Starting from the work of Goffman (1959) suggesting that people play roles for audiences, the self-presentation strategies have been studied in hundreds of studies. Self-presentation consists of the self’s effort to convey a particular image of itself, or information about itself, to other people (Baumeister, 1999). The idea that people are able to manipulate their image, often to secure some benefit by making the optimal impression, has been well supported (Leary, 1995). In this case (the strategic motive for self-presentation) self-presentation is guided by the audience’s beliefs and values.

The present research is aimed to study self-presentation strategies on students, by the way of causal ascription. Considering the theory of norm of internality (Dubois, 2003) and the social motivational approach (Weiner, 1995; Juvonen, 1996), an experimental study involving 91 subjects has been performed. We anticipated that people recognize the function of different explanation strategies, in order to make a good impression on others. The results confirm the hypothesis and, particularly, prove the role of effort as normative explanation in school context. Implications of the results for research on impression management and performance appraisal are discussed.

Rationale and Aims

Starting from the work of Goffman (1959) suggesting that people play roles for audiences, the self-presentation strategies have been studied in hundreds of studies. Self-presentation consists of the self’s effort to convey a particular image of itself, or information about itself, to other people (Baumeister, 1999). The idea that people are able to manipulate their image, often to secure some benefit by making the optimal impression, has been well supported (Leary, 1995). In this case (the strategic motive for self-presentation) self-presentation is guided by the audience’s beliefs and values. In particular, when a child enter a school for the first time s/he is engaged in social interactions which trigger the use of such strategies. The strategies implemented by the pupils are based on the school’s values and norms. These particular values and norms may be convey explicitly by the teachers, but in some case norms are implicitly learned by the pupils. In fact children discover quickly the context norms and very rapidly they become able to adopt behavioural and verbal strategies to make themselves “look good” in the eyes of others (i.e. teachers and peers) .

Some theorists have based their understanding of self-presentation strategies on the social norm of internality (Beauvois & Dubois, 2001), other theorists claimed to account on other social norms or attributional strategies, such as: norm of effort (Matteucci & Gosling, 2004; Juvonen, 1996); self-serving bias; norm of modesty.

The principal aim is to demonstrate the social valorisation of different self-presentation strategies, comparing different students’ profiles. In specific, we have drawn five profiles (fictitious) to compare the social valorisation in school context of different explanation strategies concerning success and failure events.

After a pilot study involving 272 students, the experimental study has been conducted with 91 students (Faculty of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy), (mean age= 23.5; DS= 6.1; F= 81.3%). The questionnaire, based on a previously research of Dubois and Beauvois, included the description of five students and, particularly, of their attribution style.

The five profiles included: 1. a student who explains usually his results (success and failure) using the effort as principal cause; 2. a student who explains usually his results (success and failure) using the ability as principal cause; 3. a student who explains usually his results (success and failure) using the “self-serving bias” (internal explanation for success and external explanation for failure); 4. a student who explains usually his results (success and failure) using the principle of modesty (internal explanation for failure and external explanation for success); 5. a student who explains usually his results (success and failure) using external causes;

After reading the profiles, participants were asked to rank the five fictitious students on the basis of their expectations of future school success for each student.

Some items concerning their affinity with the profiles and theirs social desirability followed.

The Friedman test showed a significant difference in the rank used by the participants to order the students’ profile in base of their probability of future school success, X² (df=4) = 236.664; p= .000.

The best strategies (in other words, the profile favourite for having success in future) is the internal-effort one; in the second place we found the internal-ability strategies; the self-serving profile came in third and the last is the external profile. The Wilcoxon test – that compares two paired groups - confirmed this results, proving that the external strategy produces the worst prediction of school achievement, while the two internal strategies (based on effort and ability) trigger the best prediction.

In achievement context, the effort of the pupils often prove more important to the teachers than objective success or failure. The performance evaluation is affected by social norms and values and therefore being able to use self-presentation strategies can be a pivotal competence!

This research increase the knowledge about the impression management in school context and about the attributional strategies useful to secure some benefit by making the optimal impression on teachers or, at least, to avoid punishment, such as negative evaluation (Weiner, 2003).

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Principal References.

Baumeister R. F. (1999), (Ed.). The self in social psychology. Philadelphia; Hove: Psychology press.

Beavois J. L. & Dubois N. (2001). Normativity and self-presentation – theoretical bases of self-presentation training for evaluation situations. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 16, 7, 490-508.

Juvonen, J. (1996), Self-presentation tactics promoting teacher and peer approval: the function of excuses and other cleaver explanations. In Juvonen, J. & Wentzel, K. R. (Eds.), Social Motivation: Understanding Children’s School Adjustment, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 43-65.

Leary M.R. (1995). Self-presentation: Impression management and interpersonal behaviour. Boulder: Westview

Matteucci M.C., Gosling P. (2004) Italian and French teachers faced with pupil’s academic failure: the norm of effort. European Journal of Psychology of Education, 19, 2, 147-166

Weiner, B. (2003). The classroom as a courtroom. Social Psychology of Education, 6, 3-15.