Forming your own style today plays a colossal role in the development of personality. Many people neglect their image and think that appearance does not matter, and that internal qualities are the main thing. Professionalism, of course, is important, you can’t argue with that. However, we still meet people “by our clothes,” and besides, it is our image that makes the first impression. The rest opens much later or does not open at all if the appearance is not attractive.
That is why I declare with confidence that style is important for any person, and not just for a public figure . It will differ depending on your profession and goals, but only a person who is not social at all, does not communicate with anyone, and does not plan to work or build a personal life can afford to completely neglect the image. As part of this material, I will talk about how to create your own image and give 5 effective tips as a stylist-image maker. And you can read about my services in the corresponding section of the site.
Stylist and image maker Stanimira Aleshina
What is image
This concept itself translated from English means “image”. In fact, the image is a stable image of a person that other people develop when communicating with him. Any image is the result of perception or, as psychologists say, perception, but social objects (people, groups, communities) differ from other things and phenomena, plants and animals, therefore the formation of a person’s image has its own characteristics.
How the image of another person develops
When we come into contact with other people, we receive a variety of information about them using all our senses:
- First of all, of course, vision works; with its help, a person generally receives 80% of all information about the world around him. When making contact, we first of all evaluate a person’s appearance; it’s not without reason that they say that you meet someone by their clothes. Facial expression and facial movements in general play an equally important role. For example, a smile very quickly adjusts a person to a positive perception of a partner, and frowning eyebrows with dissatisfaction make one want to break off contact.
- With the help of hearing, we receive not only important information in the form of speech messages, but also assess the mood and attitude of the interlocutor by the timbre of his voice, speed of speech, and intonation. It often happens that an unpleasant timbre, for example, too high, shrill, can create a negative impression of a person.
- Tactile sensations can also be important. In general, touching in the process of communication is characteristic of people who are quite familiar and treat each other well. But in contact with an unfamiliar person, they are also informative. For example, a patronizing pat on the shoulder can indicate a person’s attitude, and when shaking hands with the interlocutor, we feel the confidence or uncertainty of the handshake, feel smooth or rough, dry or wet skin.
- Even smells are important for the formation of a person’s image; in psychology they are classified as olfactory means of communication. For example, a man smells of sweat after exercising in the gym. And for a woman, this can be a sign of the brutality and sexual attractiveness of her partner.
Information from the senses is processed by the brain, analyzed, correlated with generally accepted norms, stereotypes, our personal experience and knowledge, and the output is a fairly complete picture of a person - a kind of multidimensional and multi-layered image. But this is not quite an image yet.
Two sides of the image and the real “I”
Image is not only how we perceive our communication partner, what image appears in our head. Unlike a simply social-perceptual image, along with the objective, perceived side, it also has a subjective – transmitted one.
We all, to one degree or another, consciously strive to create a certain impression of ourselves among others. And sometimes we approach this very responsibly: we carefully choose the style of clothing, think through the manner of speech, monitor gestures and facial expressions, in conversation we try to avoid some topics and focus on others. Who doesn’t want to seem at least a little smarter, prettier, more successful than they really are?
What is it for? Goals can be different: from winning the affection of the opposite sex to success in business. But, one way or another, most people work on their image and broadcast their image to others. And this is where the main problem arises.
The received and transmitted image may not coincide, and people see us in a completely different way than we would like. For example, I want to be perceived as an active, businesslike and tough business woman, but they see me as simply a scandalous and fussy woman who can ruin any business. Why?
Of course, there are inattentive people, unfriendly envious people, but that’s not the point; the main reason for the discrepancy between the transmitted and perceived image is completely different.
In addition to these two sides, two versions of the image, there is also the real “I” - a complex of personality traits, characteristics and abilities - what is really characteristic of a person. We all want to appear better, but the more the transmitted image and the real “I” do not coincide, the greater the discrepancies at the level of perception. A coward, no matter how hard he tries, will not be perceived as brave, at best arrogant, and a 50-year-old woman who tries to look 25 will most likely seem ridiculous. And in that abstract example, I am not perceived as a cool business woman, because in reality I am a little gray mouse who wants to hide in my hole and not stick out from there.
