Chapter 6:

Personality Assessment II: Personality

Judgment in Daily Life
The Personality Puzzle
Sixth Edition
by David C. Funder

Slides created by
Tera D. Letzring
Idaho State University
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 Objectives
• Discuss why the assessments you make of
your personality and that of others are
important
• Discuss the criteria that can be used for
assessing accuracy
• Discuss the four moderators of accuracy and
the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)

2
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 Think About It
• What is your reputation? How does it affect
you?
• Do you wish your reputation could be
different? How might you change your
reputation?
• Think of a time when you made a personality
judgment about someone that turned out to be
wrong. What was the cause of your mistake?

3
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Consequences of Everyday Judgments
of Personality
• Opportunities
– Employment, friendships
– Examples: shyness, self-assuredness
• Expectancies
– Intellectual expectancy effects
• Rosenthal & Jacobson (1968): climate,
feedback, input, output
– Social expectancy effects
• Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid (1977): self-fulfilling
prophecy
4
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Consequences of Everyday Judgments
of Personality
• Expectancies
– Expectancy effects in real life
• Where do expectancies generally come from?
• Expectancies are likely to be correct.
• Especially strong when held by more than one
important person for a long period of time

5
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of
Personality Judgment
• What criteria can be used to assess accuracy?
– Answer from constructivism: None, personality is
a social construction.
– Answer from critical realism: All information that
might be helpful

6
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Criteria for Accuracy
• Same as that for assessing the validity of a test
• Convergent validation
– The duck test
– Interjudge agreement
– Behavioral prediction

7
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: First Impressions
• Mostly automatic
• Some validity based on the face
– Extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to
experience
– Dominant vs. submissive and sexuality
– Low vs. high agreeableness and extraversion (and
conscientiousness)

8
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: First Impressions
• Other visible signs of personality
– Extraversion: fashionable dress, stylish haircut,
speaking in a loud voice
– Openness: variety of reading material
– Conscientiousness: neatness of bedroom
– Musical preferences: inventive, imaginative, tolerant,
and liberal; curious, risk-taking, and physically
attractive
– Handshakes: extraversion and emotional
expressiveness; shyness and anxiety
9
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• Definition

10
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• The good judge
– Early findings: depends on the context or trait;
intelligent and conscientious
– Accuracy of men vs. women: mixed findings
– For males: extraverted, well-adjusted,
unconcerned with what others think of them

11
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• The good judge
– For females: open, wide range of interests, value
independence
– High in communion; judge others favorably;
socially skilled, agreeable, and adjusted;
attributionally complex, open, positive, expressive,
and socially skilled

12
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• The good target: stable and well-organized,
psychologically well adjusted, extraverted,
agreeable
– Related to psychological health and happiness

13
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• The good trait: easy to observe, highly visible
– Evidence against the idea that peer judgments are
socially constructed and agreement is based on
communication
– Possible evolutionary basis (sociosexuality)

14
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• Good information: amount or quantity
– The acquaintanceship effect and a boundary
– Affects self-other agreement but not consensus

15
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 16
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Moderators of Accuracy
• Good information: quality
– Weak vs. strong situations
– Stressful or emotionally arousing situations
– Best situation: one that brings out the trait you
want to judge
– Thoughts and feelings vs. daily activities
– Unstructured vs. structured situations

17
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality Judgment:
The Realistic Accuracy Model
• One explanation for how accurate judgment is
possible

18
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 19
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 The Accuracy of Personality
Judgment: Implications of RAM
• Accurate personality judgment is difficult.
• Moderators of accuracy must be the result of
something that happens at one (or more) of
these four stages.
• Accuracy can be improved in four ways.

20
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 Think About It
• What does it really mean to be “accurate”
about judging someone’s personality? If you
think a person is dishonest, and the person
thinks he is honest, can this kind of
discrepancy ever be resolved? How?

21
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 Clicker Question #1
Personality judgments in daily life
a)are much less important than the results of
personality tests.
b)affect the opportunities that people are given.
c)easily reach a high level of accuracy.
d)have low accuracy for all judges.

22
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 Clicker Question #2
Based on the four moderators of accuracy, it can
be concluded that
a)the good judge must have a specified set of
characteristics.
b)the trait that is being judged has the most
influence on the level of accuracy.
c)people who are easily judged tend to have
psychological disorders.
d)information quality will be high in weak,
unstructured, and emotionally arousing
situations.
23
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
 Clicker Question #3
The Realistic Accuracy Model
a)is useful for explaining how accurate
judgments of personality are possible.
b)includes five stages.
c)implies that accuracy cannot be improved.
d)is unrelated to the four moderators.

24
© 2013 W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.