| Abstrakt: |
Personality self- and informant-reports have been ascribed complementary value based on the asymmetric knowledge of the two perspectives. However, this study is the first to investigate what personality (item) content is reflected in the shared and unique components in multi-rater personality judgments. In two large data sets (Sample 1: 664 targets/1,615 informants; Sample 2: 478 targets/1,434 informants), we used latent variable models to separate judgments into variance that is shared across targets and informants (the Trait factor), unique to self-reports (Identity), and unique to informant-reports (Reputation). Then, we predicted the personality items' loadings for each factor from the items' content. This included items' affective, behavioral, cognitive, or desire-related content, observability and evaluativeness, and centrality to identity or reputation. We found that Trait consensus was generally promoted by items reflecting observable, behavioral, but also affective content. Unique self-perceptions were captured especially by cognitions and non-observable content. Evaluativeness had inconsistent effects across samples. Similarly, unique informant-views reflected different content across samples. Both may depend on the types of informants or the available item sample. These insights build the foundation for leveraging the power of multi-rater perspectives on personality for advancing theory and measurement across different perspectives. Plain language summary: Someone's personality can be judged from two different perspectives: by the person themselves or by someone else (e.g., a friend). Self-judgments and judgments made by others show some agreement, but it typically is moderate: That is, there are some things about our personality that everyone agrees on, but there are also things that only we think about ourselves (our identity) or that only others think about us (our reputation). This may have different reasons: For example, other people can only observe what we do and say, whereas we also know what we are thinking and feeling. In this study, we wanted to find out what content makes up the different perspectives of the self and others on someone's personality. In two samples, people judged their own personality and were also judged by 1–3 people from their social networks (informants) by answering personality questionnaires. The samples, respectively, included 664/478 people judging themselves and 1,615/1,434 informants. We found that self and others agreed more on questions describing personality traits that are observable from the outside or describe behaviors (e.g., "talks a lot"), but also emotions (e.g., "often feels blue"). For traits that cannot be easily observed, especially if they concern how we think (e.g., "believes they are better than others"), people tend to have more unique self-perceptions. There was no clear pattern for informants' unique views: The content of a person's reputation may depend on the type of informant (e.g., friend, coworker, or stranger). Understanding the shared and unique components in personality self- and informant-judgments is important for different reasons: Researchers may develop personality questionnaires specifically for self- or informant-judgments rather than assigning everyone the same questions in spite of their differentiated insights. It also helps decide whose perspective is relevant in a given context and how to integrate their value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
