How do people think about understanding personality—And what do such thoughts reflect?

We examined the dimensions people use when estimating their ability to understand personality—an ability we refer to as personal intelligence. In the first two studies (Ns = 434 and 393), a four-factor model fit people's self-estimates reasonably, with scales of the “Explained Self”, “Self-Unde...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Personality and individual differences 2021-08, Vol.178, p.110671, Article 110671
Main Authors: Mayer, John D., Caruso, David R., Panter, A.T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ability
Five factor model
Goal setting
Implicit personality theory
Intelligence
Personal intelligence
Personality
Personality traits
Self-estimated intelligence
Self-knowledge
Understanding
Understanding others
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We examined the dimensions people use when estimating their ability to understand personality—an ability we refer to as personal intelligence. In the first two studies (Ns = 434 and 393), a four-factor model fit people's self-estimates reasonably, with scales of the “Explained Self”, “Self-Understanding”, “Understanding Others,” and “Goals and Planning”. In Study 2 and in Study 3 (N = 482) we examined whether any of the specific self-estimated abilities more accurately indexed actual ability-based personal intelligence relative to overall estimates, and if not, what other personality traits they correlated with. To find out, the four factor-based scales of self-estimated abilities were correlated with the objective Test of Personal Intelligence and traits of the Big Five. None of the specific, self-estimated abilities correlated with actual ability any higher than earlier-used experimenter-provided global self-estimated scales; the participants' self-estimates were determined chiefly by dimensions of the Big Five relative to ability, at a ratio of “variance explained” of six to one. The studies provide new insights into how people view their skills at understanding personality, and the possible origins of such beliefs. •Explores people's perceptions of what they know about personalities•People perceive their ability to understand personality along multiple dimensions.•Some types of self-estimated knowledge predict actual ability better.•No type of self-estimated knowledge predicts actual ability well.
ISSN:0191-8869
1873-3549
DOI:10.1016/j.paid.2021.110671