Promotion by others through social networks

ABSTRACT

Although self-promotion may be the most direct way people self-present, it carries social costs. We propose a novel phenomenon – promotion by others – wherein social networks may afford similar advantages with fewer costs. We utilized egocentric network analysis to examine relationships between social connections and perceived promoter potential (i.e., likelihood a friend will tell others about successes; PPP) and relationship dynamics. Participants enumerated friends and reported perceptions these friends would promote them, were valuable, and the extent to which they wanted these friends to know about successes. PPP was positively related to (a) network connectedness, (b) relational value, and (c) desire to know about success. We discuss benefits of promotion by others and individual differences related to engagement in this process.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-promotion
• self-presentation
• promotion by others
• self-enhancement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data can be accessed here.

Notes

1. We focus here on the fact that individual differences predict some of the variability in tendencies to self-promote. Although individual differences may also be related to motivation and ability to self-promote (an important avenue for future work on promotion by others), these questions are beyond the scope of our preliminary research presented in this manuscript.

2. All participants were able to name 30 people and none asked during the research session if they could name fewer than 30 people.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by grant numbers K01AA025994 and T32AA007459-32 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism provided to the second author.