Examining individual differences in metaperceptive accuracy using the social meta-accuracy model.

To what extent do individuals differ in understanding how others see them and who is particularly good at it? Answering these questions about the "good metaperceiver" is relevant given the beneficial outcomes of meta-accuracy. However, there likely is more than one type of the good metaperceiver: One who knows the specific impressions they make more than others do () and one who knows their reputation more than others do ). To identify and understand these good metaperceivers, we introduce the social meta-accuracy model (SMAM) as a statistical and conceptual framework and apply the SMAM to four samples of first impression interactions.

The incremental validity of average states: A replication and extension of Finnigan and Vazire (2018).

States refer to our momentary thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Average states (aggregates across multiple time points) are discussed as a more accurate and objective measure of personality compared to global self-reports since they do not only rely on people's general beliefs about themselves. Specifically, Finnigan and Vazire (2018) argued that, if average states better capture what a person is actually like, this should be reflected in their unique association with informant-reports of personality, and tested this idea based on two experience-sampling studies.

Influencing emotion: Social anxiety and comparisons on Instagram.

Individuals with social anxiety are sensitive to social hierarchies and tend to compare themselves unfavorably with others, perceiving themselves as inferior or lower in social rank. The current study explores patterns of change in these negative perceptions, and their associated emotional outcomes, in an online social context. Undergraduate students (N = 291) browsed the profiles of eight Instagram influencers and completed a measure of social comparison after viewing each profile, yielding multiple ratings of their own perceived social rank.

Understanding short-term variability in life satisfaction: The Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model.

Daily life is full of emotional ups and downs. In contrast, the objective conditions of our lives usually remain relatively stable from day to day. The degree to which emotional ups and downs influence life satisfaction-which should be relatively stable-remains a puzzle.

Why are well-adjusted people seen more accurately? The role of personality-behavior congruence in naturalistic social settings.

Expressive accuracy, being viewed in line with one's unique, distinctive personality traits, is emerging as an important individual difference that is strongly linked to psychological well-being. Yet little is known about what underlies expressive accuracy and its associations with well-being. The current studies examined whether personality-behavior congruence, the tendency to behave in line with one's distinctive personality trait profile, contributes to the links between well-being and expressive accuracy with new acquaintances (Unique perceiver-target pairs: Study 1: N = 437; Study 2: N = 874), by assessing congruence in naturalistic situations, including in a series of getting-acquainted interactions (Study 1; Ntargets = 77; Mdn Interactions: 7) and social situations in daily life over a 2-week period (Study 2; Ntargets = 146; MdnAssessments: 49).

Differential associations of knowing and liking with accuracy and positivity bias in person perception.

A great range of person perception phenomena may be conceptualized in terms of how much perceivers know about the targets, how much they like the targets, and how these factors relate to the extent to which target descriptions reflect actual target characteristics and/or evaluative bias. We present a comprehensive empirical analysis of this interplay in two studies, the second (targets: = 189, informants: = 1352) being a preregistered replication of the first (targets: = 73, informants: = 549). Using multilevel profile analyses, we investigated how liking and knowing are differentially associated with judgments' normative accuracy (i.

By myself and liking it? Predictors of distinct types of solitude experiences in daily life.

Objective: Solitude is a ubiquitous experience, often confused with loneliness, yet sometimes sought out in daily life. This study aimed to identify distinct types of solitude experiences from everyday affect/thought patterns and to examine how and for whom solitude is experienced positively versus negatively.

Method: One hundred community-dwelling adults aged 50-85 years (64% female; 56% East Asian, 36% European, 8% other/mixed heritage) and 50 students aged 18-28 years (92% female; 42% East Asian, 22% European, 36% other/mixed) each completed approximately 30 daily life assessments over 10 days on their current and desired social situation, thoughts, and affect.

Reassessing the good judge of personality.

Are some people truly better able to accurately perceive the personality of others? Previous research suggests that the good judge may be of little practical importance and individual differences minimal. In four large samples we assessed whether expressive accuracy (the good target) is a necessary condition for perceptive accuracy (the good judge) to emerge. As predicted from Funder's (1995) realistic accuracy model, assessments of the good judge predicted increased impression accuracy in the context of judgments of the good target.

A Sense of Obligation: Cultural Differences in the Experience of Obligation.

