Self-Monitoring Scale – revised

Abstract

The Revised Self-Monitoring Scale (RSMS), developed by Richard D. Lennox and Raymond N. Wolfe (1984), is an established 13-item self-report psychological instrument designed to assess individual differences in self-monitoring. Originating as a critical psychometric refinement of Mark Snyder’s original 25-item Self-Monitoring Scale (1974), the RSMS resolves long-standing psychometric concerns regarding factor instability, construct contamination, and multidimensional ambiguity. The scale conceptualizes self-monitoring not as a broad amalgamation of theatrical acting ability and sociability, but as an interplay between two distinct, intercorrelated components: Ability to Modify Self-Presentation (7 items) and Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others (6 items). Participants evaluate items along a 6-point response scale ranging from 0 (certainly, always false) to 5 (certainly, always true). Internal consistency estimates demonstrate robust reliability, with coefficient alpha typically reported at .77 for Ability to Modify Self-Presentation, .70 for Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others, and .84 for the full 13-item composite score. Structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses consistently support an oblique two-factor measurement model that exhibits measurement invariance across genders and diverse occupational cohorts. Beyond social and personality psychology, the RSMS has achieved broad clinical and neuropsychological utility, notably serving as a behavioral biomarker of socioemotional cue detection and behavioral regulation in neurodegenerative conditions such as behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD). This comprehensive article details the theoretical foundation, factor structure, psychometric properties, scoring guidelines, and research applications of the RSMS.

Keywords

Revised Self-Monitoring Scale, RSMS, self-monitoring, impression management, social sensitivity, behavioral regulation, socioemotional acuity, expressive control, Lennox and Wolfe, psychometrics

Authors

The Revised Self-Monitoring Scale was formulated and psychometrically validated by:

• Richard D. Lennox, Ph.D. — Psychometrician and research methodologist specializing in latent variable modeling, social psychology measurement, and behavioral health outcomes. Lennox conducted this work within the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo.
• Raymond N. Wolfe, Ph.D. — Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Geneseo. Wolfe’s scholarship focuses on personality assessment, social competence, impression management, and individual differences in interpersonal adaptation.

Correspondence regarding the original instrument was established through the Department of Psychology, State University of New York, College at Geneseo, Geneseo, New York 14454.

Purpose

The primary purpose of the Revised Self-Monitoring Scale (RSMS) is to evaluate an individual’s propensity and operational capacity to observe, regulate, and adapt their interpersonal behavior in response to situational demands and nonverbal cues. In human interaction, effective social competence relies upon both perceptual processing (interpreting subtle expressive markers from interlocutors) and executive motoric control (modulating facial, vocal, and postural displays to establish desired impressions). Lennox and Wolfe (1984) constructed the RSMS to address serious psychometric flaws in Mark Snyder’s (1974) original construct definition and item pool.

Snyder initially operationalized self-monitoring as a unitary syndrome comprising five distinct components: (a) concern with social appropriateness, (b) attention to social comparison information, (c) expression monitoring, (d) cross-situational behavioral variability, and (e) ability to display theatrical or deceptive expressions. However, subsequent factor analyses revealed that Snyder’s original scale confounded functional social competence with extraversion, social stage presence, and theatrical exhibitionism. Lennox and Wolfe sought to separate this construct from social anxiety and theatrical performance, refining self-monitoring to its essential communicative core: social acuity (perceiving what others feel and need) and behavioral plasticity (adjusting one’s presentation to fit those needs).

In research contexts, the RSMS enables scholars to predict expressive control, leadership efficacy, emotional intelligence, negotiation success, and cross-cultural adaptability. High self-monitors as assessed by the RSMS demonstrate heightened perspective-taking, tactical self-presentation, and responsiveness to organizational politics. In clinical and neuropsychological settings, the RSMS serves as an essential informant- and self-rating metric within batteries assessing frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD), autism spectrum conditions, and acquired social-executive deficits. Patients with neurodegenerative damage to the fronto-insular and ventromedial prefrontal networks frequently exhibit precipitous drops on RSMS subscales, underscoring its utility as an index of real-world socioemotional functioning.

Psychological Construct

The construct of self-monitoring, as purified by Lennox and Wolfe, represents a two-dimensional social-cognitive trait characterized by reciprocal perceptual and behavioral capabilities:

1. Ability to Modify Self-Presentation

This subscale (7 items) quantifies an individual’s perceived self-efficacy in regulating verbal and nonverbal displays across variable social contexts. Unlike the performance-oriented theatrics captured in earlier measures, this dimension reflects functional behavioral flexibility. Individuals scoring high on this subscale report a high capacity to shift posture, conversational tone, personal boundaries, and interpersonal warmth to align with situational norms. They do not report feeling rigid or paralyzed when a social script fails; rather, they dynamically construct alternative impressions. Conversely, individuals scoring low experience behavioral friction, reporting that they struggle to alter their behavior even when they recognize that a situation demands it.

2. Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others

This subscale (6 items) reflects social perceptiveness—specifically, the capacity to decode micro-expressions, shifts in vocal cadence, gaze cues, and unspoken affective states. High scorers are attentive to nonverbal cues that signal deception, discomfort, boredom, or offense. They detect subtle eye movements and vocal shifts that reveal hidden meanings beneath polite discourse. Low scorers tend to interpret communication literally, often failing to detect when an interlocutor is offended, disengaged, or masking negative affect.

Lennox and Wolfe demonstrated that these two subscales, while conceptually distinct, operate cooperatively. Perceptual sensitivity supplies the real-time social diagnostic data necessary to guide self-presentation adjustments. Simultaneously, the capacity to regulate self-presentation provides the vehicle through which those perceptual insights are deployed to achieve interpersonal goals.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical architecture of the RSMS is rooted in symbolic interactionism, dramaturgical sociology, and social cybernetics. Erving Goffman’s dramaturgical model posited that individuals continuously perform “front-stage” self-presentations designed to uphold shared definitions of social situations. To sustain these performances, actors must manage impressions through expressive control, interpreting audience feedback to avoid communicative disruption.

From a cybernetic perspective, self-monitoring functions as a self-correcting feedback loop consisting of:

1. Sensor (Input): Decoded through Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others. The individual perceives environmental and nonverbal feedback (e.g., eye gaze, facial expressions, tone).
2. Comparator: The cognitive appraisal system compares the perceived audience feedback against the actor’s communicative goals.
3. Effector (Output): Enacted through Ability to Modify Self-Presentation. The individual modifies their expressive behavior to reduce discrepancies between expected and observed outcomes.

Lennox and Wolfe’s crucial theoretical innovation was dissociating self-monitoring from motivational constructs like public self-consciousness or social anxiety. Earlier scales confounded the *ability* to read and adjust to social signals with neurotic apprehension over being evaluated. Lennox and Wolfe also developed an associated scale—the Concern for Appropriateness Scale—to isolate social anxiety, retaining the RSMS strictly as a metric of perceptual and behavioral social self-efficacy.

Validity

The psychometric validity of the RSMS has been evaluated through multiple empirical paradigms:

Construct and Structural Validity

Lennox and Wolfe (1984) demonstrated that the 13 items load robustly onto two designated latent constructs without cross-loading on orthogonal artifacts. Confirmatory factor analysis conducted by Cramer and Gruman (2002) confirmed that the two-factor oblique model provides an acceptable fit to empirical data, outperforming unidimensional models (e.g., Comparative Fit Index $[CFI] > .90$; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation $[RMSEA] < .06$). The two factors correlate moderately (typically$r = .35$ to $.45$), validating both their theoretical relation and their empirical distinctness.

Convergent Validity

The RSMS correlates significantly with conceptually allied constructs across social and personality psychology:

• Emotional Intelligence: The RSMS exhibits strong positive correlations with measures of emotion perception, decoding accuracy, and emotion regulation ($r = .40$ to $.55$).
• Social Cue Recognition: The Sensitivity subscale correlates positively with laboratory tests of nonverbal decoding, such as the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (DANVA) and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET).
• Extraversion and Self-Efficacy: The Ability to Modify Self-Presentation subscale correlates positively with generalized social self-efficacy ($r \approx .48$) and social assertiveness, while showing negligible correlation with neuroticism.

Discriminant Validity

Crucially, the RSMS diverges sharply from the original 25-item Snyder scale on measures of social anxiety. Whereas Snyder’s scale showed erratic correlations with social desirability and evaluation apprehension, the RSMS demonstrates near-zero correlations with neuroticism, speech anxiety, and social phobia. This confirms that the RSMS measures functional social capability rather than defensive impression management or social avoidance.

Reliability

The RSMS consistently shows solid internal consistency and temporal stability across community, collegiate, and clinical populations:

• Internal Consistency: In their foundational validation study ($N = 265$), Lennox and Wolfe (1984) reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients of:
  • Ability to Modify Self-Presentation: $\alpha = .77$ (7 items)
  • Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others: $\alpha = .70$ (6 items)
  • Full 13-Item Composite Scale: $\alpha = .84$
• Subsequent Replications: Cramer and Gruman (2002) evaluated the scale across independent samples, reporting alphas ranging from $.75$ to $.81$ for Ability to Modify Self-Presentation, $.70$ to $.77$ for Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior, and $.81$ to $.85$ for the total score. Lipka (2010) reported a total scale alpha of $.83$ in organizational workplace settings.
• Test-Retest Stability: Over test-retest intervals ranging from two to six weeks, Pearson correlation coefficients regularly range from $r = .78$ to $r = .86$, demonstrating solid temporal stability while remaining sensitive to developmental changes or neurological decline.

