Does the validity of person judgments depend on the emotional relationship between perceiver and target?

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Daniel Leising; Professor Dr. Johannes Zimmermann
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology ; Social Psychology, Industrial and Organisational Psychology
• Term: from 2014 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 259428845

The project is to clarify the extent to which the accuracy of person judgments is influenced by existing emotional relationships between perceivers and targets. Research has shown that we tend to characterize the people we like in stereotypically positive ways. Therefore, descriptions of people we like resemble each other more than descriptions of people we do not like. This could result in positive descriptions being less accurate because they make targets appear more interchangeable. In this project, target persons are described by several others who differ in their evaluative attitudes towards the targets. The descriptions are then compared in regard to how well they predict the targets' life circumstances one year later (this is the central outcome variable). We expect that judges who see targets more critically are able to make accurate predictions that neither the targets nor their close friends could make. The study is relevant in three respects: First, other-judgments in personality research are very often provided by people who like the target persons very much. The project will clarify the extent to which this approach may lead to a systematic loss of information. Second, the project has direct implications for social psychological theory. We assume that there is a fundamental conflict in interpersonal relationship regulation: On the one hand, people should aim to obtain most accurate images of other people, in order to be able to predict their behavior, and thus navigate their social environments successfully. On the other hand, people would also like to feel secure and supported as members of social groups. The project will be able to clarify the extent to which the latter goal is sometimes accomplished at the cost of the former (i.e., do people perceive close others in overly positive ways, in order to preserve group cohesion?). Third, the project will be able to show whether it is possible to actually learn something about yourself by accessing the views of people you would not normally ask for their opinions (i.e., your critics). This would yield a strong empirical argument in favor of some of the most widely practised kinds of psychological intervention (e.g., 360 degree feedback).

• DFG Programme: Research Grants