group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite. Journal of management, 23: 239-290.

Crano, W.D. 2000. Milestones in the psychological analysis of social influence. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 4: 68-80.

Crowne, D.P., & Marlowe, D. 1960. A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 24: 349-354.

Csikszentmihalyi, M. 1999. If we are so rich, why aren’t we happy? American Psychologist, 54: 821-827. Curtis, R.C., & Miller, K. 1986. Believing another likes or dislikes you: behaviors making the belief come true. Journal of Personality and Personal Psychology, 51: 284- 290.

DePaulo, B.M. 1992. Nonverbal Behavior and Self-Presentation. Psychological Bulletin, 111: 203-243.

Depaulo, B.M., Hoover, C.W., Webb, W., Kenny, D.A., & Oliver, P.V. 1987. Accuracy of person perception: do people Know what kinds of impressions they convey? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 303-315.

- 77 -


Deutsch, M., & Gerard, H.B. 1955. A study of normative and informational social influence upon individual judgement. Journal of Abnormal and Social Pychology, 51: 629-636.

Driskell, J.E., Olmstead, B., & Salas, E. 1993. Task cues, dominance cues, and influence in task groups. Journal of Applied Psychology, 78: 51-60.

Eagly, A.H., & Karau, S.J. 1991 Gender and the emergence of leaders: a meta-analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60: 685-710.

Feldman, R.S., Forrest, J.A., & Happ, B.R. 2002. Self-presentation and verbal deception: do self-presenters lie more? Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 24: 163-171.

Field, A. 2000. Discovering Statistics: Using SPSS for Windows. London: Sage Publication.

Finch, J.F., & Cialdini, R.B. 1989. Another indirect tactic of (self-) image management: Boosting. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15: 222-232.

Fletcher, G.J.O., Danilovics, P., Fernandez, G., Peterson, D., & Reeder, G.D. 1986. Attributional complexity : an individual difference measure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51: 875-884.

French, J., & Raven, B.H. 1959. The bases of social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed .), Studies of Social Power. Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social Research, 150-167.

Gangestad, S.W., & Snyder, M. 2000. Self-monitoring: appraisal and reappraisal. Psychological Bulletin, 126: 530-555.

Gardner, W.L., & Martinko, M.J. 1988. Impression Management in organizations. Journal of Management, 14: 321-338.

Gersick, C.J. 1989. Marking time: predictable transitions in task groups. Academy of Management Journal, 31: 9-41.

Giacalone, R.A., & Rosenfeld, P. 1986. Self-presentation and self-promotion in an organizational setting. Journal of Social Psychology, 126: 321-326.

Gilder de, D. 1991. Expectation States Theory: Some Investigations Within and Beyond a Research Tradition. Doctorate thesis: Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.

Godfrey, D.K.. Jones, E.E., & Lord, C. G. 1986. Self-promotion is not ingratiating. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50: 106-115.

Goffman, E. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Live. Garden City, New York: Doubleday Anchor.

Gordon, R.A. 1996. Impact of ingratiation on judgements of evaluations: a meta analytical investigation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71: 54-70.

Gouldner, A.W. 1960. The norm of reciprocity: A preliminary statement. American Sociological Review, 25: 161-178.

- 78 -


Guerin, B. 1991. Anticipating the consequences of social behaviour. Current Psychology: Research and Reviews, 10: 131-162.

Hare, A.P. 1994. Roles and relationships. In Hare, A.P., Blumberg, H.H., Davies, M.F. & Kent, V. (Eds.) Small Group Research a Handbook, Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 141-154.

Henry, R.A., Strickland, O.J., Yorges, S.L., & Ladd, D. 1996. Helping groups determine their most accurate member: the role of outcome feedback. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 26: 1153-1170.

Higgins, C.A., Judge, T.A., & Ferris, G.R. 2003. Influence tactics and work outcomes: a meta analysis. Journal of Organizational Behaviour, 24: 89-106.

James, W. 1890. The Principles of Psychology. London: Macmillan.

Janis, I.L. 1971. Groupthink, In Hackman, J.R. (Ed.), 1983. Perspectives on Behavior in Organizations, New York: McGraw-Hill, 36: 378-385.

John, O.P., Cheek, J.M., & Klohnen, E.C. 1996. On the nature of self-monitoring: construct explication with Q-sort ratings. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71: 763-776.

