Repression and Self-Presentation

Sketch-only, based on:

"Repression and Self-Presentation: When Audiences Interfere with Self-Deceptive Strategies." Baumeister, Roy F, Journal of personality and social psychology, May 1992 (Vol 62, Issue 5).

I ran across this article in the Penrose Full Text search looking for something that might give me some insight into the neural processes of a stage artist receiving feedback from an audience. Instead, I ran across this article that discussed private vs. public image, self-presentation (the efforts one takes to appear to be as one would like to be seen) and repression (self-delusional misrepresentation of ones appearance).

Of course, the psychological aspect of this depend on how much you are in self-denial, and the extent that you try to self-present as different from your actual self. Repressors, it turns out, expect positive feedback, are somewhat mystified by neutral feedback, but have a significant reaction to negative feedback; the negative assessments are retained at a high level in memory, and the subjects spend a significant amount of time viewing the negative feedback as they try to alter their self-presentation to match the desired outcome.

Simulation Possibilities

There is something very interesting here, and I might try to revisit it with the Arduino/music project, but it is a little too deep for an off-the-cuff software sketch. One way to consider this: in a "learning system" model, use feedback from the listener to change the storage and sort order of preferred phrases. Using the model described above, positive feedback could have modest effect, neutral feedback could produce more effect, but negative feedback would have the most effect - possibly even forcing the generation of new test phrases (simulating the change in self-presentation).

[ddg]