Personality judgment
Background
Personality judgment is the process through which people perceive each other’s personalities through receiving certain information about others, or meeting others in person [1]. The purpose of personality judgment is generally thought to be either to understand past behavior exhibited by the target individual, or predict future behavior of the target individual [1]. Current theories concerning personality judgment focus on the accuracy of personality judgments, and the effects of personality judgments on various aspects of social interactions [1].
Accuracy of personality judgment
A variety of variables contribute to the accuracy or inaccuracy of personality judgment in systematic ways. These variables include characteristics of the individual whose personality is being judged as well as characteristics of the individual who is judging personality. Characteristics of the target individual that are important for accurate personality judgment include visibility of the trait in question [2], psychological adjustment of the target individual [2], amount of personal disclosure concerning personal values [3], and facial expressions corresponding to personality traits [4]. Characteristics of the individual judging personality including gender and ethnic similarity to target [5], stereotype knowledge and utilization [6], and relationship to the target individual [7] are also important determinants of accuracy of personality judgment.
Cultural influences on personality judgment
An additional determinant of the processes through which personality is judged and the accuracy of these judgments is culture. Typically, researchers report cross-cultural consistency in the judgment of personality [8]. However, people from different types of cultures tend to find certain traits more easily identifiable than others, based on judging personality from facial characteristics of targets alone [9]. For example, people from Western cultures are typically better able to identify the traits of extroversion and aggresion than individuals from Eastern cultures [9].
References
- ^ a b c Funder, D. C. (1995). On the accuracy of personality judgment: A realistic approach. Psychological Review, 102(4), 652-670. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.102.4.652
- ^ a b Human, L. J., & Biesanz, J. C. (2011). Target adjustment and self-other agreement: Utilizing trait observability to disentangle judgeability and self-knowledge. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 101(1), 202-216. doi:10.1037/a0023782
- ^ Beer, A., & Brooks, C. (2011). Information quality in personality judgment: The value of personal disclosure. Journal Of Research In Personality, 45(2), 175-185. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.01.001
- ^ Hall, J. A., Gunnery, S. D., & Andrzejewski, S. A. (2011). Nonverbal emotion displays, communication modality, and the judgment of personality. Journal Of Research In Personality, 45(1), 77-83. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2010.11.012
- ^ Letzring, T. D. (2010). The effects of judge-target gender and ethnicity similarity on the accuracy of personality judgments. Social Psychology, 41(1), 42-51. doi:10.1027/1864-9335/a000007
- ^ Chan, W., & Mendelsohn, G. A. (2010). Disentangling stereotype and person effects: Do social stereotypes bias observer judgment of personality?. Journal Of Research In Personality, 44(2), 251-257. doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2010.02.001
- ^ Connelly, B. S., & Ones, D. S. (2010). An other perspective on personality: Meta-analytic integration of observers' accuracy and predictive validity. Psychological Bulletin, 136(6), 1092-1122. doi:10.1037/a0021212
- ^ Albright, L., Malloy, T. E., Dong, Q., Kenny, D. A., & Fang, X. (1997). Cross-cultural consensus in personality judgments. Journal Of Personality And Social Psychology, 72(3), 558-569. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.3.558
- ^ a b Walker, M., Jiang, F., Vetter, T., & Sczesny, S. (2011). Universals and cultural differences in forming personality trait judgments from faces. Social Psychological And Personality Science, 2(6), 609-617. doi:10.1177/1948550611402519