Examining Others in Depth: Front Stage and Backstage Behavior

The problem of figuring out what someone is really like has been presented in a clever analogy by the sociologist Erving Goffman in his lively book. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), in which he likens social behavior to a theatrical performance. In the course of our daily encounters with others, he says, we each attempt to present ourselves to create a give impression; we also tend to assume that others are doing the same thing. We are each actors in some sense, playing out our parts before an audience of others whom we hope to impress. If we are good actors, if we stage a good performance (that is, put up a good front), and if we work effectively with the others, our performance will probably be convincing.

                Theatrical performance are often enchanting, and it may be disillusioning to break through them into hard reality. The kitchen of a restaurant or the bedroom or bathroom of a house, for example, are informative backstages, although the consequences of our exploration may be disillusioning (or even dangerous!). Witness the dramatic transition from front to backstage behavior in the following passage of George Orwell’s book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1951):

It is an instructive sight to see a waiter going into a hotel dining room. As he passes the door a sudden change comes over him. The set of his shoulders alters; all the dirt and hurry and irritation have dropped off in an instant. He glides over the carpet, with a solemn priest-like air. I remember our assistant maitre d’hotel, a fiery Italian, pausing at the dining room door to address his apprentice who had broken a bottle of wine. Shaking his fist above his head he yelled (luckily the door was more or less soundprouf)

                “Tu me fais—Do you call yourself a waiter, you young bastard! You a waiter! You’re not fit to scrub floors in the brothel your mother came from. Maquerau!” Words failing him, he turned to the door; and as he opened it he delivered a final insult in the same manner as Squire Western in Tom Jones.

                Then he entered the dining room and sailed across it dish in hand, graceful as a swan. Ten seconds later he was bowing reverently to a customer. And you could not help thinking, as you saw him bow and smile, with that benign smile of the trained waiter, that the customer was put to shame by having such an aristocrat to serve him (pp. 68-69)

                As Goffman points out, our own performance in front of others may not always represent what we are really like. When we are applying for a position which we want very badly, we may present ourselves so we seem especially appropriate for that position and disguise our true nature somewhat, just as the waiter transforms himself with the swing of a door. As Goffman wrote, the “expresiveness of the individual (and therefore his ability to give impressions) appears to involve two radically different kinds of sign activity: the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off”. The expression we give is the information about ourselves we wish deliberately to convey, the aspects of our performance that we wish the audience to see. The expression we give off, on the other hand, is the information we unwittingly disclose, that can tell many truths about us. In order to be liked or accepted by others, to obtain certain rewards, to fit what we see as our appropriate roles, we use impression management. Impression management has been defined as an attempt to control images that are projected in social interaction (Schlenker, 1980). The attempt may be conscious and deliberate or unconscious and automatic. Although we may not approve of such behavior, since it is, to some degree, deceptive, we should realize we all indulge in it. Some of us may do so more frequently and more deliberately, and our attempts at impression management vary according to the pressures of the situation.

                The fact is that we all attempt to see through people’s impression-management strategies. We try to find out what others are really like. Even if it is disillusioning to see what really goes on backstage—the cursing waiter, the chef with dirty fingers—it is often important for us to know what others are really like, if we are to predict their behavior and decide how we should behave toward them.


(Source: Raven, Bertram H., Rubin, Jeffrey Z. (1983). SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 2nd Edition. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: United States of America.)

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