Image is an image, a stereotype, a set of certain qualities that has developed in people’s minds that are associated with an individual. The concept of reputation is very close to this concept.
Initially, the concept of image was used in the business environment as the main means of influencing consumers. Later, image began to be understood as the most important category in socio-political sciences and psychology.
Stereotypes have been created in people’s minds for years under the influence of what they read in newspapers, magazines, books, seen on TV and heard in groups. The policy of the country’s leadership, the intellectual level of the individual, and the general economic level of the country play a significant role in the formation of such stereotypical ideas.
For example, a large number of actors, having played one role that is most memorable to the audience, often complain that the image and reputation of the movie hero has spread to the actor in real life. That is, even close people, acquaintances and friends stopped perceiving the actor in isolation from the role he played. In fact, a comedic or tragic character in the minds of people became inseparable from the artist who performed him on stage or in films. For many actors, it was impossible to change the image of a movie hero even until the end of their lives.
Another example of image and reputation is the idea of expensive cars as a symbol of social success, happiness and material wealth. The image of great opportunities and position in society is also ensured by expensive real estate.
Recently, the topic of image formation (of a person, a company, a show business star, a businessman, a state or a politician) has acquired significant importance in life. And this is understandable, because what each subject demonstrates and puts on display has a significant influence on most of his environment. Therefore, the right approach to the formation of a personal image is the key to the success of many events.
Image is the same thing as a name, a concept inextricably linked with the idea of a person. This is a person's calling card. This is the impression that other people recreate in their memory when they remember you.
Rules for image formation in the modern world
First of all, you need to define the image, what it is. The concept of image is not only appearance, the ability to look good, to choose a hat for shoes and lipstick for a handbag, it is also the adequacy of reasoning, competent speech, and manner of communication. If attracting the opposite sex is important, then image and reputation will play a vital role. Not only among acquaintances, but also in the family, at work, in relation to older people, in love for the younger generation.
Each social class of society has its own idea of the concept of image. It is important to understand that your opinion may differ. Clothes, the way you speak, the way you carry yourself, gestures, and the intonation of words and sentences are a great way for an employer or future spouse to form an opinion about you.
You need to start working on building your image and reputation with an adequate analysis of yourself and your capabilities.
A stylist will help you change your appearance, a makeup artist will tell you how to properly care for your skin and do the right makeup, a psychologist will help you accept yourself and your own “I,” and a dance teacher will teach you how to move and walk correctly. It’s never too late to change your image; it’s important to correctly assess yourself and the situation.
What else you need to know about image formation
The image should be changed in accordance with the emerging changes in life. If, for example, your social status has changed, then you should think about changing your clothing style. Sometimes your image needs to be changed in accordance with the dress code of the company you transferred to.
Image and reputation are also being reviewed in accordance with age. It is important to know that if you do everything right, the impression you will make will be positive. The element of uniqueness in creating your image should always be present. Image and reputation are not isolated from each other.
The main condition for achieving professional success is the constant activity of a person’s inner world, continuous work on oneself, on one’s spiritual development. Just as people train their body and pump up their muscles, it is also necessary to train their memory, ability to think and analyze. First of all, books will help here. Professional and fiction literature not only preserves knowledge, but also teaches how to think, increasing competence and positive productivity. Professionalism implies confidence and the ability to control the situation. Together with economic success, professional and career success provide a person with a high social status.
The social status itself is determined by age, education, profession, position, prestige, material security, personal freedom, level of legal and moral security, career and personal prospects.
Material perception
It is formed by the presence or absence of a personal car, the furniture among which you live, and the dishes in your kitchen. This includes your home interior, certain family values, your books, personal film library, family photo albums, paintings on the walls of your home. All these details tell about the real you.
Therefore, before inviting strangers to visit your home, think carefully, perhaps your home can somehow significantly change the image you created earlier.
Components of image
- Clothes, hairstyle, accessories, tattoos, piercings can say a lot about a person. As you know, you meet a person by his clothes. Therefore, clothes can characterize a person even before he says anything or introduces himself.
- Also equally important are the issues of personal hygiene - well-groomed hair, nails, correct and appropriate makeup. A person’s appearance, first of all, affects his image and reputation in society.
- A person’s facial image is his facial expression, smile, and gaze. Facial expressions reveal a person’s friendly or negative attitude. Many people know how to mask and carefully hide their feelings and emotions from others, but the position of the lips, eyebrows, and facial expression can tell a lot about how a person really feels.
- The kinetic image of a person is gait, posture, movements, gestures. Slouching people, adopting inappropriate postures, holding their heads too high will not make the most pleasant impression. The way you move, hold your head, straighten your hair is another way to let other people know your positive, kind attitude.
- Verbal image and reputation lie in the manner of speaking, as well as what words a person uses, how rich or poor his vocabulary is, whether he emphasizes words well, what intonations he uses, and whether he is able to reason logically. This type is similar to a mental image, characterizing a person according to his social, religious and ideological beliefs.
The last component is by no means the least important. This is a material image, that is, all a person’s well-being: clothes, a car, an apartment, a villa by the sea, books, paintings, family jewelry and jewelry.
