Report on

Impression Management Technique: Do we need those in virtual life?

Submitted by: Group-8

Alpha Squad

Name Id#

Md. Fouad Hasan

Abu Bakar Siddique Shad

Shahrin Farjana

Ikra Binte Islam

Ishrat Kamal Zinia

Prepared for

Dr. Ummaha Tul Hazra

Assistant Professor

North South University

Introduction:

Impression management is a conscious process. It is based on how people attempt to control the

perceptions others form of them. Individual attempt to controls other impression by changing his

or her general behavior, appearance, style and body language. Every individual is in involved in

certain practices. If every individual want to avoid these so embarrassed or embarrassing others.

Why We use Impression Management:

We are using impression management in our day to day life in different ways. There are mainly

two main motives we have for trying to manage and control the impressions of others. They are

given below-

Instrumental motive: Instrumental motives includes what we have already mentioned.

The interest for increased self-esteem. The main meaning of instrumental motivation is

the achieving of rewards. So, when we try to control and manage perceptions to get

something back from another person, we are motivated by instrumental purposes.

Expressive motive : Expressive motive comes down to wanting to be in charge of

individual’s personal behavior and identity. It can come from social norms, expectations

or restrictions.

Techniques of Impression Management: There are eight techniques of impression management. All of these eight techniques are mostly

used in general as well as in virtual world. Those techniques are-

Conformity Favor Excuse Flattery Enhancement

Apologies

Self-promotion

Exemplification

Impression Management Techniques in Virtual World

The advancement of technology has made it possible for physically dispersed people to work

together and share information. This changes the culture of the organization and gives

organizational behavior a new dimension. Even if it changes the pattern of the organization,

Impression management techniques are still used by people. Impression management techniques

have equal importance in virtual world also. We conduct an interview to figure out how

significant these techniques are in virtual world. All the people participated in survey are

working on different companies or working as a freelancer.

1. Conformity: Conformity is usually used to fit in to a group by changing behavior or

belief according to that group. It may also be used with a purpose of reward or

promotion.

In today’s world there are many organizations where people do not have to come to a

specific physical location or office to work together with other colleagues. Even in those

types of organization social context is important to work as a team. With a hope to be a

part of the team people use this type of technique.

The respondents were asked if they ever accomplished their colleagues to be considered

as a friendly person and in response to that question most of the participants agreed that

they did it when they just joined the organization. With an intention to be a part of the

team they use conformity as an impression management technique. Some of them also

stated that in some situation they agreed on a point even if they did not want to. They just

did it to consider a part of a team.

For example when a group of freelancers form a team to work together there is a leader

who plays the main role of the team. The team leader communicate with the clients and

manage jobs for himself and the other members of the team. The team members always

abide by the rules and regulations provided by the team leader though the rules and

regulations are not liked by the team members. They do as they work under the team

leader and team leader provides jobs to them. Even if the team leader gives false

complain against someone, he/she does not argue rather he/she manages to adjust

himself/ herself with the team leader.

2.Favor: As part of Impression management technique favor is used by helping others with

an intention to be considered as a friendly person. In virtual world even though there is a limited

scope for face to face interaction people still used Ingratiation like favor to be someone’s good

book.

In our interview the respondents were asked if they ever do any kind of personal favor for their

superiors or colleagues to be treated like a friendly person. In response most of them agreed that

they sometimes get involved in those kind of behavior. One of them also stated that he used to

help his colleague by sharing information by email so that the person could finish the work with

in time limit. Even though he was not asked for help he did it just to show them how friendly he

is to his colleague and try to improve intimacy.

For example in freelancing job, when freelancer has efficient in multiple task he uses favor

technique. Suppose a SEO expert freelancer is doing work with a SEO client. He also experts in

Graphics Design. If his SEO client gives him the hope to provide graphics designing project in

near future, he will do the SEO job at reasonable price and try to maintain good relationship with

the client.

3.Excuses: One of the defensive impression management technique which is also used in

virtual world. Excuse is practiced in such a situation where an individual’s behavior will lead

him or her to build a negative impression in the eyes of others. In those cases individuals have to

use this technique to protect his or her image.

In our interview the participants were asked if they have used excuse as an impression

management technique to build a positive image. The respondents replied that even though they

do not always have to present physically into a specific location it is important for to finish their

work within a time frame. If they fail to do the work timely they are more likely to use it to hold

a positive image. They also have to give proper justifications for this kind of behavior.

4. Flattery: Flattery is an assertive Impression management technique to increase social

attractiveness. It uses by complementing others about their behavior in an effort to make one self

claim perceptive and pleasant. Flattery also used in virtual world.

For example, different types of sales company, in case of promoting, are supposed to do is job

under social media in which sales company needs to use this impression management technique.

Flattery is one of the impression management techniques. In our Research, we found a company

where sales worker promotes their companies daily events in social media. When sales worker

shares daily events, pictures in social media like, facebook and that companies managing director

followed this post in social media, which created a type of impression about that employee

towards a employer. Managing Director called this sales worker and praised him. Because,

Managing Director could feel that his sales worker is active and perfect for his company. Sales

worker shared their daily events, pictures in social media because he wanted to promote their

company. Through his shared post people also can know their company. Sales worker just did it

to consider it as a part of a company.

5.Enhancement is a self-focused Impression management technique. Under this technique,

individual tries to priorities his work rather than any other people work of the organizations. This

technique is an active self-presentation of a person. A person is aiming to enhance his image in

the eyes of others. In virtual world found enhancement uses in many ways.

