According to Sinha (2009), "Impression management is an active self-presentation of a person aiming to enhance his image in the eyes of others" (p.104).
According to Newman (2009), impression management is an “act presenting a favorable public image of oneself so that others will form positive judgments” (p.184).
Our values, norms, and statuses are never given fully formed. We have to mold them into something we’re comfortable with.
Impression management is a fundamental and universal process that involves a number of influential factors. These factors are social, cultural and spiritual.
Social Implications
The use of impression management provides people with the necessary skills to create a custom and often falsified perception. This deceptively altered perception allows a person to construct a new, but not necessarily improved version of him or herself. This approach helps a person carefully craft relationships and by extension they have the ability to alter their position in the socialization process through impression management. The previous example illustrates how impression management can also have a number of negative implications, such as, deception and falsification of self.
According to Newman (2009), “Impression management can lead to the creation of damaged identities, which must be repaired in order to sustain social interactions” (p.183).
Newman (2009) expands on this notion, “Impression management is a tool most of us use to present ourselves as likable people” (p.183). The previous examples point to and imply that impression management has a solely negative impact on the people within society.
Cultural Implications
Americans spend hours in tanning beds and spend large sums of money on spray tanning and bronzing lotions. On the other end of the spectrum, Indonesians purchase whitening lotions, body soap, and facial scrubs. This example demonstrates the importance of impression management and the great lengths people go to in order to control how people perceive them.
Spiritual Implications
Today, more and more people are trying to prove that they are better and more spiritual than their neighbors. People can be so desperate to be accepted spiritually, that they are willing to create an alternate and more spiritual persona. This persona could eventually become who the person really is and aid in the process of becoming one with Christ. However, it could also be an elaborate charade intended to fool the “church people” in their lives. This method of self-presentation is not productive or even profitable in the end.
Who are you? The simple question which managed to make me wonder, not about the answer, because, you know, who don’t know themselves? Come on. What I wondered, was the certainty of the answer itself. Who are you really? If once I’m asked, I’d think a lot about how I should answer. Who am I at home, who am I in my friendship, and who am I in my DATE? Did I present myself well enough in front of the community I was in? Did I succeed to make them see me as I wanted to be seen?
Was it because the nagging feelings, that bothered us all the time, about not being who we are? Or was it the pleasure, to be able to deceive others about seeing us? We had many faces, for different purposes. We presented ourselves happy, to them who needed happiness. We presented ourselves encouraging, to them who needed encouragement, and so on. Did we deceive them? When we were happy, then we found our friend to be sad, would we stay happy?
Also, we were faced to the need to examine people around us. We needed to see if they were true, or just a fake. We needed to know who our alliances were. Frankly, not only ourselves, who wore a mask to come out to the world. They did too. Our values, norms, and statuses were never given fully formed. We had to mold them into something we’re comfortable with.
I have a Durian theory. When we saw a durian, what came first to mind? It’s very spiky; I didn’t want to touch it, or to eat it. We judged from the exterior, and that was when the impressions management was very useful. Imagine the durian could change itself into a strawberry. Even it seemed impossible; at least it managed to occupy our perception, and successfully bent our degree of understanding. Then, we dared ourselves to peel the skins, one side to another, hardly. We would be amazed to see what’s inside, when we initially judged the exterior to be unapproachable, and we found the inside was very soft.
I thought that, every masks we put on only means that we are a mask away from what God created us to be. He created us in His self-image, and then we bothered to present ourselves differently, just because we needed to get the recognition. We need to be secure with our self-image, without worrying how others would see us from the outside. Here’s how;
1. Love God, not love yourself
When loving ourselves seemed to be the most effective way to maintain our contentment, but the Bible says not to have confidence in ourselves, but only in Christ. It’s quite funny sometimes, to find that our self-denial could be the solution to our insecurity. It’s when we let ourselves fade into the background, and become consumed with Jesus Christ. (Luke 9:23).
“The Christian life can be explained only in terms of Jesus Christ, and if your life as a Christian can still be explained in terms of you – your personality, your willpower, your gift, your talent, your money, your courage, your scholarship, your dedication, your sacrifice, or your anything – then although you may have the Christian life, you are not yet living it.” – Ian Thomas
2. Beauty is not within us, it’s within God who gives it to us.
We often tried to be just ourselves, urged people to try to love us just the way we are. But then again, if we remember that our belonging are not belong to us, it’s only belong to Jesus Christ who gives to us, then we can try to speak of ourselves less, and speak about His love more (John 3:30).
We could only gain lasting security when we look away from ourselves, and toward Jesus Christ. Then the question of “Who are you?” and “Who am I?” will ultimately be answered by who He is.