Jones, E.E. 1964. Ingratiation: A Social Psychological Analysis. New York : Appleton-Century-Crofts.

Jones, E.E., & Pittman, T.S. 1982. toward a general theory of strategic self-presentation. In Suls, J. (Ed.), Psychological Perspectives on the Self, Hillsdale New Jersey: Erlbaum, 1: 231-261.

Juvonen, J., & Murdock, T.B. 1993. How to promote social approval: effects of audience and achievement outcome on publicly communicated attributions. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85: 365-376.

Kane, J.S., & Lawler, E.E. 1978. Methods of peer assessment. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 555-586.

Kent, M.V. 1994. The presence of others. In Hare, A.P., Blumberg, H.H., Davies, M.F., & Kent, M.V. (Eds.), Small Group Research: a Handbook, Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Pulishing Corporation, 81-105.

Kent, R.L., & Moss, S.E. 1990. Self-monitoring as a predictor of leader emergence. Psychological Reports, 66: 875-881.

Kilduff, M. & Day, D.V., 1994. Do chameleons get ahead? The effects of self-monitoring on managerial careers. Academy of Management Journal, 37: 1047-1060.

Kipnis, D. & Schmidt, S.M. 1988. Upward influence styles: relationship with performance evaluations, salary, and stress. Administrative Science Quarterly, 33: 528-542.

- 79 -


Kipnis, D., Schmidt, S.M., & Wilkinson, I. 1980. Intraorganizational influence tactics: explorations in getting one’s way. Journal of Applied Psychology, 65: 440-452.

Kolb, J.A. 1998. The relationship between self-monitoring and leadership in student project groups. The Journal of Business Communication, 35: 264-282.

Koolschijn, G. 1996. Plato: De Strijd Tegen het Democratisch Beest. Amsterdam: Ooievaar.

Larsen, R.J., & Buss D.M. 2002. Personality Psychology: Domains of Knowledge about Human Nature. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.

Latané, B. 1981. The psychology of social impact. American Psychologist, 36: 343-356.

Leary, M. R. 1995. Self-presentation: Impression Management and Interpersonal Behaviour, Dubuque: Brown & Benchmark.

Leary, M. R., & Kowalski, R.M. 1990. Impression management: a literature review and two-component model. Psychological Bulletin, 107: 34-37.

Levine, J.M., & Moreland, R.L. 1990. Progress in small group research. Annual Review of Psychology, 41: 585-634.

Levy, D.A., Collins, B.E., & Nail, P.R. 1999. A new model of interpersonal influence characteristics. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 13: 715-733.

Libby, R., Trotman, K.T., & Zimmer, I. 1987. Member variation, recognition of expertise, and group performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 72: 81-87.

Littlepage, G.E., Schmidt, G.W., Whisler, E.W., & Frost, A.G. 1995. An input-process-output analysis of influence and performance in problem-solving groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69: 877-889.

Marcus, D.K. 1998. Studying group dynamics with the social relations model. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 2: 230-240.

Markus, H., & Nurius, P., 1986. Possible selves. American Psychologist, 41: 954-969.

Moscovici, S. 1985. Social influence and conformity, In: G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (eds.) The Handbook of Social Psychology (3th edition), New York: Random House, 318- 326.

Myers, D.G. 2002. Social Psychology, New York: McGraw-Hill.

Neumann, R., Strack, F. 2000. “Mood contagion”: the automatic transfer of mood between persons. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79: 211-223.

Ng, S.H. 2001. Influencing through the power of language. In Forgas, J.P., Kipling, P.W. (Eds.), Social Influence: Direct and Indirect Processes. Philadelphia: Psychology Press, 185-197.

- 80 -


Paulhus, D.L. 1984. Two component model of socially desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46: 598-609.

Pfeffer, J. 1981. Management as symbolic action: The creation and maintenance of organizational paradigms. In L.L. Cummings & B.M. Staw (Eds.), Research in Organizational Behavior, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 81-105

Remmerswaal, J. 1998. Handboek Groepsdynamica, een Nieuwe Inleiding op Theorie en Praktijk. Baarn: H. Nelissen B.V..

Robbins, S.P. 2003., Essentials of Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition. New Jersey, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.

Rosenfeld, P., Giacalone, R.A., & Riordan, C.A. 1995. Impression Management in Organizations: Theory. Measurement, Practice, London: Routledge.

