Self-Monitoring – Importance

Why is it Important?

Self-monitoring allows us to observe on our cognitive processes and behavior, notice when an error has been committed, change the behavior, and learn from the experience.¹

Education

Educational success is dependent on the student’s ability to “reflect on their progress towards a goal, to select strategies that work, and to alter strategies that are not working.”² They need to martial their conflict, attention, and uncertainty monitoring to effectively learn from their teachers and materials, and they must rely on their error and outcome monitoring processes to accurately complete their assignments in order to get passing grades. Even a student’s interoception can effect their educational success, as if a student doesn’t realize they are physically, emotionally, or mentally stressed in some way, they may not realize that their other monitoring processes are impaired due to the increase cognitive load.

Socializing

“…social self-monitoring [includes the] extent to which one keeps track of his or her own behavior and its effect on others. Problems with monitoring are described in terms of failing to appreciate or have an awareness of one’s own social behavior and the effect this might have on others. ³

In social environments, performance monitoring parameters, such as errors, can arise from one’s own actions and from other’s actions. As such, monitoring others’ actions and outcomes is informative for adaptive behaviors in social settings.⁴

For example, people who rate high in self-monitoring tend to be able to change their behavior to match their social context, and are sometimes called “social chameleons.” Those low in self-monitoring, on the other hand, tend to “stick with one consistent set of behaviors and preferences”.⁵

Monitoring is also important for inferring others’ mental states and understanding their actions, beliefs, and intentions.⁴ It has been shown that “social observation and evaluation increase[s] physiological arousal,” ⁶ and thus one’s own error monitoring tends to become heightened, and when an error, social or otherwise, is made, “the actor might consider what the observer is thinking of the actor.”⁴

It seems that most of the same neurological processes that are involved for error monitoring for the self are also activated when observing others.⁴ Interestingly, the role of the anterior insula (AI) “is to evaluate the resulting information [from an error] in a broader context of agency and social factors,” or, “to signal the affective consequences of intentional actions”, or “affective evaluation of errors,” for both the self and others, particularly if the others’ error was due to one’s self, or if the consequences will effect the self.¹ The AI is also associated with things such as vicarious pain, vicarious emotions, guilt, and shame, which then encourages behavioral modification. ¹ Overall the ability to monitor the actions and consequences of others has been shown to be a part of the social learning process, influencing our own reactions to similar situations in the future.⁴

Work

While metacognitive monitoring is important at work for the same reasons as in education, workplace politics also puts a special emphasis on social monitoring as well.

Defining social monitoring as “an individual’s observation, regulation, and control of his or her expressive behavior and self-presentation guided by social and situational cues”⁷ those who score high in such self-monitoring have been shown to be judged as “less anxious, more competent, and happier” during job interviews, leading to more job offers.⁷ Then, when in the job, ” newcomers high in self- monitoring will be especially open to and adept at recognizing critical situational and interpersonal cues about the organizational network structure and resources,” making them particularly “resilient in the face of long-term scrutiny, owing to their ability to act upon contextual cues and to fit in” and their ability to regulate “their emotions when confronted with negative events.”⁷

High self-monitoring has also been associated with leadership.⁷ High social self-monitoring has been found by researchers to be “positively associated with the use of specific influence tactics, such as ingratiation, building coalitions, appealing to higher authority, assertiveness, and rationality.”⁷
They also tend to occupy “structurally advantageous bridging positions in social networks, and also [have] the ability to capitalize on the advantages of such positions.”⁷

However, high self-monitors do not have quite as clear of an advantage in the workplace as it might seem. For example, while high-self monitors seem to more frequently become leaders, some research has brought into question if they are the best at leadership. High self monitors, likely due in part to their increased likelihood of “moral slippage in the form of manipulation and unethical behavior when individuals [see] it as reasonable,”⁷ have been shown to be related to negative impressions according to subordinates, and “negative effects on managerial and unit performance.”⁷ Higher social self-monitoring has also been associated with increased “likelihood of falling victim to false consensus error,” (the “tendency to overestimate the degree to which one’s own attitudes on specific issues are shared by others) as well as increased “unfair decision making,” including a higher liklihood of hiring fellow high self-monitors or physically attractive applicants over more qualified people with less socially-desirable presentations.⁷ They also have a tendency to “burn out” from emotional exhaustion of keeping up with the constant demands of conforming to ever-changing social situations.⁷

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