Self-monitoring in middle childhood: Personality and social correlates.

Abstract

This study examined the stability of self-monitoring in children and the relationship between self-monitoring and personality and family variables. Participants were 93 1st, 3rd, and 5th-grade children and their parents. Children completed the Junior Self-Monitoring scale, Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children (1st graders) or the Self-Perception Profile for Children (3rd and 5th graders), and a sociometric scale. Self-monitoring was stable for all children across a 15-month interval. As expected, self-monitoring was moderately related to extraversion, and for boys, higher self-monitoring scores were related to peer popularity and self-esteem. Children's self-monitoring was not related to their parents' self-monitoring, but was related to their ordinal position in the family and the number of children in the family