In this investigation of cultural differences in the experience of obligation, we distinguish between Confucian Role Ethics versus Relative Autonomy lay theories of motivation and illustrate them with data showing relevant cultural differences in both social judgments and intrapersonal experience. First, when judging others, Western European heritage culture (WEHC) participants (relative to Confucian heritage culture [CHC] participants) judged obligation-motivated actors more negatively than those motivated by agency (Study 1, N = 529). Second, in daily diary and situation sampling studies, CHC participants (relative to WEHC participants) perceived more congruency between their own agentic and obligated motivations, and more positive emotional associations with obligated motivations (Study 2, N = 200 and Study 3, N = 244).

Toward understanding the relationship between personality and well-being states and traits.

Objective: Although there is a robust connection between dispositional personality traits and well-being, relatively little research has comprehensively examined the ways in which all Big Five personality states are associated with short-term experiences of well-being within individuals. We address three central questions about the nature of the relationship between personality and well-being states: First, to what extent do personality and well-being states covary within individuals? Second, to what extent do personality and well-being states influence one another within individuals? Finally, are these within-person relationships moderated by dispositional personality traits and well-being?

Method: Two experience sampling studies (N = 161 and N = 146) were conducted over 2 weeks.

Results: Across both studies, all Big Five personality states were correlated with short-term experiences of well-being within individuals.

Dispositional malevolence and impression formation: Dark Tetrad associations with accuracy and positivity in first impressions.

Objective: The Dark Tetrad traits (subclinical psychopathy, narcissism, Machiavellianism, and everyday sadism) have interpersonal consequences. At present, however, how these traits are associated with the accuracy and positivity of first impressions is not well understood. The present article addresses three primary questions.

Knowing versus liking: Separating normative knowledge from social desirability in first impressions of personality.

There are strong differences between individuals in the tendency to view the personality of others as similar to the average person. That is, some people tend to form more normatively accurate impressions than do others. However, the process behind the formation of normatively accurate first impressions is not yet fully understood.

Try to find me: social anxiety and peer first impressions.

Following initial interactions, some people are less willing to pursue ongoing contact with socially anxious individuals than with those who are not socially anxious. To better understand this process, we conducted two studies that examined peers' first impressions of target individuals. Unacquainted individuals (N=104 and 114) participated in round robin, unstructured interactions in groups of 3 to 10 and then rated each partner and themselves on items reflecting the Big Five personality dimensions.

To thine own self be true: psychological adjustment promotes judgeability via personality-behavior congruence.

Well-adjusted individuals are highly judgeable in that their personalities tend to be seen more accurately than the personalities of less adjusted individuals (Colvin, 1993a, 1993b; Human & Biesanz, 2011a). The mechanisms behind this effect, however, are not well understood. How does adjustment facilitate judgeability? In the present video-perceptions study, we examined potential mechanisms through which adjustment could promote judgeability at 3 stages of the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM; Funder, 1995): (a) cue relevance, (b) cue availability, and (c) cue detection.

Targeting the good target: an integrative review of the characteristics and consequences of being accurately perceived.

A person's judgeability, or the extent to which a person is easy to understand, plays an important role in how accurately a target will be perceived by others. Research on this topic, however, has not been systematic or well-integrated. The current review begins to remedy this by integrating the available research on judgeability from the fields of personality perception, nonverbal communication, and social cognition.

Liberals and conservatives rely on common moral foundations when making moral judgments about influential people.

Do liberals and conservatives have qualitatively different moral points of view? Specifically, do liberals and conservatives rely on the same or different sets of moral foundations-care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity (Haidt, 2012)-when making moral judgments about influential people? In Study 1, 100 experts evaluated the impact that 40 influential figures had on each moral foundation, yielding stimulus materials for the remaining studies. In Study 2, 177 American liberal and conservative professors rated the moral character of the same figures. Liberals and conservatives relied on the same 3 moral foundations: For both groups, promoting care, fairness, and purity-but not authority or loyalty-predicted moral judgments of the targets.

Is change bad? Personality change is associated with poorer psychological health and greater metabolic syndrome in midlife.

Personality change is emerging as an important predictor of health and well-being. Extending previous research, we examined whether two types of personality change, directional and absolute, are associated with both subjective and objective indicators of health. Utilizing the longitudinal Midlife in the United States survey (MIDUS) data, we examined whether both types of change over 10 years were associated with psychological well-being, self-reported global health, and the presence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) components and diagnosis.

Abstract: Inference and Interval Estimation for Indirect Effects With Latent Variable Models.

Models specifying indirect effects (or mediation) and structural equation modeling are both popular in the social sciences. Yet relatively little research has compared methods that test for indirect effects among latent variables and provided precise estimates of the effectiveness of different methods. This simulation study provides an extensive comparison of methods for constructing confidence intervals and for making inferences about indirect effects with latent variables.

