Self-presentation refers to behaviour designed to shape the way one is seen by other people. Although such ‘impression management’ is recognised as a core part of human social interaction, little research has looked specifically at its development in childhood. This project, funded by the ESRC and led by Robin Banerjee and Mark Bennett (Univ. of Dundee), investigated young children’s reasoning about self-presentational processes in the context of rule violations. This context was chosen because children are likely to come to understand how one can use certain behaviours after a rule violation (e.g., excuses, apologies) in order to maintain a positive public ‘face’. The aims of the project were to describe and evaluate young children’s reasoning about self-presentational processes when different kinds of rules have been broken, and to determine the extent to which attention directed towards oneself can make concerns about one’s public image more salient.

Five studies were conducted with children aged 4-9 years. The results have contributed to our understanding by:

1. providing evidence that children begin to display self-presentational competencies in the early years of their school life; 
2. showing that these competencies are evoked particularly in the context of violations of social norms and conventions; and 
3. indicating the role played by the attention of an audience in raising the salience of concerns about how one appears to others.