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The Effects of Gender and Self-Monitoring on Dating Motivations
Interest in the way interpersonal relationships are formed, preserved, and reflected upon has spawned a series of studies specifically involving romantic relationships. The way one presents oneself has shown to play an important role in the type of romantic relationship that person seeks or keeps. Specifically, several studies have been aimed at discovering the impacts of the psychological construct of self-monitoring on choosing, maintaining and evaluating romantic relationships. Individual differences in self-monitoring have been assessed in a number of studies, using a 25-item Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974), where participants scoring lower in self-monitoring have been classified in previous studies as "low self-monitors," and those scoring higher on the scale have been classified as "high-self monitors." High self-monitors are generally considered to be those who are often “engaged in monitoring and controlling the images of self they project in social interaction” (Snyder, Berscheid & Glick, 1985, p. ... Low-self monitors are considered to be those who are “typically less responsive to situational and interpersonal specifications of behavior appropriateness” (Synder et al. ... In previous research, the results of the self-monitoring questionnaire have been used in conjunction with a study of some aspect(s) of participants’ dating preferences, motivations or thoughts about their current relationships. The findings of many of these studies have extended and supported the idea that significant dating motivation differences exist (at the various stages of a romantic relationship) among high self-monitors compared to low-self monitors. The objectives of the present study were to further examine the relationship of self-monitoring on dating motivations, but also to examine the effect of gender and relationship status on dating motivations.
The initiation stage of a relationship is the most basic and fundamental, and a research study involving two investigations about the initiation of a romantic relationship was conducted by Snyder, Berscheid and Glick (1985) on thirty-nine male undergraduates, where the group was divided into a high self-monitor group and a low self-monitor group. When initiating a romantic relationship in an open-field setting (when there was a choice to be made among more than one potential partner) it was found that those high in self-monitoring were more likely to choose partners on the basis of exterior appearance, while those low in self-monitoring chose partners based on interior attributes. ... Those high in self-monitoring spent significantly more time viewing the photograph than low self-monitors, who spent significantly more time reviewing the personal information given about the date candidates. ... High self-monitors sacrificed personality traits for a date with the more attractive “Jennifer,” while low self-monitors sacrificed appearance for a preferred date with “Kristen,” because she possessed more positive personality traits. Thus, it was concluded that at the initiation stage of a romantic relationship, low self-monitor males were more interested in (and spent more time evaluating) females with interesting and positive interior personality traits, even at the expense of exterior traits. Accordingly, high self-monitor males were more interested in (and spent more time evaluating) exterior traits in potential partners, even if they were less adequate in the realm of personality. ...
A study by Jones (1993) used the dating motivation scale developed by Rempel, Holmes and Zanna (1985) in conjunction with the assessment of self-monitoring, to broaden our understanding of some of the detailed traits that high self-monitors may romantically prefer versus low self-monitors. ... The dating motivation scale was used to assess their intrinsic, extrinsic and instrumental motivations with respect to their partners. High self-monitors reported more extrinsic motivations (superficial, externally-generated rewards gained merely because of involvement in a particular relationship) and fewer intrinsic motivations (pleasures derived directly from being with their partner) for dating than did low self-monitors. No significant differences in instrumental motivations (interpersonal rewards) were found between high and low self-monitors. In the second investigation, a group of unmarried high self-monitor undergraduates were compared with a group of unmarried low self-monitor undergraduates through the administration of a questionnaire, where participants were asked to rank preferences on 19 potential characteristics for a dating partner.
Approximate Word count = 3399
Approximate Pages = 13.6
(250 words per page double spaced)
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