Social Psych Response

TEXT:

Principles of Social Psychology, v. 1.0?:  Introducing Social Psychology

Original Question:

For this week’s Forum, respond to the following:  We have all heard the saying, “You have one chance to make a good first impression”. If we were going to analyze this in social psychology terms, what would we say? What is the source of most of your knowledge about impression management?

Reply to the following response with 200 words minimum. (please make response as if having a conversation, respond directly to some of the statements in below post. This is not providing an analysis of the original post. Respectfully address it and even ask clarifying or additional questions.)

For this week’s forum post we were asked the question, we have all heard of the saying, “You have one chance to make a good first impression”. If we were going to analyze this in social psychology terms, what would we say? Well, the best I think that I could describe this term/phrase in using social psychology is that I would say that this term means that a person must promote themselves more, like present themselves in a new light but remain who they are naturally all at the same time. For example, I could not count how many times I have heard this phrase growing up. I often used it myself when I was hunting for jobs when I was a teenager.

When I went on job interviews, I would promote myself as though I was excited for the job (even though sometimes the job I was interviewing for wasn’t exactly my ideal job), I still promoted myself as excited for the opportunity because honestly deep down I was but what I never done was lie about who I was as a person. I would always be nice, considerate, and honest when I would answer any question that was directed at me because honesty as I have always heard, is the best policy and truly it is. Regardless though, even if I have done everything to the “t”, some employers still laid their judgements out and didn’t always think I was deemed fit for the job, but I did not mind though, because I knew deep down that I had made a good impression despite the rejection. I knew that I had done everything in my power to present/promote myself as I truly was, I stayed true to who I was.

The second question to this week’s forum, what is the source of most of your knowledge about impression management? For this question, I would have to state that I feel that I am my own source when it came to learning about impression management. Impression management from what I have found the definition to be is “an active self-presentation of a person aiming to enhance his/her own image in the eyes of others” (Sinha as cited by Norris, 2011, para. 1). I say that my source is myself because when I was growing up, I didn’t care really about my appearance. So, when I was looking for better jobs I would often dress in jeans and a shirt.

One can safely say that I did not get the jobs I wanted because of my own image and impression that I was putting out and that was stating that I did not care one bit. When I started to dress more conservative casually, I noticed a big difference in the changes of how potential employers saw me. They saw me as that I really did care about the position I was applying for, even though at times it wasn’t ideal. It comes back to making a good first impression because how you perceive yourself, others will perceive you that way also, so I enhanced myself per-say, to have others know that I was serious about the potential jobs I would be offered.

** Please don’t just rephrase their info, but respond to it. Remember to answer question at the end if there is one. **

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