The role of sex and self-monitoring in unstructured dyadic interactions.

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine how individual differences in sex and in level of self-monitori ng were related to subjects' behavior during an initial interaction in same-sex dyads. Subjects who had been previously tested with Snyder's Self-Monitoring Scale were covertly videotaped during an unstructured 5-minute interaction with a same-sex stranger. They were then asked to give impressions of their own and the other person's behavior during the interaction period. The videotapes of these interactions were subsequently coded for a variety of behavioral measures. With respect to variations in sex, the data provided considerable evidence of greater involvement and affiliation in the female dyads than in the male dyads. The data also suggested that the self-monitoring of certain expressive behaviors may be mediated by perceptions of their sexrole appropriateness. With respect to variations in self-monitori ng, the data indicated that (a) the higher self-monitoring (SM) subject within each dyad was more likely to initiate conversation, (b) dyads in which a high-SM subject and a low-SM subject were paired appeared to experience particular interaction difficulty, and (c) within dyads, the higher (versus the lower) SM subjects' perceptions of their own and their partners' behavior were generally consistent with Snyder's conception of self-monitori ng.