In our interview we found a company where as company has intranet portal which is their own

web portal in virtual world. Through intranet portal one worker update their daily work activities.

Though other workers do not update their daily work activities but one of them daily update their

works in intranet portal. Among them one of the workers tells his manager “I updated my works

daily in very details and correctly which is really helpful for further sales”. A worker through

this creates impression in his company.

6. Apologies In general the impression management technique, apologies is use as admitting

responsibility for an unpleasant and undesirable incident and at the same time attempt to get a

pardon for the for the doing activity. We use this technique in the virtual world also. How we use

this technique in the virtual world is describe below-

Examples: In different types of online job or in case of freelancing we are supposed to do our job

under our client there we all need to use this impression management technique. Apologies is

one of that technique. In case of doing online base job sometimes it happens that our client

communicates with us via video calling (Skype) or through e-mail. It is sometimes very natural

to happen that they might be wanted something from us but somehow we understand something

else. In that case mismatches occur as we don’t understand the proper thing what we want to do

basically. That time we use apologies such as when our client say that work was not up to the

mark or it can’t be approved as this work procedures is wrong we should reply them sorry such

as- “ I am extremely sorry I made a mistake as I don’t understand how to do the job or topic of

the project. Give me some time to fix the problem and I will recover it”.

7. Self- promotion: Self promotion is another impression management technique. This

technique is basically draws special attention to one’s best qualities and achievement to highlight

his or herself which is known as self promotion.

Example: we use this technique in virtual world in different way such as- linkedin and other

types of social job sites like BD jobs, Ever jobs.com are mostly used now-a-days. From all of

this, linkedin is the world's largest professional network with hundreds of millions of members,

and growing rapidly.Linkedin helps people by establishing your professional profile and control

one of the top search results for your name. Build and maintain professional network, find and

connect with colleagues and classmates, find other professionals in the same industry

using groups and mainly discover new career opportunities by searching for job. That’s why

people always try to enrich his or her profile or cv in linkedin and show their best qualities as

well as achievement always want to prove his or her as a most qualified for their desired job so

that professional people get impressed by visiting their profile and call his or her for job

interview. In that way, people self-promote themselves in front of professional people in virtual

world by using linkedin.

8.Exemplification: Exemplification is one of the most used technique of impression

management. Exemplification is basically doing more than you need in an effort to show how

dedicated you are. Stay at work late or arrive at office very earlier so that people will notice that

you are very much hard working, try to appear busy even at that times when things are slower all

these things are use as exemplification intentionally. we also use this technique in virtual world.

In virtual world we always have to use impression management techniques. This technique is

also used in various sector of virtual world like- students sometimes have to submit their report

softcopy to their instructor via E-mail in that time they submit the report at midnight which

shows that they working very hard whole night after doing full night work they submit it which

creates a good impression towards that student. This same technique also use in same way in the

office between employee and boss. More specifically in virtual world freelancers are also use

this technique to prove themselves hardworking and dedicate worker to their foreign client such

as when they hourly base work for their client there is software which is called “tracker , the

main job of this tracker is when freelancer start to do their work they have to on the tracker first

through this software system client can always monitor their freelancer actually they are working

properly or not maintaining the time limit. This tracker basically track the movement of mouse

cursor of the freelancer. But in that case sometimes some of the freelancer move their mouse

continuously here and there of different sites to prove them very dedicated and hard working to

their work but actually not working at all. Rather doing this they sometimes do another thing also

which is to prove themselves dedicated, they submit their work very early not in the fix time

given by their client so that their foreign client think them very hard working, concern and loyal

about their work

Personality Traits and Impression Management :

Individuals differ in the extent to which they regulate, control, and observe the selves they show

in interpersonal relationships and social situations. One of the most studied personality traits

which is associates with impression management is self-monitoring. Self-monitoring is

described as a personality trait which refers to an ability to control behavior to be fit in social

situation. There are two types of self monitoring people one is high self monitor and another one

is low self monitor.

High self monitor: High self monitoring people are concerned with displaying

appropriate behavior in social situation also adjusting behavior to fit the situation. That

type of people monitoring the public appearance of self what is they display in social

situation. High self-monitors are attentive to what others do and has skilled at controlling

images of themselves.

Low self monitor: less self monitoring people are less concerned with fitting into a

situation or not able to display socially correct behavior. They are consistent with their

personalities, regardless of the beneficial or detrimental effects for them.

Effectiveness of Impression Management Techniques :

Impression management techniques are mostly used by us in real life also in virtual world. People use

these techniques sometimes consciously or can be sometimes unconsciously. All of these techniques have

effectiveness as well.

From all of these techniques, Ingratiation is mostly effective which is a psychological technique

in which an individual attempts to influence, manipulate or control another by becoming more

attractive or likeable to their target those who ingratiate with their boss to get higher performance

evaluations. This is positively related with performance evaluation. The people who self-promote

themselves basically receive lower performance evaluations and shows that individuals who

have good political skill are able to interpret impression management into higher performance

appraisals. Impression management also has effectiveness during online job interview

Conclusion:

Overall based on our interview we can say that impression management is equally important in

virtual world. People do use those techniques to build a positive impression in all aspects of

virtual world. Like in the real world we all engage in making a positive self- presentation in

virtual world also. These tactics are effective to build positive impression in workplace also. But

these tactics may not give the desired results we want to get and it sometimes backfire. We

should apply it carefully because all of them may not be equally important in all the areas.

Finally we can say that we cannot deny the importance of impression management in virtual

world. In order to hold a positive image of us we should use these techniques carefully.