Self-monitoring and personality: A behavioural-genetic study

The present study focuses on the relationship between the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality (Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness) and self-monitoring, especially Social Skills and Inconsistency.Behaviour genetic methodology was used to determine the extent to which genetic and/or environmental factors contributed to individual differences in self-monitoring and to determine the genetic and/or environmental basis of any relationship between the two self-monitoring subscales as well as between personality and self-monitoring.The sampling frame of the present study is the German Observational Study of Adult Twins (GOSAT) in which self- and peer reports of the German version of the NEO-PI-R (Ostendorf & Angleitner, 2004) and self-reports of a German version of the self-monitoring scale (Nowack & Kammer, 1987) were collected for 300 mono- and dizygotic twin pairs.Behavioural-genetic analyses showed substantial heritability for personality as well as for self-monitoring. Moreover, the relationship between personality and self-monitoring was partly mediated by genetic influences.