PSYC30 Lecture 3: Personality & Self-Knowledge

how did the behaviourist’s and psychoanalyst’s belief on our capacity for self-insight differ?

• behaviourist: dismissive of our capacity for self-insight

  • i.e., don’t ask self-report at all

• psychoanalyst: most of personality lies beneath the surface of consciousness

  • i.e., listen to self-report, but believes it’s inaccurate

why is it important to personality psychology that we question the validity of self-knowledge?

• a lot of the field relies on self-report (70% in JRP in 2006; Vazire, 2006) , assuming that we know the self more than others know us

• if self-reports are unreliable, much of what we know about personality is also unreliable

Dunning-Kruger effect

the fact that we often overestimate our abilities

who is most susceptible to the Dunning-Kruger effect?

• those with the least ability because they don’t know that they have a lot of knowledge gaps

• those with moderate expertise tend to be more humble because they know their knowledge gaps

• experts often don’t recognize that others don’t have the same knowledge as them

how might cognitive biases influence our self-view?

• they change how we see ourselves, sometimes making us unaware different elements of ourselves

• these biases may sometime make others aware of things about the self that we are unaware of

the Johari Window

• a popular self-help tool to help people decipher which aspects of their identity is know/unknown to them and others

• someone picks a number of adjectives from a list, choosing ones they feel describe their own personality

• subject's peers then get the same list, and each picks an equal number of adjectives that describe the subject

• adjectives are then inserted into a two-by-two grid of four cells.

correlates with hidden personality elements (Johari Window)?

• a lot of self consciousness/social anxiety, or when they feel they have something to hide

• often leads to imposter syndrome’s and generally struggling to connect with others

correlates with blindness/unknown personality elements (Johari Window)?

not knowing the self may lead to struggles in social connection, etc.

shortcomings of the original Johari Window?

it has been very difficult to actually decipher the accuracy of self-knowledge versus others’ knowledge of us because of methodological complications

Adapted Johari Window (Vazire & Mehl, 2008)

• developed with the help of “the EAR”

• V&M explored accuracy of self-perception + other’s perception

what are examples of EAR behaviours?

• spend time by yourself

• spend time with others

• laughing

• singing or whistling

• crying

• arguing/fighting

• listening to music/radio

• watching TV

• reading

• etc.

what problem did the EAR solve and how?

• problem: lack of objective, unobtrusive measures of behaviour + there was minimal naturalistic observation in the field

  • i.e., there was no criterion independent of self- and other-rating that measures natural behaviour

• solution: small, pocket-sized digital audio recorder with a lapel microphone

  • allows researchers to unobtrusively record a broad spectrum of acoustically detectable behaviors directly from people's daily lives

  • both objective and representative of their real-world behavior

what criterion measures do researchers testing the accuracy of self- and informant ratings traditionally rely on?

• laboratory-based behaviour

• self-reports of daily real-world behaviour

• objective measures of (important) life outcomes

These 3 approaches reflect different solutions to the apparent trade-off between two goals:

1. using a criterion measure that is independent of self- and informant ratings

2. using an ecological criterion measure that captures a representative sample of targets’ behavior

why are studies of the relative predictive validity of self- and informant-ratings rare?

• in part due to the methodological challenges involved with obtaining an appropriate criterion measure

• these issues include

  • common (overlapping) method variance

  • ecological validity (representativeness)

example: has reference effect bias skewed self-report data?

culture

• Americans report being more extroverted than Mexicans

• when they used the EAR, comparing students in Texas versus Mexico, they replicated the self-reported phenomena of Americans saying they’re more extroverted but you find the opposite when you actually observed people (possibly due to reference effect)

gender roles

• self-report suggests females are more talkative

• EAR suggest there is no difference between genders

happy life

• looked at correlations between conversation quality and quantity (self-report and EAR) + well-being

• happier people seem to have more substantive conversations

  • substantive vs. small talk conversations even impact indicators of physical health (e.g., inflammatory markers)

reference effect

the idea that we tend to rate ourselves relative to those around us

how did Vazire & Mehl (2008) explore accuracy of self perceptions versus other perceptions?

• study 1: lay predictions

  • Participants rated a list of behaviors on two separate scales:

    • how accurate they think people are at predicting how much they themselves perform each behavior

    • how accurate they think people are at predicting how much other people they know well perform this behavior.

• study 2: actual behaviour

  • Participants provided self-reports and three additional informant reports of how frequently they engage in a list of behaviors

  • Participants then wore the EAR for four consecutive days during their waking hours

do people think self- or other-ratings are more accurate? (study 1; Vazire & Mehl, 2008)

• people consider self-ratings consistently more accurate than-other ratings

• actual self- or other-accuracy depends on the trait

Do participants think that the two perspectives (self vs.

other) provide insight into different behaviors? (study2; Vazire & Mehl, 2008)

Lay perceptions about self- and other accuracy for most behaviors fell into the bottom right quadrant (known only to self), with a few falling into the top right quadrant.

what is the relative accuracy and unique predictive validity of self- and other-ratings of daily behavior? (study 2; Vazire & Mehl, 2008)

• The average accuracy across all 20 ACT behaviors was identical for the two perspectives (r = .26)

• Self-accuracy was statistically significant for 13 of the 20 behaviors

• Other-accuracy was statistically significant for 14 of the 20 behaviors

do the two perspectives provide unique insight? (study 2; Vazire & Mehl, 2008)

• The accuracy correlations of self- and other-ratings ranged from 0 to .55 and covered all four quadrants of the Johari model.

