The degree to which a person rates him or herself
as do others. Using the
Social
Relations Model assessed by the correlation between self ratings and
the target effect in ratings. Thus, self-other agreement presumes
that there is target variance in the trait rating. If there were
no target variance, then self-other agreement could not be measured.
The level of self-other agreement is surprisingly
high at
zero
acquaintance, especially for extroversion. With high acquaintance,
the degree of extroversion is fairly large, and again larger for extroversion.
There has been considerable work examining moderators of self-other agreement
(i.e., what factors lead to increases in self-other agreement). For
instance,
-
According to John and Robins, there is more self-other
agreement for traits that are not evaluatively extreme. Most other
investigators have found more agreement for positive traits than for negative
or neutral traits.
-
Traits that are more observable show more self-other agreement.
-
There is more agreement with people we are closer to though
why the agreement is greater is not so clear.
Given that self and other agree, but not perfectly
which is more accurate? Several studies suggest that others
are more accurate (see Chapter 9 of Kenny, 1994). Likely, this result
is context sensitive. That is, self should be more accurate at evaluating
more internal traits whereas others might be more accurate at evaluating
more behavioral traits. Also, self may be more accurate at predicting future
or past behavior whereas others may be more accurate at reporting behaviors
that are observed. There is some indication that self is more accurate
for judgments of
Big
Five factor of culture.
We do not understand very well the role of communication
in self-other agreement. Do people agree with self because self convinces
them to see the personas the person sees self? Alternatively, others
might convince the self to view him or herself as do others.
Based an work by Micha Strack, we can expand the concept of self-other agreement. The
self is measured for each interaction partner. So Alice rates herself
when she is with Betty, Carol, and Dawn. There are three forms of
self-other agreement: perceiver, generalized, and dyadic:
-
Perceiver self-other agreement refers to the correlation
between how a person generally sees others and how others generally see
themselves when they interact with the person.
-
Generalized self-other agreement refers to the correlation
between the how the person generally sees self with others and how others
generally see the person.
-
Dyadic self-other agreement refers to a correlation between
how a persons sees him or herself with a particular other and how that
particular other sees the person.
To date, no one has published an investigation of this
type of agreement.
When self-ratings are obtained for each interaction
partner, we can measure three types of accuracy. Are all three types of
self-other agreement found? Another interesting question is will there
be large amounts of perceiver variance in self-ratings in more collectivist
cultures?
Chapter 9 of
Interpersonal
Perception: A Social Relations Analysis