Rosenfeld, P., Giacalone, R.A., & Tedeschi, J.T. 1983. Humor and impression management. The journal of Social Psychology, 121: 59-63.

Roth, D.L., Harris, R.N., & Snyder, C.R. 1988. An individual difference measure of attributive and repudiative tactics of favourable self-presentation. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 6: 159-170.

Rudman, L.A. 1998. Self-promotion as a risk factor for women: the costs and benefits of counterstereotypical impression management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74: 629-645.

Salancik, G.R., & Pfeffer, J. 1977. Who gets power and how they hold on to it: A strategic- contingency model of power. Organizational Dynamics, Winter: 3-21

Schlenker, B.R. 1975. Self-presentation: managing the impression of consistency when reality interferes with self-enhancement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32:1030-1037.

Schlenker, B.R. 1980. Impression Management: the Self-concept, Social Identity and Interpersonal Relations. Monterey, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Schlenker, B.R., & Britt, T.W. 1999. Beneficial impression management: strategically controlling information to help friends. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76: 559-573.

Schlenker, B.R., & Weigold, M.F. 1992. Interpersonal processes involving impression regulation and management. Annual Review of Psychology, 43: 133-168.

Schneider, D.J. 1981. Tactical self-presentations: toward a broader conception, In Tedeschi, J.T. (Ed.) Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research, New York: Academic Press Inc, 23-40.

Sedikides, C. 1993. Assessment, enhancement, and verification: determinants of the self-evaluation process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 317-338.

- 81 -


Sherif, M. 1935. A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 27: 1-60.

Snyder, M. 1974. Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30: 526-537.

Snyder, M., & Gangestad, S. 1986. On the nature of self-monitoring: matters of assessment, matters of validity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51: 125-139.

Stevens, C.K., & Kristof, A.L. 1995. Making the right impression: a field study of applicant impression management during job interviews. Journal of Applied Psychology, 80: 587-606.

Stryker, S. 1980. Symbolic Interactionism: a Social Structural Version. Menlo Park, California: Benjamin/Cummings.

Swann, W.B. 1996. Self-traps: The Elusive Quest for Higher Self-esteem. New York: Freeman.

Tedeschi, J.T., & Melburg, V. 1984. Impression management and influence in the organization. In S.B. Bacharach & E. J. Lawler (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 3: 31-58.

Tedeschi, J.T., & Reiss, M. 1981. Identities, the phenomenal self, and laboratory research, In Tedeschi, J.T. (Ed.), Impression Management Theory and Social Psychological Research, New York: Academic Press Inc, 3-22.

Torrance, E.P. 1955. Some consequences of power differences on decision making in permanent and temporary three-man groups, In Hare, A.P., Borgatta, E.F., & Bales, R.F. (Eds.), Small groups: Studies in Social Interaction, New York: Knopf, 482-492.

Triplett, N. 1898. The dynamogenic factors in pacemaking and competition. American Journal of Psychology, 9: 507-533.

Tuckman, B.W. 1965. Developmental sequences in small groups. Psychology Bulletin, 63: 384-399.

Turnley, W.H., & Bolino, M.C. 2001. Achieving desired images while avoiding undesired images: exploring the role of self-monitoring in impression management. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86: 351-360.

Van Baaren, R.B., Holland, R.W., Steenaert, B., & van Knippenberg, A. 2003. Mimicry for money: behavioural consequences of imitation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 39: 393-398.

Vohs, K.D., Baumeister, R.F., & Ciarocco, N.J. 2005. Self-regulation and self-presentation: regulatory resource depletion impairs impression management and effortful self-presentation depletes regulatory resources. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88: 632-657.

- 82 -


Vonk, R. 2002. Self-serving interpretations of flattery: why ingratiation works. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82: 515-526.

Wayne, S.J., & Ferris G.R. 1990. Influence tactics, affect, and exchange quality in supervisor-subordinate interactions: A laboratory experiment and field study. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75: 487-499.

Wayne, S.J., & Liden, R.C. 1995. Effects of impression management on performance ratings: a longitudinal study. Academy of Management Journal, 1: 232-260.

Wicklund, R.A. 1980. Group contact and self-focused attention, In Paulus, P.B. (Ed.), Psychology of Group Influence. Hillsdale New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 189-208.

Yukl, G., & Falbe, C. 1990. Influence tactics and objectives in upward, downward, and lateral influence attempts. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75: 132-140.

