336 The Social Self
themselves. Instead, they filter it, bias it, and adapt it to fit in
with what they already believe and what they prefer to
believe. Hence, even if others do tell Bob exactly what they
think of him, he may discount or ignore the unwelcome
parts of the message. Some authors have argued that a degree
of optimistic self-deception is necessary for psychological
adjustment (Taylor & Brown, 1988).
Influence of Others’ Expectancies
As discussed in the previous subsection, it seems that people
do not directly internalize other’s opinions of them. How-
ever, people might still change their behavior and beliefs
according to other people’s expectations. For example,
Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) provided a demonstration of
the effect of the self-fulfilling prophecy in a study that has be-
come a classic. Teachers were told that certain students were
about to experience a leap forward in intelligence and acade-
mic success. Although this expectancy was not true (in fact,
the supposedly newly intelligent students were chosen at ran-
dom), the chosen students nevertheless showed increases in
academic performance. With new faith in these students’
abilities, the teachers presumably provided more encourage-
ment of the students and expected more of them. These ex-
pectancies were enough to produce results, even though they
originated from outside the students.
Do self-concepts change in response to others’ expectan-
cies? Darley and Fazio (1980) argued that a self-fulfilling
prophecy can produce three different types of change: change
in the perceiver’s final belief, in the target’s actual behavior,
or in the target’s self-appraisal. Out of the three, the evidence
for the last (the target’s self-appraisal) was the weakest. Thus,
perceivers see that the target changes his or her behavior and
believe that their expectancies are confirmed. However, tar-
gets do not usually come to share the perceivers’ initially
false belief about themselves.
One of the most widely cited studies of self-fulfilling
prophecies was performed by Snyder, Tanke, and Berscheid
(1977). In their study, male subjects each saw a bogus
photograph of a female interaction partner and then had a
telephone conversation with a woman they believed was
the woman in the photograph they saw; actually, the
photographs were varied randomly. The men who saw a photo-
graph of an attractive woman perceived their telephone part-
ner as more attractive and socially charming than those who
saw a photograph of an unattractive woman. These expectan-
cies were confirmed when the women’s responses varied
depending on how the men interacted with them. However, the
women did not accept the way the men treated them when it
was unfavorable. When the man thought the woman was unat-
tractive and treated her accordingly, she tended to reject and
to discount as inaccurate his view of her.
In another study, Snyder and Swann (1978) created the ex-
pectation that an interaction partner would be hostile. These
expectancies were confirmed in the interaction that followed;
the perceiver expected hostility and the target delivered by act-
ing in a hostile way. The next question was, would the target
(who had been perceived as hostile) go on to be hostile with a
new interaction partner? That is, would the treatment the target
experienced in one interaction carry over to another? Snyder
and Swann found a carryover effect only when targets were
encouraged to attribute their behavior during the first interac-
tion to their own personalities. The hostile behavior did not
carry over without this experimental manipulation; people did
not naturally attribute their hostile behavior to themselves.
These results again suggest that it is not easy to alter a person’s
self-appraisal.SELF-PRESENTATIONThe most obvious and proactive way that the self parti-
cipates in social life is through self-presentation. Self-
presentation is defined as people’s attempts to convey
information about themselves to others. Some authors have
emphasized self-presentation to such an extent that they see
life as an ongoing series of roles, played out as if by an actor
on stage (Goffman, 1959).
People seem to be inherently and pervasively concerned
with self-presentation. Baumeister (1982) showed that many
of social psychology’s effects occurred because of self-
presentation. For example, subjects in the Asch line-judging
study conformed to others’ judgments more strongly when
these other people were watching (see especially Deutsch &
Gerard, 1955). When judgments were anonymous, the con-
formity effect was substantially weaker. Cognitive and in-
trapsychic theories that explained many effects seemed to be
missing something, because the effects depended on interper-
sonal contexts. Thus, aggression, helping, attitude change,
emotion, attributional patterns, and other responses seemed
to change when the individual’s acts would be seen by others.
Leary (1995) has furnished an even longer and more impres-
sive list, showing effects of self-presentation in contexts
ranging from sports teams to business meetings to the beach
to mental hospitals.Favorability of Self-PresentationIn general, people want to present themselves favor-
ably. However, people are sometimes torn between self-
enhancement and being seen as likable. The basic question is