Factor Analysis

Extensive exploratory (EFA) and confirmatory (CFA) factor-analytic studies have clarified the latent architecture of the RSMS. Initial principal components analysis with varimax and oblimin rotations conducted by Lennox and Wolfe (1984) extracted two distinct factors accounting for substantial common variance, with item loadings ranging from $.45$ to $.74$ onto their intended factors and negligible off-factor loadings (all $< .25$).

Factor Loadings and Structural Fit

Cramer and Gruman (2002) conducted a confirmatory examination of latent structure and gender invariance ($N = 412$). Testing rival structural models, they documented that:

• A single-factor general self-monitoring model produced poor fit indices ($\chi^2/df > 4.5$, $RMSEA = .092$, $CFI = .78$).
• The correlated two-factor model provided good fit to the empirical data ($\chi^2/df = 1.84$, $RMSEA = .045$, $CFI = .94$, $TLI = .93$).
• Factor 1: Ability to Modify Self-Presentation loadings peaked on Item 1 (.68), Item 3 (.73), Item 7 (.71), and Item 10 (.69), with reverse-scored items (Item 9 and Item 12) loading reliably at $.48$ and $.52$, respectively.
• Factor 2: Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others loadings peaked on Item 2 (.62), Item 4 (.67), Item 5 (.65), Item 8 (.61), and Item 11 (.55).

Multigroup CFA analyses have further demonstrated metric and scalar invariance across genders, confirming that differences in subscale means between men and women reflect true trait variations rather than measurement bias.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

The RSMS is a self-administered questionnaire that can be completed in approximately 3 to 5 minutes.

• Test Type: Psychometric self-report scale (also adapted for informant-report in clinical research).
• Format: 13 declarative statements rated on a 6-point response scale.
• Response Options:
  • 0 = Certainly, always false
  • 1 = Generally false
  • 2 = Somewhat false, slightly false
  • 3 = Somewhat true, slightly true
  • 4 = Generally true
  • 5 = Certainly, always true
• Subscale Allocation:
  • Ability to Modify Self-Presentation: Items 1, 3, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 (7 items)
  • Sensitivity to Expressive Behavior of Others: Items 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11 (6 items)
• Scoring Instructions:
  • Reverse Scoring: Items 9 and 12 are negatively worded. Reverse score them before computing composite scores ($0 \rightarrow 5$, $1 \rightarrow 4$, $2 \rightarrow 3$, $3 \rightarrow 2$, $4 \rightarrow 1$, $5 \rightarrow 0$).
  • Subscale Scores: Sum the item ratings within each subscale. The Ability subscale ranges from 0 to 35; the Sensitivity subscale ranges from 0 to 30.
  • Total Score: Sum all 13 items (with Items 9 and 12 reversed). Total scores range from 0 to 65. Higher scores reflect greater overall self-monitoring capacity.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Revised Self-Monitoring Scale was originally published in 1984 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Lennox and Wolfe placed the instrument in the public domain for non-commercial academic, scientific, and educational research purposes. No licensing fees or royalty payments are required to administer the scale for empirical research or clinical evaluations. Researchers using the measure should cite the original 1984 validation paper. Adaptations for commercial diagnostic products or proprietary software platforms may require permission from the American Psychological Association (APA) or the scale authors.

References

• Briggs, S. R., Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. H. (1980). An analysis of the Self-Monitoring Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38(4), 679–686. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.38.4.679
• Cramer, K. M., & Gruman, J. A. (2002). The Lennox and Wolfe Revised Self-Monitoring Scale: Latent structure and gender invariance. Personality and Individual Differences, 32(4), 627–637. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0191-8869(01)00063-4
• Gangestad, S. W., & Snyder, M. (2000). Self-monitoring: Appraisal and reappraisal. Psychological Bulletin, 126(4), 530–555. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.4.530
• Lennox, R. D., & Wolfe, R. N. (1984). Revision of the Self-Monitoring Scale. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(6), 1349–1364. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.6.1349
• Lipka, P. (2010). Sexual Minorities in the Workplace: An Examination of Individual Differences That Affect Responses to Workplace Heterosexism (Doctoral dissertation, Clemson University). All Dissertations, Paper 539. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_dissertations/539/
• Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 526–537. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0037039

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)