Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1974, Vol. 30, No. 4, 526-537 SELF-MONITORING OF EXPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR1 MARK SNYDER2 University of Minnesota A social psychological construct of self-monitoring (self-observation and self-control guided by situational cues to social appropriateness) of expressive behavior and self-presentation was proposed. An internally consistent, tempo- rally stable self-report measure of individual differences in self-monitoring was constructed. Four converging laboratory and field studies of peer perception ratings, criterion group membership, self-control of facial and vocal emotional expressive behavior, and attention to normative social comparison information were conducted to demonstrate the convergent and discriminant validity of the Self-Monitoring Scale (SM). The use of SM to investigate hypotheses concerning consistency in expression across situations and between channels of expressive behavior was discussed. A common observation in literature and cultural folklore has been that certain non- language behaviors, such as voice quality, body motion, touch, and the use of personal space appear to play a prominent role in communication. Furthermore, laboratory and field research clearly indicates that much in- formation about a person's affective states, status and attitude, cooperative and competi- tive nature of social interaction, and inter- personal intimacy is expressed and accurately communicated to others in nonverbal expres- sive behavior (e.g., Ekman, 1971 Hall, 1966 Mehrabian, 1969 Sommer, 1969). Much interest in nonverbal expressive be- havior stems from a belief that it may not be under voluntary control and might function 1 This report is based on a doctoral dissertation submitted to Stanford University. The research was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Training Grant MH-12283 in Social Psy- chology and in part by a Canada Council Doctoral Fellowship. The author thanks Daryl J. Bern, chair- man of the dissertation committee, for his encour- agement and intelligent counsel throughout the con- ceptual, empirical, and literary phases of the disser- tation and J. Merrill Carlsmith, Lee D. Ross, and Philip G. Zimbardo, members of the committee, for their interest, attention, and suggestions at various stages of the research. John Grether, Tom Price, Chris Ryan, Anne Coffey, Sheridan Crawford, Jul'.e Steinmetz, Mike Cochran, Kris Keller, Richard Quan, and Mike Boyle provided valuable and creative assistance in conducting the experiments and contributed their insights into self-monitoring. 2 Requests for reprints should be sent to Mark Snyder, Laboratory for Research in Social Relations, Department of Psychology, University of Minne- sota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. as a pipeline or radarscope to one's true inner "self" (e.g., Freud, 1959). Although non- verbal behavior may often escape voluntary attempts at censorship (Ekman & Friesen, 1969), there have been numerous demonstra- tions that individuals can voluntarily express various emotions with their vocal and/or facial expressive behavior in such a way that their expressive behavior can be accurately interpreted by observers (e.g., Davitz, 1964). In fact, some social observers have proposed that the ability to manage and control ex- pressive presentation is a prerequisite to ef- fective social and interpersonal functioning. Thus Goffman (1955) has likened social in- teraction to a theatrical performance or "line" of verbal and nonverbal self-expressive acts which are managed to keep one's line appropriate to the current situation. Such self-management requires a repertoire of face-saving devices, an awareness of the in- terpretations which others place on one's acts, a desire to maintain social approval, and the willingness to use this repertoire of impres- sion management tactics. Within the more restricted domain of facial expressions of emotional affect, Ekman (1971) has suggested that individuals typically exercise control over their facial expressions to intensify, de- intensify, neutralize, or mask the expression of a felt affect, according to various norms of social performance. There are, however, striking and important individual differences in the extent to which individuals can and do monitor their self- presentation, expressive behavior, and non- 526

SELF-MONITORING OF EXPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR 527 verbal affective display. Clearly, professional stage actors can do what I cannot. Politicians have long known how important it is to wear the right face for the right constituency. La- Guardia learned the expressive repertoires of several different cultures in New York and became "chameleon-like" the son of what- ever people he was facing. Yet little research has directly concerned such individual dif- ferences in the self-control of expressive be- havior. At best, some dispositional correlates of spontaneous and natural expression of emo- tion have been reported (e.g., Buck, Savin, Miller, & Caul, 1972 Davitz, 1964). A Concept of Self-Monitoring of Expressive Behavior How might individual differences in the self-control of expressive behavior arise? What might be the developmental, historical, and current motivational origins of self-control ability and performance? Perhaps some indi- viduals have learned that their affective ex- perience and expression are either socially inappropriate or lacking. Such people may monitor (observe and control) their self- presentation and expressive behavior. The goals of self-monitoring may be (a) to com- municate accurately one's true emotional state by means of an intensified expressive presen- tation (b) to communicate accurately an arbitrary emotional state which need not be congruent with actual emotional experience (c) to conceal adaptively an inappropriate emotional state and appear unresponsive and unexpressive (d) to conceal adaptively an inappropriate emotional state and appear to be experiencing an appropriate one (e) to appear to be experiencing some emotion when one experiences nothing and a nonresponse is inappropriate. An acute sensitivity to the cues in a situ- ation which indicate what expression or self- presentation is appropriate and what is not is a corollary ability to self-monitoring. One such set of cues for guiding self-monitoring is the emotional expressive behavior of other similar comparison persons in the same situ- ation. There is some evidence of an acute version of this process. When persons are made un- certain of their emotional reactions, they look to the behavior of others for cues to define their emotional states and model the emo- tional expressive behavior of others in the same situation who appear to be behaving appropriately (Schachter & Singer, 1962). On the other hand, persons who have not learned a concern for appropriateness of their self-presentation would not have such well- developed self-monitoring skills and would not be so vigilant to social comparison informa- tion about appropriate patterns of expression and experience. This is not to say that they are not emotionally expressive or even that they are less so than those who monitor their presentation. Rather, their self-presentation and expressive behavior seem, in a functional sense, to be controlled from within by their affective states (they express it as they feel it) rather than monitored, controlled, and molded to fit the situation. Self-Monitoring and Consistency in Expression: Between Modalities and across Situations Do people, as Freud (1959) believed, say one thing with their lips and another with their fingertips? More specifically, what gov- erns the consistency between expression in different channels of expression, such as vocal and facial, and the consistency between non- verbal and verbal expression? The self-moni- toring approach provides one perspective on differences and consistencies across channels of expression, including verbal self-presenta- tion. It is likely that when one is monitoring, various channels are monitored differentially, and perhaps some forgotten. Thus, what may be communicated by one channel may differ from what is communicated by another. For example, I may cover my sadness by putting on a happy face but forget to use a happy voice. Ekman and Friesen (1969, 1972) have demonstrated with psychiatric patients and student nurses that in deception situations people are more likely to monitor their facial than body presentation, with the result that the deception is more likely to be detected from an examination of body cues than fa-