Target adjustment and self-other agreement: utilizing trait observability to disentangle judgeability and self-knowledge.

Are well-adjusted individuals good targets or accurate self-judges? Across two round-robin studies, the current research first demonstrates that well-adjusted individuals' personalities are viewed with greater distinctive self-other agreement by new acquaintances. Is this enhanced self-other agreement a function of greater judgeability, improving others' ability to form an accurate impression? Or is it a function of greater self-knowledge, having a more accurate impression about oneself? By examining the relationship between psychological adjustment and self-other agreement as a function of trait observability, it becomes clear that psychological adjustment fosters self-other agreement through judgeability more so than through self-knowledge. Specifically, well-adjusted individuals provide new acquaintances with greater information regarding their less observable traits, enhancing others' knowledge and thus distinctive self-other agreement.

Through the looking glass clearly: accuracy and assumed similarity in well-adjusted individuals' first impressions.

Do well-adjusted individuals have particularly accurate insight into what others are like or are they biased, primarily seeing their own characteristics in others? In the current studies, the authors examined how psychologically adjusted individuals tend to see new acquaintances, directly comparing their levels of distinctive accuracy (accurately perceiving others' unique characteristics), normative accuracy (perceiving others as similar to the average person), and assumed similarity (perceiving others as similar to the self). Across two interactive, round-robin studies, well-adjusted individuals, compared with less adjusted individuals, did not perceive new acquaintances' unique characteristics more accurately but did perceive new acquaintances, on average, as similar to the average person, reflecting an accurate understanding of what people generally tend to be like. Furthermore, well-adjusted individuals had a biased tendency to perceive their own unique characteristics in others.

Daily cognitive appraisals, daily affect, and long-term depressive symptoms: the role of self-esteem and self-concept clarity in the stress process.

The current study investigated how self-esteem and self-concept clarity are implicated in the stress process both in the short and long term. Initial and 2-year follow-up interviews were completed by 178 participants from stepfamily unions. In twice-daily structured diaries over 7 days, participants reported their main family stressor, cognitive appraisals (perceived stressor threat and stressor controllability), and negative affect.

What is beautiful is good and more accurately understood. Physical attractiveness and accuracy in first impressions of personality.

Beautiful people are seen more positively than others, but are they also seen more accurately? In a round-robin design in which previously unacquainted individuals met for 3 min, results were consistent with the "beautiful is good" stereotype: More physically attractive individuals were viewed with greater normative accuracy; that is, they were viewed more in line with the highly desirable normative profile. Notably, more physically attractive targets were viewed more in line with their unique self-reported personality traits, that is, with greater distinctive accuracy. Further analyses revealed that both positivity and accuracy were to some extent in the eye of the beholder: Perceivers' idiosyncratic impressions of a target's attractiveness were also positively related to the positivity and accuracy of impressions.

The Social Accuracy Model of Interpersonal Perception: Assessing Individual Differences in Perceptive and Expressive Accuracy.

The social accuracy model of interpersonal perception (SAM) is a componential model that estimates perceiver and target effects of different components of accuracy across traits simultaneously. For instance, Jane may be generally accurate in her perceptions of others and thus high in perceptive accuracy-the extent to which a particular perceiver's impressions are more or less accurate than other perceivers on average across different targets. Just as well, Jake may be accurately perceived by others and thus high in expressive accuracy-the extent to which a particular target is accurately perceived on average across different perceivers.

Assessing Mediational Models: Testing and Interval Estimation for Indirect Effects.

Theoretical models specifying indirect or mediated effects are common in the social sciences. An indirect effect exists when an independent variable's influence on the dependent variable is mediated through an intervening variable. Classic approaches to assessing such mediational hypotheses ( Baron & Kenny, 1986 ; Sobel, 1982 ) have in recent years been supplemented by computationally intensive methods such as bootstrapping, the distribution of the product methods, and hierarchical Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods.

The cost of forming more accurate impressions: accuracy-motivated perceivers see the personality of others more distinctively but less normatively than perceivers without an explicit goal.

Does the motivation to form accurate impressions actually improve accuracy? The present work extended Kenny's (1991, 1994) weighted-average model (WAM)--a theoretical model of the factors that influence agreement among personality judgments--to examine two components of interpersonal perception: distinctive and normative accuracy. WAM predicts that an accuracy motivation should enhance distinctive accuracy but decrease normative accuracy. In other words, the impressions of a perceiver with an accuracy motivation will correspond more with the target person's unique characteristics and less with the characteristics of the average person.