你想给别人留下什么印象，你在跟别人接触时可能就会刻意表现出那一方面的特质，让别人注意到。这种行为就属于“印象管理”（impression management）。

In sociology and social psychology, impression management is a goal-directed conscious or unconscious process in which people attempt to influence the perceptions of other people about a person, object or event; they do so by regulating and controlling information in social interaction. It is usually used synonymously with self-presentation, in which a person tries to influence the perception of their image.

在社会学以及社会心理学中，印象管理是人们以目标为导向、试图通过调整和控制社交活动中的信息来影响别人对某人、某物或某事看法的过程，这种影响行为可以是有意识的也可能是无意识的。与印象管理相近的一个说法为self-presentation（个人展示），即某人试图影响人们对其形象的认识。

People adopt many different impression management strategies. One of them is ingratiation, where we use flattery or praise to increase our social attractiveness by highlighting our better characteristics so that others will like us.

人们使用的印象管理策略有很多。其中一个是逢迎，我们用奉承或赞赏来增加我们在社交活动中的吸引力、凸显我们性格中好的一面，以便让别人都喜欢我们。

Another strategy is intimidation, which is aggressively showing anger to get others to hear and obey us.

另一个策略师威吓，也就是向别人表现出攻击性和怒气，让别人听命于我们。

A strategy that has garnered a great amount of research attention is self-handicapping. In this case people create 'obstacles' and 'excuses’ for themselves so that they can avoid self-blame when they do poorly. (Source: Wikipedia)

另外一个被很多人研究过的策略是自我设障。人们给自己设定了很多“障碍”和“借口”，这样，如果自己表现不佳，他们也就不用自责了。

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（中国日报网英语点津 Helen）

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