What you think?
“Research finds [self-monitors] to be excellent negotiators and far more likely to be promoted at work than their low self-monitoring peers,” Roloff said.
But there’s a downside for high self-monitors when it comes to their romantic relationships.
“High self-monitors may appear to be the kind of people we want to have relationships with, but they themselves are less committed to and less happy in their relationships than low self-monitors,” Roloff said.
The problem seems to be that they can’t turn the self-monitoring off.
“The desire to alter one’s personality to appropriately fit a given situation or social climate prevents high self-monitors from presenting their true selves during intimate interactions with their romantic partners,” Roloff said. “High self-monitors are very likeable and successful people. However, it appears they’re just not deep.”
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High self-monitors seem to avoid face-threatening interactions and honest self-disclosure. Thus partners of these people may be completely in the dark about the extent of their significant other’s degree of commitment and regard.
“It’s not that high self-monitors are intentionally deceptive or evil,” Roloff said. “They appear to have an outlook and way of achieving their goals that makes them attractive to us socially but that prevents them from being particularly happy or loyal in their romantic relationships.”
How do you relate or not relate to this? Which do you consider yourself (more or less likely to monitor your behavior), and do you think it relates to how committed you generally feel in a relationship?
I’m a low self-monitor. I can really relate to this article because I’ve known some high self-monitors and couldn’t figure them out until I started to realize that some people do this. Like an onion, peel back one mask and there’s another mask underneath, as if it’s masks all the way down. However, the article makes a very good point that such folks are not intentionally fake, they’ve just been trained to avoid self-reflection about it. I can believe that, because if the chameleon behavior were calculated in a rational way, it wouldn’t be so clumsily self-destructive to a high-self-monitor’s own goals.
In terms of how committed I generally feel in a relationship, I think the commitment being referred to is not about whether one intends to stay or leave. It’s how much vulnerability you expose, and how much you reveal of your true thoughts and feelings. The article talks about the high self-monitor not being quite as committed, in that he or she may reveal one thing to one person, but not reveal it to another person, based on what they want to hear; and not “commit” to their own thought, feeling, or position for all people based on their authentic self.
I’d consider myself a “high self-monitor”, and until recently I’ve been wildly unsuccessful in romantic relationships, so that rings true. However, I’m not particularly good at negotiation and I don’t think I’m particularly likeable. More than anything, I feel like people like me until they get to know me. Human interaction is a highly difficult issue for me, and for all my self-monitoring I can never figure out what I’m doing wrong. On the other hand, self-criticism helps me succeed in every other area.
I simmer below the surface a lot too, because I don’t like that showing-true-self thing.
For my opinion, I would say that it’s more complex than they’ve made it – but that makes sense, as the scientists stated in the article that more testing needed to be done that takes into account the partners of the primary subject.
As a pre-teen, I was extremely low on the self-monitoring scale (or at least the capability for flexing my personality, as some people call it), and I don’t think that did me any good either socially or in relationships. Maybe, though, the social interaction problems tended to prevent people from getting involved with me, at the time.
I’m really not sure where I’d place myself at this point. I am certainly capable of understanding how to relate to others and showing that part of myself in kind, but I also spend an inordinate amount of time checking my self-bullshit meter, and consider myself eager to face conflict, rather than avoiding face-threatening interactions.
But that’s really just me, and, for good and for bad, I tend to be a behavioral outlier.