Management Case

Choose two different situations that you will encounter this week in everyday life, and commit to observing yourself for thirty minutes as you participate in each. For example, you may observe yourself at work, at a family birthday celebration, at lunch with friends, in your math class, etc. The two situations you choose don't need to be extraordinary in any way; in fact, the more mundane, the better. But they should be markedly different from one anotherThis exercise in ethnography is designed to make your own impression management visible- and to help you see how integral it is to your everyday life. You will observe yourself acting and interacting in two different social situations and will then do a comparative analysis of your presentation of self in each setting. This is also known as "autoethnography".

Step 1: Observation

Choose two different situations that you will encounter this week in everyday life, and commit to observing yourself for thirty minutes as you participate in each. For example, you may observe yourself at work, at a family birthday celebration, at lunch with friends, in your math class, etc. The two situations you choose don't need to be extraordinary in any way; in fact, the more mundane, the better. But they should be markedly different from one another.

Choose two different situations that you will encounter this week in everyday life, and commit to observing yourself for thirty minutes as you participate in each. For example, you may observe yourself at work, at a family birthday celebration, at lunch with friends, in your math class, etc. The two situations you choose don't need to be extraordinary in any way; in fact, the more mundane, the better. But they should be markedly different from one anotherAs you observe the smallest aspects of your interactions, you will probably discover that you perform somewhat different versions of yourself in the two situations. "Doing student", for instance, might be very different from "doing boyfriend".

A final Goffman-inspired question is this: does engaging in impression management mean that we have no basic, unchanging self? If we bring different selves to different situations, what does this say about the idea of a "true self"?