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Impression Management

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  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences

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Definition

Impression management has been defined as “the goal-directed activity of controlling information about some person, object, idea, or event to audiences” (p. 201, Schlenker and Pontari 2000).

Introduction

Impression management is a popular research phenomenon in social and personality psychology. The concept overlaps with faking and social desirability. Yet, whereas those terms are often used when describing response distortions in questionnaires, impression management is used when people interact. In recent years, impression management has had a strong indirect influence on personality research. This is related to the rise of interest in subclinical narcissism. In what follows, we will define and describe key aspects of impression management and tie those to narcissism as an example of an interindividual difference construct.

Leary and Kowalski (1990) defined two discreet processes related to impression management: impression motivation and impression construction....

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Matthias Ziegler & Ursula Hess

Authors
  1. Matthias Ziegler
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  2. Ursula Hess
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthias Ziegler .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Virgil Zeigler-Hill

  2. Oakland University, Rochester, USA

    Todd K. Shackelford

Section Editor information

  1. Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Matthias Ziegler

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Ziegler, M., Hess, U. (2017). Impression Management. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1312-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_1312-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8

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