is a personality characteristic that makes an individual pay closer
attention to a social situation so that they can change their
behaviors to fit that situation.
easily blend into social situations, knowing what to do or say
with each person. They appear more friendly and less anxious to
observers, and are sensitive to social cues are likely to vary
their behavior from situation to situation. High self-monitors
behavior better, and will change their behavior to suit the situation
as they perceive it. They are more concerned with acting appropriately
than being true to themselves.
If an outcome depends on another
person, high self-monitors will recall more information about
the other person, and make more confident judgments and extreme
inferences about the other person.
High self-monitors (HSMs) describe
themselves as flexible, adaptive, and shrewd. They tend to use
situational factors to explain their behavior. They have many
friends, but are not very close with most of them. They have different
friends for different activities. Friendship loss is not a difficulty,
as there are other friends to take the place of any that are lost.
They tend to date around, and have different dates for different
places. They are concerned about their date's appearance.
(LSMs), on the other hand, act themselves regardless of the situation,
so they rarely conform to the norms of the social setting. LSMs
are less sensitive to social cues, and less likely to change their
behavior from one situation to another.
LSMs prefer to be seen as they
really are, and they behave so as to express internal attitudes
and dispositions. Their attitudes are more accessible, so LSMs
have a greater consistency between their attitudes and their behavior.
LSMs are more likely to show effects of fatigue and moods than
Low self-monitors describe themselves
as consistent and principled, and they use dispositional explanations
to explain their behavior. They have few friends, but these friends
are quite close to them. They have the same friends for all of
their activities. They select friends with similar attitudes.
Friendship loss is difficult, because there are so few that each
will be missed quite a bit, and the loss will affect, most if
not all, activities. They tend to have steady, and more intimate
relationships, and they care about their partner's personality.
Neither high nor low self
monitoring is a better way of viewing the world.
These are simply different approaches to the world. People tend
to prefer friends and romantic partners who are similar to themselves
in self-monitoring style. HSMs see LSMs as insensitive, while
LSMs see HSMs as superficial