In this paper, a compliance control strategy for robot manipulators that employs a self-adjusting stiffiness function is proposed. Based on the contact force, each entry of the diagonal stiffness matrix corresponding to a task coordinate in the operational space is adaptively adjusted during contact along the corresponding axis. The proposed method can be used for both the unconstrained and constrained motions without any switching mechanism which often causes undesirable instability and/or vibrational motion of the end-effector. The experimental results involving a two-link direct drive manipulator interacting with an unknown environment demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method.