Self-regulation and self-presentation: regulatory resource depletion impairs impression management and effortful self-presentation depletes regulatory resources.
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 counter-normative 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.
Vohs
Kathleen D
KD
Marketing Division, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada. vohs@sauder.ubc.ca
Baumeister
Roy F
RF
Ciarocco
Natalie J
NJ
D003071:Cognition; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008297:Male; D012649:Self Concept; D012919:Social Behavior; D012927:Social Control, Informal