Journal oj Personality and Social Psychology 1975, Vol. 32, No. 4, 637-644 Persons, Situations, and the Control of Social Behavior Mark Snyder and Thomas C. Monson University of Minnesota Two studies investigated differences in the situational control of behavior as a result of variation in attentiveness to situational and interpersonal guides to social appropriateness. In Study 1, subjects participated in a group discussion that made salient either of two reference groups. The effects of this manipula- tion on social conformity were examined as a function of self-monitoring and neuroticism measures. Social conformity of high self-monitoring and low neu- roticism subjects differed reliably between discussion contexts. Low self-moni- toring and high neuroticism subjects were unaffected by discussion context. In Study 2, raters judged their generosity, honesty, and hostility in nine relevant situations. A variance measure of perceived situational variability indicated that high self-monitoring subjects reported more situational variability than did low self-monitoring subjects. Implications for the interaction of situa- tional and dispositional determinants of behavior are discussed. Research and theory have Idng attempted to weigh the relative influence of situational and dispositional determinants of human be- havior. Inevitably, participants in this en- deavor have taken sides. Classical personality formulations have emphasized traits and types and searched for cross-situational consisten- cies in behavior (Alker, 1972; Cattell, 1950; Guilford, 19S9). Unfortunately for this posi- tion, as Mischel (1968) has documented, cross-situational correlation coefficients in any domain of social behavior rarely exceed .30. Social learning theorists (e.g., Mischel, 1968, 1973) have interpreted this as evidence for the situational control of behavior. Neverthe- less, whenever comparisons of the amount of variance in self-report, self-rating, or actual behaviors attributable to person variables and situation variables are made, rarely do either account for sizable amounts of variance. Bow- ers (1973) has reported that across 18 com- parisons, the average variance due to persons This research was supported in part by a grant in aid of research from the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota and in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant 1R03 MH 24998- 01A1 to Mark Snyder. We thank Paul S. Rosenblatt for constructive ad- vice and comments on earlier versions of this manu- script. Requests for reprints should be sent to Mark Snyder, Laboratory for Research in Social Relations, Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 554S5. was 12.71%, that due to situations was 10.17%, and that due to Person X Situation interactions was 20.77%. Recent perspectives on the "traits versus situations" debate have stressed the interac- tion between personal and situational deter- minants of behavior (e.g., Bern, 1972; End- ler, Note 1). Moreover, research suggests that individuals differ in the extent to which their social behavior is consistent ("trait- like") or variable ("trait free") across social situations (Bern & Allen, 1974; Campus, 1974). One interpretation of these findings is that persons differ in the extent to which situational and dispositional factors influence behavior. Moreover, these individual differ- ences can be conceptualized in terms of the social-psychological construct of self-monitor- ing (McGee & Snyder, 197S; Snyder, 1972, 1974). Self-monitoring individuals, out of a concern for the situational and interpersonal appropriateness of their social behavior, are particularly sensitive to the expression and self-presentation of others in social situations and use these cues as guidelines for managing their own social behavior. As a result, these persons should show considerable situation- to-situation discriminativeness or variability in their behavior. By comparison, non-self- monitoring individuals have less concern for the appropriateness of their social behavior and attend less to situational cues as guides to their social behavior. Their behavioral 637