Snyder (1974; 1987) introduced the psychological construct ''self-moni
toring''. High self-monitorers are especially attentive to the situati
onal appropriateness of their behavior, and they search and use social
cues in order to present themselves and to regulate as well as contro
l their behavior. Low self-monitorers are less attentive to the social
cues and they also do not possess a well developed repertoire of skil
ls in order to present themselves. A German version of the self monito
ring scale was introduced by Nowack and Kammer (1987), However, these
authors found the scale to be composed of two independent subscales, '
'inconsistency'' and ''social skills''. In our first study (N=431 univ
ersity students) we replicated the two factor structure by means of co
nfirmatory factor analysis. Model fit turned out to be higher (GFl=.91
) than for a one-dimensional model (GFl=.83). The two subscales are on
ly marginally correlated (r=.14). In addition, inconsistency seems to
be of a more defensive and neurotic nature in comparison to social ski
lls, in that inconsistency correlates higher with neuroticism (r=.32 v
s. r=.-.23), public self consciousness (r=.23 vs. r=-.03) and social d
esirability (r=-.39 vs. r=.08). In a second study assessors' ratings o
f candidates for supervisory positions in the context of assessment ce
nters within an international enterprise were correlated with ''social
skills'' (N=58; r=.26; p (<.05) but not with ''inconsistency'' (r=.02
; ns).