The materialized image also echoes this component - poems, books, dissertations, decorations, business cards, software products, patents, Christmas tree decorations, confectionery - everything that was invented, made, embodied, created by man.
Definition and rules
What is image? These are emotions, the response of strangers to the appearance of a particular individual, that is, the emotions caused by him and his clothes, the feelings that the image of a certain person awakens in other people.
There are four rules of image:
- first, do not show your confusion and sadness;
- second, control the tone of communication, both real and virtual;
- third, don’t forget to share your achievements;
- fourth - present your image favorably.
Internal and external image structures
The first part of the complex structure of the concept of image is the person’s ideas about his appearance, voice, facial expressions, gestures and how he evaluates himself: handsome, smart, kind.- The second internal structure is a person’s ideas about how others see him.
- The third part of the structure of the concept of image is the so-called feedback, what a person receives from other people in the form of compliments, criticism, insults, declarations of love or ridicule. What is important here is not the statements themselves, but the person’s attitude towards them. Many are unable to accept constructive criticism and take it with hostility, others do not recognize good banter and ridicule of actions. Some will be proud of the praise, while others will be offended and decide that they were underestimated by criticizing or giving advice.
All three structures are closely intertwined in a person’s self-image. Image and reputation help each person determine their individual style if they are harmonious and form a single image of a person.
Perception or self-orientation
An individual image is created by an individual based on two types of motives:
- Increase self-esteem and feel more comfortable.
- Achieve certain interaction goals.
Depending on the first or second type of motivation, two types of image are distinguished: one focused on self-awareness or on the perception of it by the recipient. However, these two types are not mutually exclusive. It is easy to see that in this case the image of a politician or, for example, a teacher, belongs to the second type. But it is believed that the greatest success in their activities is achieved by those people whose two types coincide - in other words, their image is also focused on their sense of self.
Purpose of image in life
The main purpose of image and reputation is to achieve the effect of personal attractiveness.
It is important for a person to win over people, no matter what he does. To run a business, to defend a dissertation or an important project, to find a husband or to shop in a store - everywhere it is important to be able to make a good impression and win people over. Without this skill it is truly impossible to achieve outstanding success. Therefore, it is so important to know what an image is and, if necessary, to be able to change the image.
Specialists work on creating the image: makeup artists, psychologists, dance teachers and yoga trainers, PR people and marketers, producers and sociologists, speech therapists and stylists. There are schools where they teach how to correctly achieve what you want using the visual effect of a person. Practicing psychologists conduct training in such schools. In addition to the visual component, they will teach you a correct understanding of the world and self-image, talk about ways to accept yourself and increase the attractiveness of a person’s inner appearance.
Today there is a new profession - image maker. This professional will tell you how you can change your image to achieve maximum success at work, when running a company or when managing household affairs. Also, famous people can resort to the services of this specialist in order to form a scandalous image of themselves.
Image makers advise accepting your outer shell (image) as a means to achieve your plans. Every day you need to be well dressed in public, neatly combed, with the right makeup, behave adequately, watch your words, gestures and even gait. That is, his reputation must be conscious and thought out to such small details as, for example, clothing, accessories, greetings, topics of conversation, attitude towards other people, everyday positive mood and gratitude.
For company managers it can also be energy, steadfastness, for subordinate employees - punctuality, for housewives - caring, etc. Then the person will make a good impression. And he will be successful in all plans and affairs, and not just in personal relationships.
The purpose of the image is mainly to assert oneself in one’s own eyes and improve one’s own sense of self, to take a better position in society, that is, if possible, to correspond to certain stereotypes in a social group, to achieve a certain goal in a career plan or in financial environment.
How to create an attractive image
Image is an image; it differs from reputation in that it is earned, but an image is created. And creating an image is not an easy task, since you need to consider perception at all three levels. If a low level of intelligence can be hidden or disguised for some time, character traits can be “edited” and corresponding rumors can be spread, then what about, for example, gender, height or physique.
We must also take into account the perception, experience and sphere of interests of those people whom we want to impress. Taking into account all the difficulties of image formation, famous or, as they say, media personalities (politicians, actors, large businessmen) have their own image specialists - professional image makers. But they are also wrong. So, in the 90s, Boris Yeltsin, no less than on the advice of such specialists, began to smile. It would be better if he didn't do this. On a face whose muscles were not accustomed to such a facial movement, the smile resembled a crooked grimace.
An ordinary person does not have image makers, and he should first figure out what makes us more attractive in the eyes of other people.
Attractive factors
A person exists and communicates in a variety of social groups, and accordingly, his success will depend on different sets of qualities. To have an attractive image in a group of friends who are fond of sports, you need some qualities, but to promote your own construction company – completely different ones. But there are still general parameters by which we evaluate people, and attractiveness factors that are common to all.
beauty
No matter how much we are told that the main thing in a person is business qualities, decency and intelligence, and not physical attractiveness, external data still plays a very important role. We unconsciously endow a beautiful person with the best features and try to ignore his shortcomings. We trust beautiful people more; we strive to interact with them, to be close to them, as if we are sure that we too will get a “piece” of this beauty given from above. By the way, the same reaction is to the manifestation of health, which is considered an important condition for external attractiveness. We like healthy people more than sick people.
