The Relationship Between Self-Monitoring and Leadership in Student Project Groups

Abstract

High self-monitoring individuals respond to cues from others and adapt theirself-presentations to suit their audience. Since one of the goals of this behavioris to create a favorable impression in the audience, self-monitoring has beenidentified as a factor that might be related to an individual's being perceived asa leader. Although several studies have revealed a significant relationshipbetween self-monitoring and leader emergence, relatively few have examined therelationship outside the laboratory setting. The purpose of the two studiesreported in this article was to examine whether self-reported scores on a measure of self-monitoring would be related to leader emergence in student groupsworking on realistic, sustained projects. Study One revealed a low, but significant, correlation between self-monitoring and leader emergence. Study Twofound a negligible relationship in the overall sample, but a significant moderatecorrelation in a group of preferred leaders who were examined separately. Thevariation in magnitude of correlations in the overall sample seemed to beexplained by fluctuations in correlations for females. The relationship betweenself-monitoring and males remained at a low but stable level over the twostudies.