Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.
Erving GoffmanRead
When a stranger comes into our presence, then, first appearances are likely to enable us to anticipate his category and attributes, his 'social identity' - to use a term that is better than 'social status' because personal attributes such as 'honesty' are involved, as well as structural ones, like 'occupation.'
Interpretation
What this quote means
First impressions significantly shape our perceptions of others based on their visible attributes and societal roles.
This quote by Erving Goffman highlights the importance of first impressions in social interactions. When we encounter a stranger, our initial assessment often relies on their outward appearances and social markers, such as occupation and perceived honesty. These attributes influence how we categorize them socially, which may affect our subsequent behavior and judgment toward them.
Themes
First ImpressionSocial IdentityAttributesHonestyOccupation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a workshop on networking and making lasting first impressions.
More from Erving Goffman
All quotes →And to the degree that the individual maintains a show before others that he himself does not believe, he can come to experience a special kind of alienation from self and a special kind of wariness of others.
Erving GoffmanRead
I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the acts of different persons mutually present to another.
Erving GoffmanRead
Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each man may like his cell.
Erving GoffmanRead
By definition, of course, we believe the person with a stigma is not quite human. On this assumption we exercise varieties of discrimination, through which we effectively, if often unthinkingly, reduce his life chances.
Erving GoffmanRead
Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks
Erving GoffmanRead
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