Self-monitoring
How much people adjust their behavior to fit the social situation.
What it means
A stable individual difference in the degree to which people observe and regulate their expressive behavior and self-presentation in response to social cues. High self-monitors are attuned to situational appropriateness and readily adapt their behavior, attitudes, and even apparent personality to fit the audience, functioning as social chameleons. Low self-monitors instead act from inner states and values, displaying greater cross-situational consistency between private attitudes and public behavior. The dimension predicts differences in persuasion susceptibility, social networks, leadership emergence, and the attitude–behavior link. It is a key construct for understanding why some people seem markedly different across contexts while others remain the same everywhere.
Examples
A high self-monitor is gregarious at a party and reserved in a meeting; a low self-monitor behaves much the same in both.
A high self-monitor tailors her accent, humour and opinions to each of four interviewers; the low self-monitor gives all four the same answers and lets the panel decide.
On a dating app, a high self-monitor rewrites his profile for whichever audience he hopes to attract; a low self-monitor posts one blunt description and leaves it up for years.
First described in Mark Snyder (1974).