When working on your image, you need to strive to ensure that it does not contradict the real qualities of your personality and does not diverge too much from the experience, knowledge and abilities that we have. Don't you like these qualities and abilities? Would you like to appear better? Then start changing your image with internal transformations.
Bibliography
- A.Yu. Panasyuk. Image formation. M., 2007
- A.Yu. Panasyuk. I am your image maker and am ready to shape your professional image. M., 2004
- E.B. Perelygina. Psychology of image. M., 2002
- https://coachinstitute.ru/mediateka/pro-kouching/formirovanie-imidzha-ot-vnutrennego-k-vneshnemu.html
- https://rb.ru/story/imidzh/
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- Modern programs for creating graphics
Levels of image perception
The second difference between an image and just an image is sustainability. People in general are changeable objects, therefore ordinary perceptual images are situational, mobile, they arise instantly and constantly change depending on a person’s movements, changes in facial expression, posture, timbre of voice, gestures, etc. But the image consists only of the stable characteristics of the individual, those what makes him a unique, unrepeatable personality. In psychology, there are 3 groups of such characteristics depending on the level of human perception:
- The biological level is age, gender, health status, features of the course of nervous processes, physical data, etc.
- Psychological – level of intelligence, character traits, characteristics of the emotional sphere, interests, tastes, creativity, etc.
- The social level includes information about a person that is spread by other people: rumors, gossip, attitudes, etc.
Of course, the stability of an image is relative; it can change, even quite consciously. In addition, over time, a certain attitude towards a person develops, under whose influence the image is corrected. For example, a young man with many tattoos and piercings can be an excellent professional, although he was not initially perceived as such.
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.
Tips for creating and changing your image
If you want to achieve success and make the right impression on people around you, you need to seriously approach the problem of creating or changing your image. A few tips will help you cope with this difficult task.
- Think about the image you want to create among others. Clearly highlight, or better yet, write down the personality traits that you would like to demonstrate.
- Pay attention to the fact that the desired image matches the real “I” as closely as possible. If you lack any character traits or abilities, think about how they can be developed or compensated for by some other personality traits.
- Start creating your image with internal restructuring, with working on yourself. Thus, demonstrating your professionalism or erudition in the absence of them is not only difficult, but also unproductive - your partners will quickly see through you.
- Carefully consider your appearance, speech, gestures and facial expressions - they must correspond to the chosen image. The half-thug slang of a gopnik in the mouth of a young man demonstrating a yuppie image sounds strange, to say the least.
- Try to make your behavior seem natural and relaxed. And this will not be easy to do, since you will have to constantly monitor the compliance of your image with the chosen image.
Despite all the difficulties of creating your image from scratch, changing it is even more difficult. As already mentioned, this is a stable image, and it exists not only as a complex of external forms of behavior, but also in the heads of people who know you. And this image creates a strong attitude towards perceiving you from a certain perspective.
That is, when trying to change the image, others will still see the person they are used to and will not pay attention to what is new in him. Or, even worse, express your rejection: “Why are you dressed up like that today?!”, “Look, the way you spoke! There’s no need to be smart, it doesn’t suit you.”
Therefore, changing your image should be gradual so that people get used to your new image. It is much easier to solve this problem when moving to another city, when entering another educational institution, or when changing jobs.
If you are serious about creating your image, then with due persistence and patience, success will await you, perhaps not immediately.
Conclusions:
1. Interpersonal perception, or social perception, is a complex process of perceiving the external signs of a person, correlating them with personal characteristics and interpreting actions and behavior on this basis.
2. Mechanisms of social perception - the ways in which people interpret actions, understand and evaluate another person. The mechanisms of cognition and understanding include, first of all, identification, empathy and attraction. A universal mechanism for interpreting the motives and reasons for another person’s actions is the mechanism of causal attribution.
3. In the process of perception, distortions of the perceived image are possible, due to the socio-psychological effects of interpersonal perception; they are objective in nature and require certain efforts of the perceiving personality.
4. The effects of interpersonal perception include the effect of primacy and novelty, stereotyping, halo, projection.
5. Image is a certain image that a person, his “I,” presents to the world, a kind of form of self-presentation. The concept of image includes not only natural personality traits, but also specially created ones. It speaks both about the external appearance and the inner world of a person, about his psychological type. The problem of studying and building an image is dealt with by a new branch of scientific knowledge - imageology.
