How Do We Perform In Everyday Life?
If we're acting all the time, why aren't we aware of it?
Table of Contents
Have you ever wondered… “Am I an asshole?”
Maybe. Maybe not. But at some point, you’ve probably acted like one without realizing it.
We all have. Thanks to a little thing called self-deception, which is what makes acting “natural” in the first place. It’s a lot easier to do and say things seemingly out of character when your situation compels you to play that part. It also makes sense when you consider the evolutionary logic of deceit, i.e., we deceive ourselves in order to better deceive others.
What is self-deception?
For Robert Trivers, sociobiologist and author of the Folly of Fools, self-deception (along with internal conflict and fragmentation) is actually an evolutionary adaptive mechanism born of our need to survive in complex situations:
"Self-deception is the active misrepresentation of reality to the conscious mind. [...] We hide the truth from ourselves to hide it more deeply from others."
In biology, it’s an information-processing bias that obscures the brain’s relationship with implicit and explicit memory. This becomes even more fascinating when viewed through the lens of acting and sociology. Sociologist Erving Goffman, for example, described “constant self-deception” as that which “results when, what were originally two different roles, actor and audience, are compressed into the same individual.”
Robert Downey Jr. playing Kirk Lazarus playing Sgt. Lincoln Osiris (Tropic Thunder, 2008)
In other words, when you’re stressed, lying to yourself (the actor)—and in turn those around you (the audience)—becomes second nature as it facilitates social survival. This is painfully obvious in social interactions that lead to first impressions, such as job interviews, first dates, presentations, or meeting new people.
The problem is that “deception” is a loaded word. As is “self-deception.”
Most people aren’t actually trying to dupe everyone around them, nor are they strategically manipulating others on their way to the top. Generally, we’re all engaging in a process of impression management, which often has little, if anything, to do with “the truth” of who we are.
You could be presenting an idealized version of yourself or a weak, less intimidating one. Either way, you're trying to preserve yourself in a society built on appearances.
Why would you ever present a less-than-perfect yourself? Gee, I dunno, have you ever found it helpful to play dumb to avoid scrutiny or act childish for more attention? Trivers describes the behavior as “deceiving down,” a survival mechanism also found in the animal kingdom and frequently exhibited by humans in competitive situations:
“[…] we usually think of deception where self-image is concerned as involving inflation of self—you are bigger, brighter, better-looking than you really are. But there is a second kind of deception—deceiving down—in which the organism is selected to make itself appear smaller, stupider, and perhaps even uglier, thereby gaining an advantage. In herring gulls and various other seabirds, offspring actively diminish their apparent size and degree of aggressiveness as fledglings, to be permitted to remain near their parents, thereby consuming more parental investment.”
Trivers, “Self-Deception in Everyday Life” 167
Why don't we notice self-deception?
In short, it kicks in like any other survival instinct. If you really think about it, this is kind of built into the very structure of social interaction, especially modern-day communication that relies heavily on representational cues.
Depending on the context of your situation and the type of people you’re interacting with, you’ll automatically determine what you need out of the interaction (motive), why you need it (intent), and adapt your behavior (speech, tone, body language, personal views, mannerisms, wardrobe, and overall conduct) to elicit the desired outcome (action).
Your motive might be as simple as avoiding embarrassment—a perceived threat to social survival and one of the most powerful catalysts for acting in everyday life.
The scene is set, the role is defined, all you have to do is “make it your own,” not much different from the assignment of a professional actor.
Case in point: Meet the parents
Let’s say you’re nervous about meeting your future in-laws. What if they don’t like me or think I’m not good enough? A few days later, you might run out of damns to give and hype yourself up. You know what, screw this. I’m just going to be myself! If they don’t like me, too bad!
Yet you’re aware that a bad impression could lead to a potential conflict in your relationship. So despite your vows of “authenticity,” you’ll likely adapt to the situation to get that approval as it relates to your social survival. This can manifest in a whole bunch of ways.
You might censor your opinions around them, feign interest in things you don’t give a damn about, or exaggerate the values you have in common. Depending on your emotional investment in the role, you might even tell yourself: Wow, this is going better than I thought!
Regardless of your awareness of this conformity, your responses would probably be heavily censored to elicit a favorable reaction, contrary to your initial commitment to the “truth.”
What acting techniques do we use?
Day in and day out, we’re expected to play a range of roles to fulfill our obligations in society—a child, parent, manager, partner, colleague, mentor, competitor, friend, lover, neighbor, acquaintance, civilian, activist, the list goes on. But some of these roles will inevitably collide as you prioritize different events in your life.
In order to juggle these important roles, we switch effortlessly between role attachment and role distance (or as sociologist Erving Goffman would put it, between sincerity and cynicism) to hold our place in society.
This isn’t a moral code whereby sincerity equals good and cynicism equals bad, but rather a spectrum that indicates the level of emotional investment in each role.
Now, you might not prepare for these roles the same way a professional actor does. But that’s because you’re not Marlon Brando playing Vito Corleone on the set of The Godfather.
You’re [insert social identity], playing [insert social role] in [insert situation].
