Abstract

This research focused on the target effect on a perceiver's judgments of personality when the perceiver and the target are unacquainted. The perceiver was given no opportunity to interact with the target, a condition we refer to as zero acquaintance. We reasoned that in order to make personality judgments, perceivers would use the information available to them (physical appearance). Consensus in personality judgments would result, then, from shared stereotypes about particular physical appearance characteristics. Results from three separate studies with 259 subjects supported this hypothesis. On two of the five dimensions (extraversion and conscientiousness) on which subjects rated each other, a significant proportion of variance was due to the stimulus target. Consensus on judgments of extraversion appears to have been largely mediated by judgments of physical attractiveness. Across the three studies there was also evidence that the consensus in judgments on these two dimensions had some validity, in that they correlated with self-judgments on those two dimensions.

Keywords

PsychologySocial psychologyZero (linguistics)PersonalityCognitive psychology

MeSH Terms

BeautyEstheticsExtraversionPsychologicalHumansJudgmentPersonalitySelf ConceptSocial PerceptionSocial Responsibility

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Publication Info

Year
1988
Type
article
Volume
55
Issue
3
Pages
387-395
Citations
373
Access
Closed

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Cite This

Linda Albright, David A. Kenny, Thomas E. Malloy (1988). Consensus in personality judgments at zero acquaintance.. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology , 55 (3) , 387-395. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.55.3.387

Identifiers

DOI
10.1037/0022-3514.55.3.387
PMID
3171912

Data Quality

Data completeness: 81%