Essay On Self-Presentation Theory

THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Considering the numerous amount of people actively engaging in social media specifically Facebook, the researchers decided to formulate a study that would require many Facebook users to participate in order to sought out its effects on a person’s self-esteem. In order to support the validity of the study, the researchers provide psychological theories to help explain and to easily understand the concepts used. One of it is the Self-Presentation Theory. It is observed when an individual’s behavior attempts to convey some information about oneself or some image of oneself to other people. An individual has a motivational drive to portray one’s positive self-trait. These motivations are elicited depending on situational

He proposed that human beings have the drive to evaluate one’s own opinion about self and when an individual isn’t capable of evaluating own opinions and abilities, there is a tendency that one will compare one’s self to others. Self-evaluation is one of the functions of social comparison. An individual tend to choose a person to compare with who is similar to one’s self. Specifically those who shares some distinctive characteristic. Research suggests most people believe that choosing a similar person to compare with helps ensure the accuracy of the self-evaluation. However, individuals are not always unbiased self-evaluators, and accurate self-evaluations may not be the primary goal of the comparison. Festinger also stated that an upward comparison happens when an individual compares one’s self with someone who has better abilities while downward comparison suggests that an individual tends to compare one’s self with someone who’s worse. A highly driven individual is most likely to involve in an upward comparison and typically views one’s self as superior or has equal abilities to the “best person”. Studies suggests that if given a chance, people choose to make an upward comparison instead of a downward one. However, during unhappy times where one’s motivation and self-esteem is low, a person usually engages in downward comparison in order to feel better about one’s