Students' self-presentation strategies and academic achievement

Starting from the work of Goffman (1959) suggesting that people play roles for audiences, the self-presentation strategies have been studied in hundreds of studies. Self-presentation consists of the self’s effort to convey a particular image of itself, or information about itself, to other people (Baumeister, 1999). The idea that people are able to manipulate their image, often to secure some benefit by making the optimal impression, has been well supported (Leary, 1995). In this case (the strategic motive for self-presentation) self-presentation is guided by the audience’s beliefs and values. The present research is aimed to study self-presentation strategies on students, by the way of causal ascription. Considering the theory of norm of internality (Dubois, 2003) and the social motivational approach (Weiner, 1995; Juvonen, 1996), an experimental study involving 91 subjects has been performed. We anticipated that people recognize the function of different explanation strategies, in order to make a good impression on others. The results confirm the hypothesis and, particularly, prove the role of effort as normative explanation in school context. Implications of the results for research on impression management and performance appraisal are discussed.