Chapters 5 - Personality Judgement

Question 1

What are some everyday consequences of how others judge your personality?

Answer 1

• opportunities (ex. shyness and self-assuredness)
• expectancies and self-fulfilling prophecies
  
  • intellectual expectancy effects (Rosenthal and Jacobson, 1968 on “bloomers”)
  • self-fulfilling prophecies (Snyder, Tanke and Berscheid, 1977 - the females’ behaviour was different when males were shown a picture; results = more humorous, warm and poised)

Question 2

What is the constructivist perspective of personality?

Answer 2

It is a social construction

Question 3

What is the critical realist’s perspective of personality?

Answer 3

Uses any and all info that might be helpful

Question 4

What is the criteria for accuracy of personality judgement?

Answer 4

Same as assessing validity of a test

- convergent validation

Question 5

What are the 2 primary criteria for convergent validation?

Answer 5

1. interjudge agreement (each rater gives the same rating)

2. behavioural prediction and predictive validity (do they do what you think they do?)

Question 6

Describe first impressions.

Answer 6

• mostly automatic

- some validity based on face

Question 7

What quality do good judges of personality have?

Answer 7

they score high in communion (they are invested in developing and maintaining relationships)

Question 8

Do people usually know if they are a good judge of personality?

Answer 8

No

- we can identify relative personalities (like from a spouse or sibling) but not global ones

Question 9

What constitutes a good target?

Answer 9

• stable, well organized and consistent behaviour
• psychologically well adjusted
• extraverted, agreeable
• related to psychological health and happiness

Question 10

Is it more important to have a good judge or a good target?

Answer 10

A good target

Question 11

What constitutes a good trait?

Answer 11

easy to observe and highly visible (ex. talkativeness)

- bad traits are more internal

Question 12

What constitutes good information?

Answer 12

quantity vs quality

• amount of time does not change consensus but it does change accuracy
• quality of information is dependent on how much room for variation there is (ex. measuring extraversion on a bus vs at a party)
  
  • the best situation brings out the trait you want to measure

Question 13

What is one explanation for how accurate judgement of personality is possible?

Answer 13

The realistic accuracy model (the RAM)

Question 14

Describe RAM.

Answer 14

target > relevance > availability > detection > utilization > judge

• relevance and availability are dependent upon the target
• detection and utilization are dependent upon the judge

Question 15

What are the implications of RAM?

Answer 15

• moderators of accuracy must be the result of something

- improvement can be found in each of the four categories