Goffman’s theory of Impression Management is a conceptual framework as to how individuals present their selves and how they control the image they convey to others. Goffman also likened the Impression Management to a theatrical play where our daily life is the ‘stage’, the individual is the ‘social actor’ and the people around the individual is the ‘audience’.
Goffman believed that by nature, we tend to seek information from others at the first meet-up. With this information that we receive, we establish expectations of how we should behave as well as to how the people around us should behave. Much of this information are based on snap judgments and derived from the information we get from the people in our surroundings.
In the case of the Muslim lady in the article, Kameelah Rasheed, who was forced off the plane, she is the ‘social actor’, whereas the ‘audience’ are…show more content… This behaviour is apparent in the experience of one Kameelah Rashid who was not only called for further questioning by the immigration officers after the regular security checks, but whose passport and phone were also confiscated.
She was also asked other questions such as the reason she was flying to Istanbul and unrelated ones such as how she could afford to go on a vacation and the price of her flight ticket. I deduce from this that the officers deemed her as a potential threat as they have a distorted image and impression of Muslims. They were being extra cautious with her to the point of patronising her, although she did not have any guns or bombs with her or pose any harm to anyone.
In Goffman’s theory of Impression Management, it is said that team members have to work together to maintain the credibility of their performance in front of the audience and team members have to avoid communication that is out of the character of the team. Success is reliant on the collaboration of all team