Self-Monitoring and Control in Dyadic Interactions

This study sought to examine individual differences in the level of planning and monitoring involved in actual interpersonal interactions between pairs of friends and strangers, as measured by Snyder's (1974) Self-Monitoring Scale. The experiment required same- and opposite-sex dyads of friends or strangers to converse for 10 min, before completing a questionnaire rating their behavior and feelings in the interaction. These subjects also completed the SM Scale. The analysis established that the original unitary scale was a very poor predictor of subjects' perceptions of the interaction, whereas an analysis based on three subscales suggested by previous research (e.g., Briggs, Cheek, & Buss, 1980 ) not only successfully predicted the subjects' perceptions but also explained the failure of the unitary scale. The subscales frequently operated in opposite directions to one another, so that although the individual subscales were able to predict aspects of subjects' perceptions quite well, when the scores were amalgamated into a single overall score this predictive power was lost. We concluded that the subscales derived from the Self-Monitoring Scale provided a better explanation of subjects' perceptions of their interactions, and the implications of this for the concept of self-monitoring are discussed.