4.5d Erving Goffman’s Impression Management
Everyone, including Black people, navigating double consciousness, looks to manage the impressions others have of them. Erving Goffman (1956) used dramaturgical theory to illustrate the process. Dramaturgical theory studies social life as if it is a play people perform. A play has a frontstage and a backstage, as does social life. The frontstage is made up of those parts of one’s self that an individual shares with others. The backstage consists of those aspects of one’s self that a person shares with a more limited audience or with no one. Goffman called the process by which individuals select the aspects of their self they share as impression management.
Impression Management and the Job Search
Job seekers, for instance, revise their resumes or frontstage as a form of impression management. Younger job seekers may include activities from high school or inflate their job responsibilities to compensate for having less experience because of their youth. Older job seekers might remove the dates of their degrees or remove employment from the earlier part of their career, moving these signals to the backstage to avoid ageism (discrimination based on age).
In a study of age discrimination by AARP, two-thirds (64%) of people who are 50 or older believe “older workers face age discrimination in the workplace” and that this discrimination is common (Choi-Allum, 2024). Moreover, 21% of respondents said they had faced age-based discrimination since turning 40 (Choi-Allum, 2024).
Photo 4.21
Resumes Are Used for Impression Management
A job search is one of the times when active impression management is most visible. It usually extends beyond the resume to how people dress and behave in an employment interview to influence the hiring manager’s impression of them. However, most people do impression management much of the time. They decide what to do and say depending on the audience and the social norms of the setting. For instance, young adult college students typically wear casual clothing and even pajamas to class to present a carefree attitude. Still, they dress in a more put-together, formal, or sexy way when going out to a party to fit in with the situation. Overall, people use impression management to influence the feelings others have of them, thereby affirming their sense of self.