Yukl, G., & Tracy, J.B. 1992. Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77: 525-535.

Zajonc, R.B. 1965. Social Facilitation. Science, 149 :269-274.

Zanna, M.P., & Pack, S.J. 1975. On the self-fulfilling nature of apparent sex differences in behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 11: 583-591.

Zuckerman, M., Hall, J.A., DeFrank, R.S., & Rosenthal, R. 1976. Encoding and decoding of spontaneous and posed facial expressions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 34: 966-977.

- 83 -

Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 10. Appendix

10. Appendix


Questionnaire on Group Behaviour

For my master thesis, as a student at the FdEWB at the University of Maastricht, I carry out a research on the behaviour of group members in work groups. I would like to ask you for your cooperation in gathering data for this research. Here fore I ask you to fill in this questionnaire. The following pages contain some questions. Please read every question carefully and try to answer them directly without losing too much time. There are no good or bad solutions. The questions must be answered by encircling the number that seems most applicable. Answer the questions privately without discussing them with your co-workers. The first three pages contain questions about yourself. The last pages contain questions about your group members. Please fill them in for all your group members. All data will be treated confidentially.

Thank you very much,

Sjir Uitdewilligen

Name:

Age:

Nationality:

Gender (Please encircle the correct answer): MaleFemale

If you are interested in the results of this research, you can fill in your e-mail address. E-mail address:


Please indicate how much you agree with the following statements:

Totally disagree

Disagree Neutral Agree Totally agree

1. I find it hard to imitate the behaviour of other people. 1 2 3 4 5

2. At parties and social gatherings, I do not attempt to do or say things that others will like.

1 2 3 4 5

3. I can only argue for ideas which I already believe. 1 2 3 4 5

4. I can make instant speeches even on topics about which I have almost no information.

1 2 3 4 5

5. I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain people. 1 2 3 4 5

6. I would probably make a good actor. 1 2 3 4 5

7. In a group of people I am rarely the center of attention. 1 2 3 4 5

8. In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons.

1 2 3 4 5

9. I am not particularly good at making other people like me. 1 2 3 4 5

10. I'm not always the person I appear to be. 1 2 3 4 5

11. I would not change my opinions (or the way I do things) in order to please someone or win their favor.

1 2 3 4 5

12. I have considered being an entertainer. 1 2 3 4 5

13. I have never been good at word guessing games or improvisional acting. 1 2 3 4 5


14. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations.

1 2 3 4 5

15. At a party I let others keep the jokes and stories going. 1 2 3 4 5

16. I feel a bit awkward in company and do not show up quite as well as I should. 1 2 3 4 5

17. I can look anyone in the eye and tell a lie with a straight face (if for a right end).

1 2 3 4 5

18. I may deceive people by being friendly when I really dislike them. 1 2 3 4 5

Totally

disagree Disagree Neutral Agree Totally agree

Please indicate how accurate each statement is in describing your behaviour during the group project.

Very Inaccurate

Inaccurate Neutral Accurate Very accurate

1. Make other group members aware of your talents or qualifications. 1 2 3 4 5

2. Make other group members aware of your unique skills and abilities. 1 2 3 4 5

3. Let other group members know that you are a valuable member of the group. 1 2 3 4 5

4. Talk proudly about your past accomplishments which might help make this project successful.

1 2 3 4 5

5. Praise your group members for their efforts so that they will consider you a nice person.

1 2 3 4 5

6. Compliment your group members so they will see you as likeable. 1 2 3 4 5

7. Do personal favors for members of the group to show them that you are friendly.

1 2 3 4 5

8. Take an interest in other group members' personal lives to show them that you are friendly.

1 2 3 4 5

Please fill in the names of your group members and answer the following questions about all of them .

Name of group member 1:Totally

disagreeDisagree Neutral Agree Totally

agree

I like this person. 1 2 3 4 5

I would like to work with this person again on another group task.

1 2 3 4 5

This person has a lot of influence on group decisions.

1 2 3 4 5

If this person makes a suggestion, it gets accepted by the other members of the group.

1 2 3 4 5

This person is competent concerning the group task.

1 2 3 4 5

This person has got the necessary expertise for this group task.

1 2 3 4 5



agree



1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5



agree



1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5



agree



1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5



agree



1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5



agree



1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5


1 2 3 4 5

concerns with impression management already go back to the...

Documents