Are social chameleons prone to entrepreneurship?

Purpose People differ in the extent to which they dispositionally monitor their projected images, expressive behavior and self-presentation according to the contingencies of the situations. Building on Snyder’s self-monitoring theory, this paper aims to assess the influences of self-monitoring on entrepreneurial intention and explain the process responsible for these effects. Because high self-monitors and low self-monitors differ in their ability to adapt their self-presentation and patterns of behaviors to the contingencies of the situation, it was reasonable to suspect that chameleon-like high self-monitors will be more prone to entrepreneurship than true-to-themselves low self-monitors. Design/methodology/approach Based on a sample of 296 respondents, a self-administered questionnaire assessing the attitude toward entrepreneurship, risk aversion, entrepreneurial intentions and the four dimensions of self-monitoring (acting ability, extraversion, other-directedness and speaking ability), and other control variables was conducted. Findings The findings of this study generally support that self-monitoring has relevance in predicting an individual’s entrepreneurial intentions. Because high self-monitors have more acting and speaking abilities, are more extroverted and are more concerned with how others perceive them than are low self-monitors, they would be more likely to start a business and become business owners as they possess favorable attitudes toward entrepreneurship. The overall result regarding risk aversion fails to support a mediating relationship between self-monitoring and entrepreneurial intentions. However, at the same time, the findings confirm that risk aversion directly reduces entrepreneurial intention. Research limitations/implications The findings expand the implementation of Snyder’s self-monitoring theory in the entrepreneurship arena and make an important contribution to the many additions and alterations that have been implemented to the theory of planned behavior in the entrepreneurship literature to better explain entrepreneurial intentions and behaviors. The results add to these works by demonstrating that self-monitoring is a trait that influences the attitude toward entrepreneurship. Also, attitude toward entrepreneurship was found to be a mediator of the relationship between self-monitoring and entrepreneurial intentions. The limitation concerns the use of a convenience sample of students and cross-sectional data. Practical i