Trait Perception Accuracy and Acquaintance Within Groups: Tracking Accuracy Development

Abstract

Previous work on trait perception has evaluated accuracy at discrete stages of relationships (e.g., strangers, best friends). A relatively limited body of literature has investigated changes in accuracy as acquaintance within a dyad or group increases. Small groups of initially unacquainted individuals spent more than 30 hr participating in a wide range of activities designed to represent common interpersonal contexts (e.g., eating, traveling). We calculated how accurately each participant judged others in their group on the big five traits across three distinct points within the acquaintance process: zero acquaintance, after a getting-to-know-you conversation, and after 10 weeks of interaction and activity. Judgments of all five traits exhibited accuracy above chance levels after 10 weeks. An examination of the trait rating stability revealed that much of the revision in judgments occurred not over the course of the 10-week relationship as suspected, but between zero acquaintance and the getting-to-know-you conversation.

The Effect of Information Quantity on Distinctive Accuracy and Normativity of Personality Trait Judgments

“…These findings are in contrast with previous results that found increases in levels of self-other agreement and overall accuracy as information quantity increased (Beer & Watson, 2010;Borkenau & Liebler, 1992). Despite this, previous research has also suggested that the effects of time on accuracy may be trait specific, and thus, examining traits overall does not necessarily provide a full understanding of this relationship (Brown & Bernieri, 2017). When all traits were combined, both distinctive accuracy and normativity reached statistical significance for all observation lengths.…”

“…In addition, time was a significant moderator of normativity, but not distinctive accuracy, indicating that judges used more information about what the average person is like for judgments of Agreeableness as time increased. These results fit with previous research that has found a linear trend in accuracy of Agreeableness over time with short information quantities (Brown & Bernieri, ; Carney et al, ). Because a significant linear trend for distinctive accuracy of Agreeableness was not found, longer observation lengths may be required for judges to gather the cues required for more distinctively accurate judgments of this trait.…”

“…These differences at the trait level are notable in that they indicate that certain traits benefit more from increases in information quantity when time is limited compared with others and that judges achieve accuracy in different ways depending on the trait. These findings are in alignment with previous research that has found differences in how length of acquaintanceship affects accuracy depending on the trait and point to the idea that examination of separate traits is essential to more fully understand the effects of information quantity on accuracy (Brown & Bernieri, ; Carney et al, ).…”

“…Some studies utilize a third-party-observation approach in which participants watch videos of individuals that span a few seconds to several minutes to a few hours, while other studies have participants engage in interactions with strangers that range from several minutes to a few hours. Other studies have investigated real-life acquaintanceships to study longer term relationships that go beyond just a few hours of interaction to span a semester or many years (Biesanz et al, 2007;Brown & Bernieri, 2017;Kenny et al, 1994).…”

“…3 Another longitudinal study assessed accuracy after one versus seven 20minute group interactions and found an increase in accuracy for all traits except Extraversion (Paulhus & Reynolds, 1995). Yet another longitudinal study compared self-other agreement of judgments based on no interaction, one 5minute conversation, and weekly conversations across 10 weeks (totaling about 30 hours of interaction) and found that self-other agreement increased for all traits when comparing ratings before any interaction to ratings after 10 weeks of interaction (Brown & Bernieri, 2017). The trait with the largest increase in self-other agreement over time was Extraversion, although this was the only trait that did not have a greater level of change between 5 minutes and 10 weeks than between no interaction and 5 minutes.…”