Construal Processes and Trait Ambiguity: Implications for Self-Peer Agreement in Personality Judgment

The relationship between trait ambiguity and self-peer agreement in personality judgment was examined. In Study 1, self-peer agreement was lower on ambiguous traits (those with many behavioral referents) than on unambiguous ones (those with few behavioral referents). This finding was partially moder...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of personality and social psychology 1997-03, Vol.72 (3), p.664-677
Main Authors: Hayes, Andrew F, Dunning, David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
Biological and medical sciences
College Students
Ego
Female
Friendship
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Human
Humans
Interpersonal Relations
Judgment
Male
Peer Group
Peers
Personality
Personality Traits
Processes
Psychology
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Roommates
Self-Concept
Self-Other agreement
Social attribution, perception and cognition
Social Desirability
Social judgments
Social Perception
Social psychology
Surveys and Questionnaires
Traits
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Summary:The relationship between trait ambiguity and self-peer agreement in personality judgment was examined. In Study 1, self-peer agreement was lower on ambiguous traits (those with many behavioral referents) than on unambiguous ones (those with few behavioral referents). This finding was partially moderated by the level of friendship between peers. These results suggest that people disagree in their judgments because they use idiosyncratic trait definitions when making judgments on ambiguous traits. Study 2 tested this explanation by exploring self-peer agreement when participant pairs were forced to use the same trait definition versus different ones when judging themselves and each other. Forcing participants to use the same trait definition increased the degree to which their judgments covaried with one another. Discussion centers on the cognitive and motivational forces that can influence the degree to which personality judgments differ.
ISSN:0022-3514
1939-1315
DOI:10.1037/0022-3514.72.3.664