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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
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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
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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.
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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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 1. Introduction
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 1. Introduction
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.
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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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 2. Theoretical background
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.
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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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 3. Influence in groups
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 3. Influence in groups
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 3. Influence in groups
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 3. Influence in groups
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 3. Influence in groups
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.
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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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 4. Hypotheses
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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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 5. Methods
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 5. Methods
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 5. Methods
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 5. Methods
some evidence that the scales used seem to measure the concepts they were supposed to
measure.
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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).
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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**
N = 23** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
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**
N = 64** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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).
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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-
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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
Model R² Adj. R² Significance Ind. variable
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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
Model R² Adj. R² Significance Ind. variable
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 6. Results
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).
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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-
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
(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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
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
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 7. Discussion and limitations
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.
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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
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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.
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 9. References
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Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 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:
Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 10. Appendix
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
Impression Management in Group Situations Chapter 10. Appendix
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
Name of group member 2: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
Name of group member 3: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
Name of group member 4: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
Name of group member 5: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
Name of group member 6: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