The judgment of personality: An overview of current empirical research findings

This article presents an overview of the current state of knowledge in personality judgment research. We discuss accuracy and bias in personality judgments, including types of inter-rater agreement and elements of criteria used to determine levels of agreement and accuracy. We then address 1) the words and phrases that people use to describe one another and themselves, 2) research investigating judgments of targets by perceivers per trait, and 3) research investigating judgments of targets by perceivers on profiles or sets of traits. We also provide 4) an outlook regarding important research questions that remain unanswered in this field.

The Judgment of Personality: An Overview of Current Empirical Research Findings

This article presents an overview of the current state of knowledge in personality judgment research. We address (1) the words and phrases that people use to describe one another and themselves, (2) research in the “variable-centered” tradition, which investigates judgments of targets by perceivers on single traits, and (3) research investigating judgments of targets by perceivers on whole profiles of traits. Our focus is on inter-rater agreement, accuracy, and bias. We also provide (4) an outlook regarding important research questions that remain to be answered in this field. Although we consider our attempt to jointly identify the most robust evidence in the field to be largely successful, we acknowledge that the process of consensus building was fairly difficult. Thus, we close with a number of concrete suggestions for making such collaborative-writing processes as constructive as possible.

EVALUATION OF THE ACCURACY OF PERSONALITY JUDGMENTS BASED ON WRITTEN VERBAL PRODUCTION

The process of personality judgment occurs in daily social interactions and represents an attempt to identify characteristics of someone else's personality, in the way to explain past and predict future behaviors. The results of this process have implications on future decisions and actions of people. This research aimed to examine the accuracy of non-expert ratings of Extraversion and Conscientiousness based on short written texts. The sample consisted of 215 participants (Mage = 28.58, SD = 10.30; 80.5% females). The exclusion criterion was that participants were psychologists or psychology students, i.e., individuals familiar with personality research and taxonomies. Participants rated Extraversion and Conscientiousness, based on the texts written by five different individuals. Criteria used to estimate the accuracy of judgments were the agreement between self-report measures on HEXACO PI-R from people who wrote the texts and ratings from participants, as well as the agreement between multiple raters. The results showed that there was a moderate self-other agreement for Extraversion and Conscientiousness. Also, the results showed that there was a high between-raters agreement for Extraversion and Conscientiousness. This study indicates that it is possible to judge one’s personality based on written verbal production, as well that raters tend to form similar impressions about the personality from written texts.

Accuracy in Judging Others’ Personalities: The Role of Emotion Recognition, Emotion Understanding, and Trait Emotional Intelligence

The ability to accurately judge others’ personality and the ability to accurately recognize others’ emotions are both part of the broader construct of interpersonal accuracy (IPA). However, little research has examined the association between these two IPA domains. Little is also known about the relationship between personality judgment accuracy and other socio-emotional skills and traits. In the present study, 121 participants judged eight traits (Big Five, intelligence, cooperativeness, and empathy) in each of 30 targets who were presented either in a photograph, a muted video, or a video with sound. The videos were 30 second excerpts from negotiations that the targets had engaged in. Participants also completed standard tests of emotion recognition ability, emotion understanding, and trait emotional intelligence. Results showed that personality judgment accuracy, when indexed as trait accuracy and distinctive profile accuracy, positively correlated with emotion recognition ability and was unrelated to emotion understanding and trait emotional intelligence. Female participants were more accurate in judging targets’ personality than men. These results provide support for IPA as a set of correlated domain-specific skills and encourage further research on personality judgment accuracy as a meaningful individual difference variable.

The Accuracy of Personality Trait Judgments

How accurately can we judge the personality traits of ourselves and others? What are the factors that influence our ability to make correct judgments? How can we use this information to improve our social interactions and relationships? In this introduction to the Oxford Handbook of Accurate Personality Judgment, the reader is introduced to the study of personality trait accuracy. Foundations of this research are reviewed and an overview of the volume is provided. Chapters explore current judgment models and review empirical work on moderators of accuracy, including characteristics of judges, targets, traits, and information. They explain the challenges encountered when judging different types of targets and examine how different kinds of information contribute to the judgment process. The applications and implications of this work for relationships, workplace interactions, and evaluations of psychological health and functioning are discussed. Ways to improve accuracy and future directions for research on trait accuracy are offered.

Conclusions and Future Directions for the Study of Accurate Personality Judgment

This chapter identifies several well-established findings and overarching themes within personality trait accuracy research, and highlights especially promising directions for future research. Topics include (1) theoretical frameworks for accuracy, (2) moderators of accuracy and the context or situation in which judgments are made, (3) the important consequences of accuracy, (4) interventions and training programs to increase judgmental ability and judgability, (5) the generalizability of previous findings, and (6) standardized tests of the accuracy of judging personality traits. The chapter ends by stating that it is an exciting time to be a researcher studying the accuracy of personality trait judgments.

The Realistic Accuracy Model

This chapter describes the realistic accuracy model (RAM), starting with a history of its development. It then describes the four moderators of accuracy in personality judgment—good judge, good target, good trait, and good information—and how these moderators interact with each other. Next, it describes the four stages in the process of making accurate judgments, which are relevance, availability, detection, and utilization. Implications of the model for improving judgment accuracy and applications to judgments of states are then discussed. The chapter concludes with suggested directions for future research, including judgments of other levels of personality besides traits, interactions between moderators, the development of judgmental ability, and the consequences of judgmental accuracy.

Information as a Moderator of Accuracy in Personality Judgment

People inherently believe that additional information is helpful in making accurate personality judgment, an assertion supported by empirical evidence. This chapter reviews the evidence beginning with the cross-sectional and longitudinal study of accuracy in naturally existing groups and continuing through to laboratory-based experiments involving the intentional manipulation of available information. In doing so, it discusses the process of becoming acquainted with others in our social world and makes suggestions for future avenues of research in this area, including but not limited to more clearly defining acquaintanceship, studying information quantity and quality jointly and separately, and better connecting personality judgment with real-world phenomena.