In response to a call by Gangestad and Snyder (2000), this paper is a preliminary step in the investigation of status-oriented motivation in self-monitoring theory. A word association task with four student samples (US, UK, Quebec and Switzerland) shows that the nature of the link between prestige-related knowledge and self-monitoring level varies substantially between the four national samples. Future research should therefore take into account cultural factors when studying the role of prestige as a motivation behind self-monitoring. A series of research questions resulting from the study are discussed in the paper.