Self-Regulation and Self-Presentation: Regulatory Resource Depletion Impairs Impression Management and Effortful Self-Presentation Depletes Regulatory Resources

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology 2005-04, Vol.88 (4), p.632-657
• Main Authors: Vohs, Kathleen D, Baumeister, Roy F, Ciarocco, Natalie J
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Behavior; Biological and medical sciences; Cognition; Cognition & reasoning; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Human; Humans; Impression Management; Interpersonal Interaction; Interpersonal Relations; Male; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Regulation; Self; Self Concept; Self-management; Self-Presentation; Self-Regulation; Social Behavior; Social Control, Informal; Social Interaction; Social interactions. Communication. Group processes; Social Norms; Social psychology; Social representations
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.88.4.632

Self-presentation may require self-regulation, especially when familiar or dispositional tendencies must be overridden in service of the desired impression. Studies 1-4 showed that self-presentation under challenging conditions or according to counternormative patterns (presenting oneself modestly to strangers, boastfully to friends, contrary to gender norms, to a skeptical audience, or while being a racial token) led to impaired self-regulation later, suggesting that those self-presentations depleted self-regulatory resources. When self-presentation conformed to familiar, normative, or dispositional patterns, self-regulation was less implicated. Studies 5-8 showed that when resources for self-regulation had been depleted by prior acts of self-control, self-presentation drifted toward less-effective patterns (talking too much, overly or insufficiently intimate disclosures, or egotistical arrogance). Thus, inner processes may serve interpersonal functions, although optimal interpersonal activity exacts a short-term cost.