Personality Judgments

Vocabulary flashcards covering key terms from a lecture on personality judgments.

Snap judgments

Quick first impressions formed from minimal information (e.g., brief exposure to a person’s face or voice).

Social Relations Model (SRM)

A framework for partitioning variance in judgments into target effects, perceiver effects, perceiver–target interaction, and residual variance.

Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM)

A four-step model of accurate personality judgment: Relevance, Availability, Detection, and Judgment.

RAM - Relevance

Information must be relevant to the trait being judged.

RAM - Availability

The relevant information must be available to the judge.

RAM - Detection

The judge must detect the relevant information in the behavioral cues.

RAM - Judgment

The judge must use the detected information to form a trait judgment.

Self-Other Knowledge Asymmetry (SOKA)

No single group is universally more accurate; accuracy varies by trait and observer; some traits are more observable than others.

Target effects

Characteristics of the person being judged that influence judgments.

Perceiver effects

Characteristics of the person making the judgment that influence judgments.

Perceiver × Target effects

Interaction between perceiver and target characteristics that shapes judgments.

Target-ICC

Intraclass correlation for judgments about a target; measures agreement among perceivers.

Perceiver-ICC

Intraclass correlation for judgments across targets for a given perceiver; reflects agreement among target judgments.

Warmth and Competence

Two core dimensions of social judgment: Warmth (friendliness, trustworthiness, morality) and Competence (intelligence, skill, creativity, efficacy).

Trustworthiness

A warmth-related trait dimension indicating honesty and reliability.

Dominance

A trait dimension indicating power, assertiveness; part of the cold/dominance side of judgments.

Youthful/Attractive

Dimension reflecting youthful appearance or attractiveness in person perception.

Big Five mapping to warmth/competence

Warmth maps onto Agreeableness; Competence maps onto Conscientiousness and Openness.

Halo effect

Bias where a general positive impression (e.g., attractiveness) colors judgments of specific traits.

Behavioral confirmation

Perceiver’s beliefs influence their behavior toward the target, which elicits responses that confirm the beliefs.

Self-fulfilling prophecy

Another name for behavioral confirmation; beliefs lead to actions that bring about the expected trait in the target.

Consensus (interjudge agreement)

The degree to which different judges agree on a target’s trait.

Observable traits

Traits that are readily observed by others (e.g., talkativeness).

Unobservable traits

Traits not readily observable (e.g., anxiety) and harder to judge.