But what to do if a person does not have outstanding external data? Their absence can be compensated by correctly chosen clothing, makeup, signs of inner strength, confidence and physical health, as well as openness and goodwill in communication. A sincere smile makes any person more beautiful. And in general, there is a very correct women's saying, which is attributed to the founder of a chain of cosmetic stores, Elena Rubinstein: “There are no ugly women, there are only lazy ones.”
Similarities
Psychologists' studies have shown that we trust people who are somewhat similar to us more. Moreover, we are talking not only about external similarity, but also about related interests or the absence of age difference. As soon as we understand that the interlocutor is interested in the same thing that we are, his attractiveness instantly increases, as well as interest in him.
In groups of different ages, people close in age communicate more often and are intuitively wary of both older people and younger people. Belonging to one social group, youth community, or fan club increases attractiveness.
It is interesting that attractiveness is influenced even by the proximity of origin, the places where they spent their childhood and youth. People who come from the same area, and even more so who graduated from the same university or school, quickly develop sympathy for each other.
Halo effect (halo effect)
It takes a lot of time to get to know a person’s personal qualities in their entirety. But it often happens that some bright and attractive feature catches the eye: physical beauty, erudition, self-confidence, eloquence. And this trait creates a kind of halo effect, coloring the perception of the individual as a whole. It is by this that we evaluate a partner.
The halo effect also works in the case when some factor is not directly related to the individual, but seems to accompany him. Thus, a military uniform creates an aura of masculinity, while a shocking hairstyle creates an aura of frivolity. And if a stranger is represented by a person we respect, then respect creates an aura around this person.
Infantile appearance
It would seem that we should trust adults more, but one of the factors of attractiveness is childish appearance. Features such as large eyes and a protruding mouth, a small nose, puffy lips and a fragile physique create an image that is associated with a child. And we begin to experience unconscious trust, sympathy and desire to help this person. Studies have shown that people who look somewhat like children are perceived as non-threatening, defenseless, sincere and pleasant.
This feature of perception has a very ancient nature and is inherent even in animals, which often protect and care for not only their own, but also other people’s young.
Socio-psychological analysis of image
The concept of image with a high degree of confidence can be called an interdisciplinary concept, since its formation occurred in many sciences simultaneously, generalizing knowledge in accordance with the goals and objectives of each science. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the process of formation of this concept was studied mainly by psychologists and sociologists.
A person today, in the twenty-first century, living in a new information society, is valuable only as an individual capable of self-expression and having undeniable success in all areas of his life. At the same time, the individual expression of each person occurs increasingly with the help of information technologies: social networks and virtual communication. Live human communication in this case is simply replaced by symbolic communication for the purpose of exchanging information.
The roles that a person performs every day in the family, at work or in a cafe also become symbolic. A certain image and reputation of an individual are created depending on the environment in which a person has to be on a daily basis.
A person, mainly due to the influence of the media, has formed his own idea of the concept of image. This is the image of a person through the eyes of other people, a whole range of stereotypes attached to our personality in people’s minds, as well as our idea of ourselves, which in one way or another can be transmitted to others; a person's overall image on social networks and his attractiveness to other people, read through “likes” on his social network profile.
Let's understand the concepts. What is image
Translated from English, the term “image,” which corresponds to the word “image,” literally means “image.” If we talk about the image as such, then in psychology this term is understood as a product of mental reflection, processing of a particular phenomenon by the psyche. Moreover, this process includes both analysis and synthesis.
But this is not the only definition of image in psychological science. Some researchers believe that it should be understood as the public “I” of a person, his external image; others believe that image represents who a person appears to others - how he presents himself to others.
For example, Polly Bird in her work emphasizes that image is the complete picture that a person provides to others. It includes a number of components - appearance, manner of speaking, skills, posture, all kinds of little things (accessories) [3].
On the one hand, the described characteristics apply to the concept of image; but, as E. B. Perelygina emphasizes, they are still not completely synonymous. It is more precise to define image as one of the types of image. But in this case, it is not any of the possible phenomena that is subject to perception, but the subject itself. Such an entity can be individuals, groups of people or commercial organizations. Both the person himself and his environment take part in the formation of the image. In the first case, we are talking about an individual image. The nature of image, therefore, consists of two components - psychological and social. Taking this fact into account, E. B. Perelygina offers the following definition of the concept we are considering:
“Image is a symbolic image of a subject, created in the process of subject-subject interaction” [3].
At the same time, in the matter of studying the image, it is useful to introduce two participants in communication - a kind of “actors” in its creation:
- The prototype of the image. This is the person or organization (subject) for whom a certain image is created. When it comes to a person, an individual image is implied.
- Recipient . The receiving party is the subject for whom the image is being created. The recipient can be either an individual or a group of people. In this case, we can talk about the audience of the image.
