Do We Know When Our Impressions of Others Are Valid? Evidence for Realistic Accuracy Awareness in First Impressions of Personality

Abstract

Do people have insight into the validity of their first impressions or accuracy awareness? Across two large interactive round-robins, those who reported having formed a more accurate impression of a specific target had (a) a more distinctive realistically accurate impression, accurately perceiving the target's unique personality characteristics as described by the target's self-, parent-, and peer-reports, and (b) a more normatively accurate impression, perceiving the target to be similar to what people generally tend to be like. Specifically, if a perceiver reported forming a more valid impression of a specific target, he or she had in fact formed a more realistically accurate impression of that target for all but the highest impression validity levels. In contrast, people who generally reported more valid impressions were not actually more accurate in general. In sum, people are aware of when and for whom their first impressions are more realistically accurate.

Confidence of social judgments is not just error: Individual differences in the structure, stability, and social functions of perceptual confidence

“…Although we did not find evidence that confidence was related to accuracy in these studies, our method was not designed to test for accuracy. We therefore do not see these null results as rejection of past work (e.g., Ames et al, 2009;Biesanz et al, 2011;Carlson et al, 2010). and the sense of power, than participants who were not rated confidently.…”

“…First, relationship effects are analogous to the differential component of confidence that previous research has examined in relationship to accuracy (Ames et al, 2009;Biesanz et al, 2011;Carlson et al, 2010) and were therefore not the focus of our research. Second, the SRM requires two indicators of a latent construct in order to separate relationship effects from error (i.e., variation that is not explained by perceivers, targets, or the relationship).…”

“…For example, Ames et al (2009) and Biesanz et al (2011) had participants provide confidence ratings for multiple videos of participants to examine the relationship between relative confidence and relative accuracy. Carlson et al (2010) used a round-robin group rating design to examine the relationship between accuracy and confidence in meta-perceptions.…”

“…Past research suggests that levels of perceptual confidence are too high and may be unwarranted in general because the confidence a person feels about his or her impressions of others thus is not substantially related to the accuracy of those same impressions (e.g., Ames & Kammrath, 2004;Dunning et al, 1990;Gill et al, 1998;Swann & Gill, 1997). Recent research has assessed confidence across ratings of multiple targets in order to demonstrate that a person's relative feeling of confidence is positively related to the person's relative accuracy (Ames, Kammrath, Suppes, & Bolger, 2009;Biesanz et al, 2011;Carlson, Furr, & Vazire, 2010). However, the effect sizes reported in these studies are small, and further emphasize that a large percentage of variance in confidence is not related to accuracy.…”

Your Best Self Helps Reveal Your True Self

“…This 24-item version of the BFI has been used in several other published papers (e.g., Biesanz, et al, 2011;Chan et al, 2010;Human …”