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Personality
Assessment 1 Running head:
TARGET’S AND JUDGE’S ASSESSMENT OF PERSONALITY Personality
Assessment: Targets’ versus Judges’ Perceptions in a
Personality Assessment: Targets' versus Judges' Perceptions in a Group
of High School Students Do we perceive ourselves in the same way as others perceive us with respect to our personalities? Everyone has had an experience wherein they feel that another person has judged them unfairly or that their central nature was misunderstood. Because we are each confined to an indelible internal perspective of ourselves, we cannot be sure if we look the same to people who are forced to view us from an external position. Perhaps personality not only determines subjective opinions but is also a subjective
matter itself. A previous study on interpersonal perceptions (Kenny, Albright, Malloy, & Kashy, 1994) used “The Big Five,” factors of personality established by Norman in 1963 (as cited in Kenny, et. al, 1994). The five personality factors include extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and openness. Using these guidelines, interpersonal relationships could be tested to explore various correlations. A more accurate interpersonal relationship would agree in all five categories, and there could be larger and smaller discrepancies found in different areas. As Kenny (1991) found in his study, simply because people agree on the assessment of an individual’s personality does not mean that their judgment is accurate. Kenny studied the six factors that determine consensus between judges (other than accuracy). Judges may agree because they have seen the target (the personality being studied) in similar situations, or because they share “meaning systems” by which they interpret the target’s actions, or because they have discussed, and subsequently matched, their opinions of the target’s personality. Thus, two people may agree
in the analysis of a personality, without being entirely correct. Funder, Kolar, and Blackman (1995) conducted a study which ruled out some of the hypotheses of inaccurate but corresponding assessment. The study discounted what they called the “overlap hypothesis,” which suggests that judges may agree because they have seen the target in the same environment, and the “communication
Personality Assessment 3 hypothesis” which states that similarity may exist if the judges have talked about their opinions with each other. By obtaining personality assessments from the targets’ parents, fellow college students, and acquaintances in their hometown, the researchers were able to conclude that the agreements were not due to any interaction between the judges or similar situations, because the different groups had no possibility for previous communication, nor had they observed the target in only one setting. The second part to the research of Funder et al. (1995) discredited the “similarity hypothesis,” which suggests that the judges may be similar to the target (and thus rate the target analogously to themselves) because people often choose friends who have comparable personalities. The researchers gathered data from both strangers and acquaintances and had them assess their own characters as well as the targets’ characters. Even when the results of the tests between the two were very different, the correlation between the judges’ and targets’ opinions of the
targets’ personalities remained fairly strong. Trope and Alfieri (1997) investigated the fundamental attribution error: (i.e., how observers tend to over-utilize dispositional traits and under-utilize situational influences when determining an individual’s personality.) This tendency could affect the correlation between the perceptions of the targets and the judges. For example, a person may know herself to be friendly and outgoing, but an observer seeing her in an awkward situation might notice that she is quiet and withdrawn and assume that her behavior is due to an inherently unsociable personality. Trope and Alfieri’s research explored how an observer may judge someone’s personality based on the situational
Personality Assessment 4 information, but then alter their presumptions once they infer more
about the person’s behavior in the future. Technical “accuracy” in the assessment of an individual’s nature is difficult to define, for there is no completely objective “key” for answers, but true accuracy need not be the primary focus. More telling is the comparison of the target’s self-assessment to a friend’s assessment, or the correspondence of evaluations from multiple judges. In our experiment, we will have multiple subjects and judges complete personality assessments, and examine the correlation between the judges’ and the targets’ assessments. We will statistically analyze the whole group as well as examine any differences relating to gender. We predict that targets (i.e., those subjects rating their own personalities) will exaggerate their admirable qualities and think of themselves more idealistically, producing a favorable evaluation, whereas judges (i.e., subjects rating a partner) will rate the targets more realistically because they have a more objective outside perspective. The correlation in female relationships will likely be stronger than the correlation between males because females tend to express themselves more openly to each other.
References Funder, D. C., Kolar, D. C., & Blackman, M. C. (1995). Agreement among judges of personality: Interpersonal relations, similarity, and acquaintanceship.
Journal of Personality and Social Kenny, D. A. (1991). A general model of consensus and accuracy in interpersonal perception. Psychological Review, 98, 155-163. Kenny, D. A., Albright, L., Malloy, T. E., & Kashy, D. A. (1994). Consensus in interpersonal perception: Acquaintance and the big five. Psychological
Bulletin, 116, 245-258. Trope, Y. & Alfieri, T. (1997). Effortfulness and flexibility of dispositional judgment processes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 662-674. |
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