Compare methods

	Need to Belong Scale	Self-Monitoring Scale
Field	Social Psychology	Social Psychology
Family	Latent structure	Latent structure
Year of origin	2013	1974
Originator	Mark Leary and colleagues	Mark Snyder
Type	Self-report individual-difference scale	Self-report individual-difference scale
Seminal source	Leary, M. R., Kelly, K. M., Cottrell, C. A., & Schreindorfer, L. S. (2013). Construct validity of the Need to Belong Scale: Mapping the nomological network. Journal of Personality Assessment, 95(6), 610-624.	Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30(4), 526-537.
Aliases	NTBS, Belongingness Need Scale, Need for Belonging Measure	SM Scale, Snyder Self-Monitoring Scale, Self-Monitoring Inventory
Related	3	3
Summary	The Need to Belong Scale (NTBS) is a brief self-report instrument that measures individual differences in the strength of a person's motivation to form and maintain social bonds. Grounded in Baumeister and Leary's belongingness hypothesis -- the claim that the need to belong is a fundamental human motive -- the scale asks respondents to rate agreement with statements about wanting acceptance, fearing rejection, and needing to feel connected. Leary, Kelly, Cottrell, and Schreindorfer's 2013 validation established its construct validity across nine studies, showing that need to belong correlates with but is distinct from related constructs such as affiliation motivation and extraversion, and predicts sensitivity to social cues and reactions to exclusion. It has become a standard moderator and individual-difference measure in research on rejection, ostracism, and social motivation.	The Self-Monitoring Scale, introduced by Mark Snyder in 1974, measures the extent to which people observe and control their expressive behavior and self-presentation in response to situational and interpersonal cues. High self-monitors are sensitive to social context and skilled at adjusting how they come across, behaving like social chameleons whose conduct varies across situations; low self-monitors express their inner attitudes and dispositions more consistently regardless of audience. The original 25-item true/false scale was designed to be internally consistent and temporally stable, validated through laboratory and field studies of expressive control. The construct became influential in person-situation debates, attitude-behavior consistency, and research on impression management, persuasion, and relationships, although the scale's dimensionality and revisions have been the subject of ongoing discussion.