Why Do People Act So Differently in Different Situations?

The way I act in sitting through one of my college lectures is radically different from how I act when I go out dancing on Friday nights. My interaction with my friends is different than my interaction with my employer. Have you ever thought of why people behave so differently in different situations and with different people? For example, why it is easier to flip someone off when your mom isn’t with you? Sociologist Erving Goffman who call this the difference in front-stage and back-stage performances. 

 In one of his books, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman argues that we all live our lives as if we were actors in a play. Sometimes we need to be on the stage making ourselves look good and doing what we feel is expected of us. At other times, like when we are with our close friends, we can present a different “self,” our back-stage self. We have all been socialized to know what we are expected to do in different situations in the culture we live in, and our attempt to carry out those expectations is our front-stage performance.

So, before you adjust your behavior to fit a social setting, try to think more like a sociologist. Recognize that you have been trained to know what to do in different situations through years of social interaction and that, to some extent, your actions are dictated by those social forces. Congrats on conforming to what is expected of you!