| Abstract: | Theory and research on self-monitoring have accumulated into a sizable literature on the impact of variation in the extent to which people cultivate public appearances in diverse domains of social functioning. Yet self-monitoring and its measure, the Self-Monitoring Scale, are surrounded by controversy generated by conflicting answers to the critical question, Is self-monitoring a unitary phenomenon? A primary source of answers to this question has been largely neglected—the Self-Monitoring Scale's relations with external criteria. The authors propose a quantitative method to examine the self-monitoring literature and thereby address major issues of the controversy. Application of this method reveals that, with important exceptions, a wide range of external criteria tap a dimension directly measured by the Self-Monitoring Scale. The authors discuss what this appraisal reveals about what self-monitoring is and is not. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