• This suggests that the two perspectives know about different behaviors.

• though there were some commonalities

  • Self-ratings were significantly more accurate than for arguing, and were slightly but not significantly more accurate for watching TV.

  • Other-ratings were significantly more accurate for talking one-on-one, and attending a lecture, and were marginally significantly more accurate for spending time with others

what were commonalities across self- and other-perspectives? (study 2; Vazire & Mehl, 2008)

accurate predicting

• watching TV

• talking on the phone

• listening to music

inaccurate predicting

• spending time indoors

• spending time outdoors

• crying

Knowing Me, Knowing You (Vazire & Mehl, 2008): result summary and implications

• show that close others are as accurate as the self in predicting daily behavior

• accuracy varies across behaviors for both the self and for others, and the two perspectives often independently predict behaviour

• there is no perspective from which a person is known best

• both the self and others possess unique insight into how a person typically behaves.

Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry (SOKA) model

• aims to provide a framework to explain and predict self-other asymmetries in accuracy

• suggests that self vs. other-perception differs because of

  1. informational differences in perspective (i.e., salience of overt vs. covert aspects of a person)

  2. motivational significance (i.e., ego-relevance of the judgment)

what are the elements of the SOKA model?

• human perceivers act as intuitive scientists

  • influenced by “cold” information-processing goals

  • helps us understand/predict other’s behaviour

• human perceivers act as intuitive politicians

  • influenced by “hot” motivational goals

  • helps us protect/enhance self-worth

• draws the conclusion that self-perception and other-perception differ due to differences in perspective (observability) and motivational (evaluativeness) significance

how might the quality and quantity of information influence self- and other-perceptions? (Vazire, 2010)

quantity

• we have more information about the self

• people place more weight on own-thought and feelings than behaviours when forming self-perceptions

quality

• we have access to different types of information about the self vs. the other

• salience of information differ, thus the information is detected and weighted differently

• e.g., other-perceptions are more accurate for observable traits than for internal traits

SOKA model (Vazire, 2010): 2 predictions

1. Trait observability is associated with self-other

   knowledge asymmetry such that others know more than the self about highly observable traits (e.g., extraversion) and the self knows more than others about traits low in observability (e.g., neuroticism).

   • However, low trait observability should be more consequential for strangers than for friends.

2. Trait evaluativeness is associated with self-other

   knowledge asymmetry such that others know more than the self about highly evaluative traits (e.g., intellect), and this asymmetry is reduced or reversed for evaluatively neutral traits (e.g., extraversion or neuroticism).

   • People’s motives in judging a target are likely to influence what information they pay attention to (detection) and how they interpret that information (utilization).

what is the main motivational difference between self-perception and other-perception?

the degree of ego-involvement

• i.e., more concerned with protecting ego when doing self-ratings

how did Vazire (2010) test the validity of the SOKA model?

• aim: SOKA model predicting which aspects of personality are best judged by the self and which are best judged by others

• participant self-rating were rated by 4 friends and 4 strangers, specifically on

  • neuroticism

  • extraversion

  • intellect

SOKA model (Vazire, 2010): criterion measures

• neuroticism: trier social stress test

  • talk about what you like and don’t like about your body

• extraversion: leaderless group discussion

  • decide how to allocate fictional resources among yourselves

• intelligence: wonderlic personnel test

  • 12-min test of verbal and non-verbal intelligence

• creativity: brick creativity test

  • list as many uses as you can for a brick

SOKA model (Vazire, 2010): results

• the self knows more than others about neuroticism-related traits

• friends know more than strangers about neuroticism-related traits

• self and others know equal amounts about extraversion-related traits

• friends know better than the self and stranger about intellect related traits

SOKA model (Vazire, 2010): implications

• whether we know know ourselves or others know us better depends on the trait being evaluated

• our biases may get in the way of our ability to judge the self (helps to explain self-esteem paradox)

self-esteem paradox

there’s often no obvious relationship between people’s accomplishments and virtues and their self-esteem

how accurate are self-perceptions? (Vazire & Carlson, 2010)

r = .25

how accurate are other-perceptions? (Vazire & Carlson, 2010)

r = .40

how accurate are personal assumptions about other-perceptions (i.e., meta-perceptions)? (Vazire & Carlson, 2010)

r = .44

meta-insight

Meta-perceptions predict others’ perceptions incrementally over self-perceptions, suggesting that people can distinguish between how they see themselves and how others see them

blind spots

there is considerable consensus among others’ perceptions even after controlling for targets’ self- and meta-perceptions, suggesting that others agree in their attribution of personality features to targets that the targets did not attribute to themselves or to their reputations