Listeners' Perceptions of Speaker Personality Traits Based on Speech

Purpose Voice and speech are rich with information about a speaker's personality and other features of identity. This study seeks to determine the extent to which listeners agree about speakers' social, physical, and personality attributes. Method Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, listeners rated a group of speakers who were unbalanced for sex and personality traits. The second experiment elaborated on the first by ensuring the speaker set was balanced for sex and personality traits. Both experiments played standard speech samples from speakers who provided personality information via the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire–Brief Form. Groups of listeners rated each speaker on the same personality traits and other features of identity. Responses were analyzed for listener agreement. Results For both experiments, listeners showed consistently high levels of agreement on the personality attributes of a speaker. For certain speakers, listener agreement on some personality traits was as high as 92% and 97% in Experiments 1 and 2, respectively. Furthermore, a range of agreement across personality subscales was observed across speakers such that some were agreed-upon across all personality ratings and others were agreed-upon only for a few personality traits. Conclusions When it comes to judging personality traits and other features of identity, most listeners might not be “correct” about speakers' traits and attributes, but they broadly agree about how the listener sounds. Some speakers send more salient voice and speech cues that drive agreement about their personality, whereas others speak in a manner that precludes consensus. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.16906990

Who Are You? The Study of Personality in Patients With Anterograde Amnesia

Little is known about the role of declarative memory in the ongoing perception of one’s personality. Seven individuals who developed a rare and severe type of anterograde amnesia following damage to their medial temporal lobes were identified from our neurological patient registry. We examined the stability of their personality ratings on the Big Five Inventory over five retest periods and assessed the accuracy of their ratings via analyses of self–caregiver agreement. The patients portrayed a stable sense of self over the course of 1 year. However, their self-ratings differed from those provided by the caregivers. Intriguingly, these discrepancies diminished when caregivers retrospectively rated the patients’ personalities prior to their brain injury, suggesting that patients’ perceptions of themselves were stuck in the past. We interpret our findings to indicate that the ability to form new declarative memories is not required for maintaining a stable sense of self but may be important for updating one’s sense of self over time.

What teachers and parents can add to personality ratings of children: Unique associations with academic performance in elementary school

Adults’ ratings of children’s personality have been found to be more closely associated with academic performance than children’s self-reports. However, less is known about the relevance of the unique perspectives held by specific adult observers such as teachers and parents for explaining variance in academic performance. In this study, we applied bifactor (S–1) models for 1411 elementary school children to investigate the relative merits of teacher and parent ratings of children’s personalities for academic performance above and beyond the children’s self-reports. We examined these associations using standardized achievement test scores in addition to grades. We found that teachers’ unique views on children’s openness and conscientiousness had the strongest associations with academic performance. Parents’ unique views on children’s neuroticism showed incremental associations above teacher ratings or self-reports. For extraversion and agreeableness, however, children’s self-reports were more strongly associated with academic performance than teacher or parent ratings. These results highlight the differential value of using multiple informants when explaining academic performance with personality traits.

This is what loneliness looks like: A mixed-methods study of loneliness in adolescence and young adulthood

The present study used quantitative and qualitative methods to explore how lonely young people are seen from others’ perspectives, in terms of their personality, behavior, and life circumstances. Data were drawn from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a cohort of 2,232 individuals born in the U.K. in the mid-1990s. When participants were aged 18, they provided self-reports of loneliness, and informant ratings of loneliness were provided by interviewers, as well as participants’ parents and siblings. Interviewers further provided Big Five personality ratings and detailed written notes in which they documented their perceptions of the participants and their reflections on the content of the interview. In the quantitative section of the article, regression analyses were used to examine the perceptibility of loneliness and how participants’ loneliness related to their perceived personality traits. The informant ratings of participants’ loneliness showed good agreement with self-reports. Furthermore, loneliness was associated with lower perceived conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extroversion and higher perceived neuroticism. Within-twin pair analyses indicated that these associations were partly explained by common underlying genetic influences. In the qualitative section of the study, the loneliest 5% of study participants ( N = 108) were selected, and thematic analysis was applied to the study interviewers’ notes about those participants. Three themes were identified and named: “uncomfortable in own skin,” “clustering of risk,” and “difficulties accessing social resources.” These results add depth to the current conceptualization of loneliness and emphasize the complexity and intersectional nature of the circumstances severely lonely young adults live in.

Relationship Between Patient and Informant Assessment of Personality and Cognitive Status