Let’s say you’re [Thomas, a dude with crippling social anxiety], playing [a cheerful barista] at a [busy coffee chain]. You’re in a social crisis most of the day because your job requires you to perform in a manner that’s inconsistent with how you are in your day-to-day. But you need the cash to pay your rent and now “you gotta do what you gotta do” to make it work. So you get your survival mode on and that’s where role distance comes into play.
What is role distance?
Role distance in sociology means standing emotionally detached from the part you’re playing in service of a social situation. In theater, this is known as the “distancing effect” or Verfremdungseffekt popularized by German playwright Bertolt Brecht, who used “distance” as a dramatic device to provoke the audience to think critically, particularly in political plays. The technique evolved overtime and made its way into film, where it’s often used to break cinematic convention through self-referential meta techniques like breaking the fourth wall.
In everyday life, role distance can be an incredibly convincing and somewhat disruptive acting technique—in some sense, far less demanding since you don’t have to go through the trouble of convincing yourself in order to convince your audience. For instance, Thomas doesn’t need to believe he’s a social butterfly in order to do his job well. He can do so without identifying too closely with his mask and thus avoid the feelings of self-betrayal that inevitably come up whenever we feel we’re acting “out of character” at work or in personal encounters.
We also experience this day-to-day in the form of “social masking.” It’s the reason why some people don’t notice when a seemingly confident person is suffering from extreme social anxiety.
What is Method acting?
Al Pacino in The Godfather Part II (1974)
Role distance or cynical/detached role performance would stand in contrast to sincerity or role attachment where you’re emotionally invested in the part you’re playing. For example, Thomas might fully immerse in his cheerful barista role upon interacting with a customer who also happens to be a friend. His feelings would now be congruent with his presentation of self.
In “real life,” role distance or cynical performance allows us to transition from one moment to another without bearing the emotional repercussions, as well as the cognitive load, of playing multiple (at times contradictory) parts.
In professional acting, this usually gets turned on its head. Professional actors are playing one part for the screen or stage, with no room for role contamination. That’s why they often train to reconnect with the child-like part of their being in order to rediscover “the art of play within the art of playing”. And it’s usually harder than it looks. As acting theorist Robert Cohen puts it: Adulthood is plagued by “an etiology of ‘bad acting’ disease […] and curing this disease is a tall order.”
Indeed this is why many screen actors choose to stay in character between takes. To some degree, they need to intentionally blur the line between where they end and their character begins in order to achieve a kind of inimitable authenticity in their portrayal. While this approach is often associated with “Method acting,” it’s worth noting that each actor has a unique method with which to tap into the emotional life of their character on stage or set. It’s a deeply personal interpretation.
Despite the awe and mystique wrapped around the Method, the main way it deviated from classical acting was its radical (at the time) insistence on being “self-possessed in passion” through discipline and commitment. As Al Pacino explains in his autobiography:
“There’s no method at the Actors Studio. Everybody comes with their own method. Is there a method to writing? Yeah, you pick up a pen. You don’t ask a violinist or a cellist if they use a method. They practice. But since I was a kid I got criticized by people for being a Method actor when I didn’t know what they were talking about. Method? I played a role in a play. How I observe it and bring it to life, that’s my task, that’s what I go after. Finding a way to bring something to life so it can go through me.”
Al Pacino, “Sonny Boy”
In everyday life, we’re not attempting to be artful, we’re simply trying to survive and keep things moving in an unpredictable social drama. Unlike professional actors, therefore, we unconsciously move along the cynicism-sincerity spectrum—from emotional detachment to attachment and vice versa—to best navigate and survive complex situations.
And then, of course, you have the ultimate neurosis resulting from our need to predict and calculate each social interaction and possible outcome, aka The Fielder Method as seen in the hilariously original HBO docu-comedy The Rehearsal.
Then why do I suck at social interaction? Isn't that the whole point of acting—to influence others?
Contrary to popular opinion, acting in everyday life isn’t always about the confidence game nor a masterclass in deception. Sometimes it’s an alignment between what you’re intuiting and how you’re behaving in response to those intuitions.
For instance, you might be suspicious of your partner and not care to hide it. Or you might be worried about embarrassing yourself and make a self-deprecating joke to let your audience in on it. In other words…
Acting can also be a manifestation of self-awareness. This is particularly evident among actors who use role distance and critical thinking to challenge and subvert social norms.
Role distance gets a bad rap in the real world due to its close association with cult leaders, financial crooks, and sociopaths. But it’s not the same thing as absence of empathy.
In fact, in some cases, it could be empathy on steroids because of the multitude of perspectives available to you. We hear about professional actors doing this all the time, but think of satirists or comedians. Or even your favorite writer. Now think of your own life. If you were diagnosed with an illness, you might go to great lengths to appear healthy—maybe even pretend to be marvelously happy—to simply keep your family from worrying incessantly about you.
“It is not assumed, of course, that all cynical performers are interested in deluding their audiences for purposes of what is called ‘self-interest’ or private gain. A cynical individual may delude his audience for what he considers to be their own good, or for the good of the community, etc.”
Goffman, “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” 11
Ultimately, acting in “the real world” is about navigating self-deception and self-awareness as we experience the sometimes conflicting and arbitrary nature of social reality.
**************************************
💭 Does any of this resonate with you? Let me know in the comments below!
🚀 Subscribe to my newsletter for new posts every week!
Last updated March 15, 2025