Opposite-Sex Friendship Initiation: Some Dispositional Differences in Self-Monitoring

Presenter Information

Abigail Masterson

Faculty Sponsor

Dr. Christopher Leone

Faculty Sponsor College

College of Arts and Sciences

Faculty Sponsor Department

Psychology

Location

SOARS Virtual Conference

Presentation Website

https://unfsoars.domains.unf.edu/2021/posters/opposite-sex-friendship-initiation-some-dispositional-differences-in-self-monitoring/

Keywords

SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Archives; SOARS (Conference) (2021 : University of North Florida) – Posters; University of North Florida -- Students -- Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Office of Undergraduate Research; University of North Florida. Graduate School; College students – Research -- Florida – Jacksonville – Posters; University of North Florida – Graduate students – Research – Posters; University of North Florida. Department of Psychology -- Research – Posters; Friendship -- Sex differences – Research – Posters; Project of Merit Award Winner

Abstract

Project of Merit Winner

Compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors have an unrestricted orientation to sexual liaisons and view friendships as activity-based (see Fuglestad & Snyder, 2010, for a literature review). These two tendencies suggest high self-monitors are more likely than low self-monitors to initiate opposite sex friendships for sexual purposes. To evaluate this prediction, 133 male and 135 female heterosexuals completed the 25 item Self-Monitoring Scale (Snyder, 1974) and the Reasons for Friendship Initiation Scale (Bleske-Rechek & Buss, 2001). Using participants’ self-monitoring and sex as predictors in multiple regression analyses, high self-monitors more often than low self-monitors cited the following reasons as being important when they initiated opposite sex friendships: they (a) wanted to have sex as well as (b) desired protection (c) sought info about other opposite sex individuals, (d) networked with other opposite sex individuals, (e) assessed their friends’ mate potential, (f) assessed their own sexual desirability, (g) wanted to boost their self-esteem, and (h) wanted to acquire resources or status (all ps < .05). Self-monitoring differences were independent of sex differences. These findings extend both the self-monitoring and opposite sex friendship initiation literatures. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

Comments

Audio Presentation Transcript:

Hi everyone! My name is Abigail Masterson and today I am going to be presenting my poster entitled: Opposite-sex friendship initiation: some dispositional differences in self-monitoring. A little bit of background information regarding self-monitoring. The traditional model of self-monitoring consists of two categories: high and low. High self-monitors are more concerned with social appropriateness and direct their attention to others regarding how they should act. Low self-monitors on the other hand are more concerned with staying true to themselves and direct their attention inwards regarding how they should act.
Within sexual relationships, high self-monitors are more likely to have an unrestricted orientation meaning they are likely to have more and be less committed to their sexual partners. Low self-monitors on the other hand are more likely to have a restricted orientation meaning they are likely to have fewer and be more committed to their sexual partners. Overall high self-monitors are likely to be more promiscuous while low self-monitors are more likely to be in committed monogamous relationships.
Moving on to reasons for opposite sex friendship initiation, there are two broad categories why people would initiate an opposite sex friendship: mate potential or friendship. These categories are then broken down into more specific reasons for initiation being self-esteem boost, resource acquisition, physical protection, sexual attraction, desire for sex, common interests, emotional support, advice about the opposite sex, conversation, and overall companionship. Some of these reasons fit in both the mate potential and friendship categories so we looked at the traits individually.
We hypothesized self-monitoring would be positively correlated with sexual gratification as an important reason for initiating opposite sex friendships while self-monitoring would be negatively correlated with companionship as an important reason for initiating opposite sex friendships.
We had 268 participants collected via amazon’s MTurk. Participants completed the 25 item self-monitoring scale, the reasons for initiation scale, and the sociosexual orientation inventory as a potential covariate.
We found that self-monitoring was positively correlated with sexual gratification, protection, networking, self-esteem boost, gaining information about the opposite sex, mate potential, acquiring resources, gaining status, and assessing sexual desirability being important reasons for initiating an opposite sex friendship. This means those higher in self-monitoring were more likely to cite those reasons as being important when initiating an opposite sex friendship. Sexual accessibility and companionship were not related to self-monitoring when controlling for sociosexuality.
Overall, our first hypothesis was supported- high self-monitors are more likely than low self-monitors to cite all other reasons measured as being important for initiating opposite sex friendships, including sexual gratification. Our second hypothesis was not supported as we found companionship was not an important reason for self-monitors to initiate an opposite sex friendship.
This extends the literature regarding friendship and individual differences. Also, this provides evidence that personality traits are related to why people choose the friends they do. Some limitations are that this was collected via a self-report survey and was correlational. This data was also collected during March and April of 2020, where the coronavirus pandemic initiated lockdown. There is a potential that high self-monitors cited all the reasons as being important since they were lonelier.
Some future directions include: Replication in LGBTQ relationships, assessing protective versus acquisitive self-monitoring, and examining at a dyadic level. Thank you for listening to my presentation! If you have any questions my email is located in the bottom right corner of my poster.

Rights Statement

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