The effect of faculty self-promotion on student evaluations of teaching

Abstract

This study investigated the effect that varying degrees of faculty self-promotion had on 322 student evaluations. As high student evaluations are correlated with greater student learning, it is imperative that we assess how faculty's presentation style is per-ceived by students so as to enhance instruction and therefore student leaming. Students read a biographical introduction to a speaker followed by a transcript of a lecture. A manipulation check revealed that only the boastful, individual self-promotion condition was perceived as significantly different from the other three self-promotion conditions, so the data were recoded according to what students perceived to be self-promotion. Sub-sequent analyses found that this perceived self-promotion leads to lower evaluations. Personality and competence attributions accounted for 67% of students' perceptions of faculty. keywords: student evaluations of teaching, student ratings of instruction, teacher effectiveness evaluation, teaching evalua-tions, self-promotion, self-presentation, impression management, faculty instructors Impression management refers to ways in which people attempt to influence how others see them. The most prominent way, self-presentation, involves how people manipulate information about themselves in order to create and maintain a desired percepdon of themselves (Gardner & Mar-tinko, 1988; Schneider, 1981; Tumley & Bolino, 2001). Although psychologists have studied self-presentation since the early 1960s, most of the recent research conducted in this area has focused on busi-ness settings, specifically addressing employment interviewing and hiring and performance evaluation (Howard & Fer-ris, 1996). To our knowledge, no research has addressed the effect of self-presenta-don in an educadonal setdng. Jones and Pittman (1982) idendfied five strategies comprising self-presentation: ingratiation, intimidation, self-promotion. exemplificadon, and supplicadon. Ingra-dadon and self-promodon are the two most influendal ones that have been researched (Ellis, West, Ryan, & DeShon, 2002; Stevens & Kristof, 1995). Ingradadon tac-dcs are intended to evoke attribudons of social attractiveness or hkeability, while self-promodon tacdcs are intended to evoke competence attribudons (Elhs et al., 2002). Very often many setdngs demand that indi-viduals exhibit both social attractiveness and competence. The goal of self-promotion is to promote one's accomplishments, achieve-ments, contribudons, talents, and qualides so favorably that others will view the self-promoter as highly competent