Erving Goffman’s theory of social action

Knowing the chasm that exists between our social image and our true personality.

With a simple glance at the publications of your friends or followers on social networks such as Facebook or Instagram, we can see the way in which people reflect their life and personality through the photos and videos they upload.

However, in these networks there are no signs of suffering, hardship or sadness in the profiles of any of its members. We see a multitude of photos of happy faces, landscapes, smiles, phrases of overcoming; and yet there is no room for a reality as crushing and true as the existence of human Pain and suffering in the life of each person.

What do we really know about others when we see their profile on social networks? Can these virtual platforms tell us what people are really like?

This market of the samples of happiness that we find every time we open social networks, can be seen from one of the great theories of personality, the one developed by the sociologist and writer, Erving Goffman.

Erving Goffman and the personality created by interactions

This author develops his work around the creation of personality through interactions with others. He argues that much of our behavior depends on interpersonal scenarios and usually takes the form of what we want to achieve and what we are interested in from our interlocutors. It is a constant management of our image in the eyes of others.

According to Goffman, in interaction it is always a matter of defining the situation in such a way as to gain control over the impressions that others form of us. From this perspective, the best definition that corresponds to the person is that of an actor playing a role. and that it acts through interactions with others.

From this theory, interaction would consist of creating impressions that allow us to form the inferences that benefit us and that reflect the intentions and aspects of our own identity that we want to communicate, making the relationship with others a continuous management of the public image, a successive series of self-presentations.

Goffman's theory and social networks

Nowadays, these self-presentations could be each of the photos and videos that we send to all those who follow us on social networks, as a way of creating a positive image of others in order to obtain benefits for our own followers. But not only that would serve to sell our public image, but also each of the interactions that we carry out on a daily basis.

The meeting with the baker when buying bread, the daily coffee with work colleagues, the date with that person introduced to you by a friend.... Any of these scenarios involves the creation of impressions. and, depending on your interpretation, the people you interact with will impose one personality or another on you.

From this perspective, identity is the way the subject presents him/herself according to the advantages and disadvantages of the possible multiple identities of the subject at any given time. In short, Goffman's theory of social action would explain a set of roles that we play in each interaction in order to obtain benefits and, above all, to be accepted by society.

Goffman insists that such a play of representations never conveys the real identity, but rather the desired identity, which is why human behavior is characterized by the techniques of advertising, marketing, and interpretation. Goffman's model reflects the importance of negotiation as a form of social interaction..

The public image market

It is easy to conclude that this is a somewhat Machiavellian theory of identity based on the superficial, the aesthetic and the false. However, the similarities of this author's conclusions with the world of social networks and personal dealings, in which there is no room for suffering and misfortune but everything is hidden behind the products of a supermarket of happiness, appearances and aesthetics, are very real and need to be taken into account.

At least to make us aware that the person behind that Instagram account may be a far cry from the person he or she really is.