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Maintaining Your Public Self

Renowned sociologist Erving Goffman (1955) noted that whenever you communicate with others, you present a public self—your face—that you want others to see and know. Face doesn’t just happen; you actively create and present it through your communication. Your face can be anything you want it to be—“perky and upbeat,” “cool and level-headed,” or “tough as nails.” We create different faces for different moments and relationships in our lives, such as our face as a parent, college student, coworker, or homeless-shelter volunteer.

Sometimes your face is a mask, a public self designed to strategically veil your private self (Goffman, 1959). Masks can be dramatic, such as when Rick Welts hid his grief over the loss of his longtime partner. Or, masks can be subtle—for example, the parent who acts calm in front of an injured child so the youngster doesn’t become frightened. Some masks are designed to inflate one’s estimation in the eyes of others. One study found that 90 percent of college students surveyed admitted telling at least one lie to impress a person they were romantically interested in (Rowatt, Cunningham, & Druen, 1998). Other masks are crafted so people underestimate us and our abilities (Gibson & Sachau, 2000). For instance, you might act sad and lethargic around a future opponent during a racquetball tournament, letting it slip “how bad” you’ve been playing all day (even though you’ve actually won all your games). Your hope is that your opponent won’t adequately prepare, and you will gain a competitive advantage.

Regardless of the form our face takes—a genuine representation of our private self, or a mask designed to hide this self from others—Goffman argued that we often form a strong emotional attachment to our face because it represents the person we most want others to see when they communicate with and relate to us.

Sometimes after we’ve created a certain face, information is revealed that contradicts it, causing us to lose face (Goffman, 1955). Losing face provokes feelings of shame, humiliation, and sadness—in a word, embarrassment. For example, in October 2004, singer Ashlee Simpson performed live on NBC’s Saturday Night Live. Or did she? Simpson and her band performed her first song, “Pieces of Me,” without a hitch. Later, when they began playing their second song, the music for “Pieces of Me” began playing over the loudspeakers, complete with Simpson’s vocal track. The faux pas revealed to viewers that Simpson and her band had lip-synched their first song. Embarrassed, Simpson ran off the stage. At the end of the show, she came back onstage with host Jude Law and tried to alleviate her embarrassment by blaming her band, telling audience members, “My band started playing the wrong song, and I didn’t know what to do.”

While losing face can cause intense embarrassment, this is not the only cost. When others see us lose face, they may begin to question whether the public self with which they’re familiar is a genuine reflection of our private self. For example, suppose your workplace face is “dedicated, hardworking employee.” Everything you say and do at the office bolsters this image. You ask your boss if there’s extra work to be done, help fellow coworkers, show up early, stay late, and so forth. But if you tell your manager that you need your afternoon schedule cleared to work on an urgent report and then she sees you playing World of Warcraft on your computer, she’ll undoubtedly view your actions as inconsistent with your communication. Your face as the “hardworking employee” will be called into question, as will your credibility.

Because losing face can damage others’ impressions of you, maintaining face during interpersonal interactions is extremely important. How can you effectively maintain face?³ Use words and actions consistent with the face you’re trying to craft. From one moment to the next and from one behavior to the next, your interpersonal communication and behaviors must complement your face, rather than clash with it. Also, make sure your communication and behaviors mesh with the knowledge that others already have about you. If you say or do things that contradict what others know is true about you, they’ll see your face as false. For example, if your neighbor knows you don’t like him because a friend of yours told him so, he’s likely to be skeptical the next time you adopt the face of “friendly, caring neighbor” by warmly greeting him.

Finally, for your face to be maintained, your communication and behavior must be reinforced by objects and events in the surrounding environment—things over which you have only limited control. You can communicate in a consistent fashion and have everyone believe you, but if a contradictory event occurs, you will lose face. For example, imagine that your romantic partner is overseas for the summer, and you agree to video chat regularly. Your first scheduled chat is Friday at 5 p.m. But when 5 p.m. Friday rolls around, your server is down, preventing you from Internet access. By the time the server is up again, your partner has already signed off, leaving a perplexed message regarding your “neglect.” To restore face, you’ll need to explain what happened.

Of course, all of us fall from grace on occasion, whether it’s getting caught gaming when we should be working, failing to be available when we’ve promised, or lip-synching when we should be singing. But remember, most people want you to be able to maintain face, because your face is the positive, public “you” with whom they’re most familiar. So when something happens that causes you to lose face, promptly acknowledge that the event happened, admit responsibility for any of your actions that contributed to the event, apologize for your actions and for disappointing others, and move to maintain your face again. Apologies are fairly successful at reducing people’s negative impressions and the anger that may have been triggered—especially when such apologies avoid excuses that contradict what people know really happened (Ohbuchi & Sato, 1994). People who deny their inconsistencies or who blame others for their lapses (like Ashlee Simpson) are judged much more harshly.