Personality has been linked to risk of dementia. Most studies ask individuals to rate their own personality traits or for a knowledgeable informant to perform the rating; few collect data from both. When informants are asked to give an estimate of the patient’s lifelong personality traits, they often describe personality before disease onset. When asked to self-rate, patients may instead assess their personality as they see themselves, providing a personality-state measure. The goal of this study was to assess agreement between two independent measures of personality and evaluate whether stage of cognitive impairment and characteristics of patients or caregivers impact concordance. In 79 consecutive patient-caregiver dyads presenting to our center (mean age:76.8±8.4; 44.1% female; 6% cognitively normal, 41% MCI; and 53% dementia) with in-depth psychosocial and neuropsychological evaluations, we found informants rated patients lower on openness (O) (ICC=0.434; 95%CI: 0.235-0.598) and agreeableness (A) (ICC=0.491; 95%CI: 0.302-0.643) and higher on extraversion (O) (ICC=0.396; 95%CI: 0.191-0.568) and neuroticism (N) (ICC=0.444; 95%CI: 0.247-0.607). Greater discordance was observed in established dementia (ICCE=0.497; 95%CI: 0.222-0.700; ICCA=0.337; 95%CI:0.031-0.586; ICCN=0.422; 95%CI: 0.191-0.683), compared with MCI (ICCO=0.568; 95%CI: 0.282-0.762). We explored the effect of patient and caregiver mood and caregiver burden on personality ratings. Although personality is typically described as a trait, we present evidence that in the eyes of patients, personality ratings may represent a state that changes across the spectrum of cognitive impairment. Understanding how patients and caregivers differentially perceive personality may assist in developing novel psychotherapeutic interventions and approaches dealing with behavioral manifestations of dementia.

Personality, cognition and behavior in chimpanzees: a new approach based on Eysenck’s model

Personality has been linked to individual variation in interest and performance in cognitive tasks. Nevertheless, this relationship is still poorly understood and has rarely been considered in animal cognition research. Here, we investigated the association between personality and interest, motivation and task performance in 13 sanctuary chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) housed at Fundació Mona (Spain). Personality was assessed with a 12-item questionnaire based on Eysenck’s Psychoticism-Extraversion-Neuroticism model completed by familiar keepers and researchers. Additionally, personality ratings were compared to behavioral observations conducted over an 11-year period. Experimental tasks consisted in several puzzle boxes that needed to be manipulated in order to obtain a food reward. Dependent variables included participation (as an indicator of interest), success and latency (as measures of performance), and losing contact with the task (as an indicator of motivation). As predicted, we obtained significant correlations between Eysenck’s personality traits and observed behaviors, although some expected associations were absent. We then analyzed data using Generalized Linear Mixed Models, running a model for each dependent variable. In both sexes, lower Extraversion and lower Dominance were linked to a higher probability of success, but this effect was stronger in females. Furthermore, higher Neuropsychoticism predicted higher probability of success in females, but not in males. The probability of losing contact with the task was higher in young chimpanzees, and in those rated lower on Extraversion and higher on Dominance. Additionally, chimpanzees rated higher on Neuropsychoticism were also more likely to stop interacting with the task, but again this was more evident in females. Participation and latency were not linked to any personality trait. Our findings show that the PEN may be a good model to describe chimpanzee personality, and stress the importance of considering personality when interpreting the results of cognitive research in non-human primates.

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Barry CT, McDougall KH, Anderson AC et al. „Check Your Selfie before You Wreck Your Selfie“: Personality ratings of Instagram users as a function of self-image posts. Journal of Research in Personality 2019; 82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.07.001

Peer Sociometric Status and Personality Development from Middle Childhood to Preadolescence

Sociometric status, the regard that other group members confer to an individual, is one of the most ubiquitous and behaviourally relevant attributes assigned to the person by the social environment. Despite this, its contribution to personality development has received little attention. The present three–wave longitudinal study, spanning the age range 7–13 years ( n = 1222), sought to fill this gap by examining the transactional pathways between peer sociometric status (measured by peer nominations) and Five–Factor personality traits (measured by self–ratings and parent and teacher ratings). Sociometric status prospectively predicted the development of extraversion. By contrast, agreeableness and neuroticism prospectively predicted the development of sociometric status. Furthermore, individual–level stability in extraversion was associated with individual–level stability in sociometric status. The results were robust across different sources of personality ratings. We argue that peer sociometric status in the school classroom is the type of environmental effect that has potential to explain personality development. Because of its stability, broadness, and possible impact across a variety of personality processes, sociometric status can both repetitiously and simultaneously influence the network of multiple inter–correlated micro–level personality processes, potentially leading to a new network equilibrium that manifests in changes at the level of the broad personality trait. © 2019 European Association of Personality Psychology

Peer Sociometric Status and Personality Development from Middle Childhood to Preadolescence

Sociometric status, the regard that other group members confer to an individual, is one of the most ubiquitous and behaviorally relevant attributes assigned to the person by the social environment. Despite this, its contribution to personality development has received little attention. The present three-wave longitudinal study, spanning the age range 7-13 years (n = 1222), sought to fill this gap by examining the transactional pathways between peer sociometric status (measured by peer nominations) and Five-Factor personality traits (measured by self-, parent, and teacher ratings). Sociometric status prospectively predicted the development of extraversion. By contrast, agreeableness and neuroticism prospectively predicted the development of sociometric status. Furthermore, individual-level stability in extraversion was associated with individual-level stability in sociometric status. The results were robust across different sources of personality ratings. We argue that peer sociometric status in the school classroom is the type of environmental effect that has potential to explain personality development. Due to its stability, broadness, and possible impact across a variety of personality processes, sociometric status can both repetitiously and simultaneously influence the network of multiple inter-correlated micro-level personality processes, potentially leading to a new network equilibrium that manifests in changes at the level of the broad personality trait.