Chapter Overview

Chapter 9

• The process of presenting yourself effectively is based on communicating, verbally and nonverbally, favorable meanings of your personal qualities. The goal is to help others form as positive an impression of you as you can.
• People make elaborate inferences about others on the basis of relatively little information. Salient characteristics become particularly important in constructing an impression of what another individual is really like. In fact, with limited data, you put together an organized implicit personality that you think can predict the behavior of the individual you have just met.
• Labels are an important part of implicit personality construction. If you have a convenient label-"nerd," "sexpot," "jock," or whatever-you will load onto the person all the meanings such terms carry. These meanings may be incorrect and quite unfair, but they provide guidelines for action that may seem at the time to be based on realities.
• One of the problems in self-presentation is selective perception. People tend to attribute unacceptable behavior to your personal shortcomings and praiseworthy behavior to causes beyond your control. Thus, it's important to plan ahead-to decide what to say and how much to self-disclose. Saying too much too quickly may be counterproductive.
• Changing impressions that people already have of you is very difficult. It is possible to change their impressions, but at times it may not be worth the effort. If such a change is necessary, you must first deal with people's natural resistance to change. This means being prepared to keep your emotions under control and carefully constructing the new impression you wish to create.