Words, People, and Implicit Personality Theory

Soto, Clinton B. De; Hamilton, Margaret; Taylor, Ralph B.

doi:10.1521/soco.1985.3.4.369

Cited by 10 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Moreover, judges' implicit theories about "what goes with what" (Shweder, 1975;Shweder & D'Andrade, 1980) are held so strongly that the factor structure of judgments remains stable regardless of whether a real person is available to judge (Passini & Norman, 1966). This fact is interpreted by some investigators as indicating that personality judgments are based more on these implicit theories than on observations of the persons judged (Shweder & D'Andrade, 1980; see rebuttals by Block, Weiss, & Thome, 1979;DeSoto, Hamilton, & Taylor, 1985;Romer&Revelle, 1984;Paunonen& Jackson, 1979).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Friends and strangers: Acquaintanceship, agreement, and the accuracy of personality judgment.

Funder¹,

Colvin²

1988

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

477

499

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We examined the effect of acquaintanceship on interjudge agreement in personality ratings. Approximately 150 undergraduates described their own personalities using the Q-sort. They were also described by two close acquaintances and by two "strangers" who knew them only via a single, spontaneous interaction viewed on videotape. The effect of acquaintanceship was powerful: Judgments by close acquaintances agreed with each other and with subjects' self-judgments much better than did judgments by strangers, even though strangers' judgments agreed with each other and with subjects' self-judgments beyond a chance level. This result implies that agreement among acquaintances' judgments must derive at least partly from experience with and observation of the person who is judged. The same traits that yielded better agreement among acquaintances also yielded better agreement among strangers and tended to be rated higher in subjective visibility, suggesting that people are intuitively knowledgeable about the traits they can judge with more and less agreement.

show abstract

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Friends and strangers: Acquaintanceship, agreement, and the accuracy of personality judgment.

Funder¹,

Colvin²

1988

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

477

499

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…They showed, in a parallel set of analyses, one contaminated and one uncontaminated by semantic distortion effects, that target persons are described in the same way in both analyses. Most observers regard the semantic distortion hypothesis as having been largely disproved (see also DeSoto, Hamilton, & Taylor, 1985).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The meaning of personality test scores.

Hogan

Nicholson²

1988

American Psychologist

160

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The process of reexamining the methodological and metatheoretical assumptions of personality psychology over the past two decades has been useful for both critics and practitioners of personality research. Although the field has progressed substantially, some critics continue to raise 1960s-vintage complaints, and some researchers perpetuate earlier abuses. We believe that a single issue-construct validity-underlies the perceived and actual shortcomings of current assessment-based personality research. Unfortunately, many psychologists seem unaware of the extensive literature on construct validity, This article reviews five major contributions to our understanding of construct validity and discusses their importance for evaluating new personality measures. This review is intended as a guide for practitioners as well as an answer to questions raised by critics. Because the problem of construct validity is generic to our discipline, these issues are significant not only for personality researchers but also for psychologists in other domains.

show abstract

“…The arguments against the traditional (trait) theory of personality put forward by Shweder and D'Andrade and several other researchers (e.g., Berman & Kenny, 1976; Berman, Read, & Kenny, 1983; Bourne, 1977; Chapman & Chapman, 1967, 1969; Mischel, 1968) have been countered by a number of authors for several reasons (Block, 1977; Block, Weiss, & Thorne, 1979; Borkenau, 1986b; Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1987; DeSoto, Hamilton, & Taylor, 1985; Epstein, 1979; Jackson, Chan, & Stricker, 1979; Lamiell, Foss, & Cavenee, 1980; Romer & Revelle, 1984; Weiss, 1979; Weiss & Mendelsohn, 1986). A central point in the discussion of the systematic distortion hypothesis is the question how should behaviors shown by a person be coded for scientific analysis?…”

mentioning

confidence: 97%

Inferring interpersonal traits from behavior: Act prototypicality versus conceptual similarity of trait concepts.

Riemann¹,

Angleitner²

1993

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article investigates 2 models of the cognitive process underlying trait ratings: The trait-to-trait process states that trait inferences are guided by the conceptual similarity among traits. We presented Ss with 6 fictitious persons. Each was described by acts referring to 1 of 6 traits. Ss rated the targets on interpersonal trait terms. If trait ratings are gathered immediately after the presentation of behavioral information about a single target (Study 1) these ratings correspond closely to the prototypicality ratings of the acts on the trait concepts (behavior-to-trait process). However, if Ss have to keep the behavioral information about several targets in memory (Study 2), the trait ratings are guided by the conceptual relations among the concepts under study (trait-totrait process).The contrast between mechanical collection of data in science and the reliance on poorly understood human judgments in psychological assessment have made many psychologists skeptical about the dependability of the latter kind of data. Among the many claims and empirical demonstrations of shortcomings of social judgments (see Nisbett & Ross, 1980), the so-called systematic distortion hypothesis (

show abstract

Words, People, and Implicit Personality Theory

Cited by 10 publications

References 2 publications

Friends and strangers: Acquaintanceship, agreement, and the accuracy of personality judgment.

Friends and strangers: Acquaintanceship, agreement, and the accuracy of personality judgment.

The meaning of personality test scores.

Inferring interpersonal traits from behavior: Act prototypicality versus conceptual similarity of trait concepts.

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About