Studies assigning impression goals to achieve in the laboratory typically assume their results translate to social success outside. To test this, 156 participants interacted with a confederate, first with no goal (baseline) and then with a goal (post-goal). Goals were to appear likeable, intelligent, likeable and intelligent, or no goal (Control). Up to 10 friends provided ratings of participants. According to video perceivers, participants achieved their goals on average (relative to Control). Confident-type behaviors mediated Likeability condition assignment (relative to Control) and post-goal likeability, and less smiling/laughing mediated Intelligence condition assignment (relative to Control) and post-goal intelligence. Post-goal perceiver ratings (controlling for baseline) correlated with self-rated and friend-rated social life outcomes, suggesting laboratory impression success translates to outside social success.
Interpersonal accuracy, the ability to correctly assess other people’s states or traits, has been studied for over 60 years, and many correlates have been uncovered. Furthermore, theorists routinely propose that having this kind of skill matters for social and workplace outcomes. However, much of the empirical work concerned with interpersonal accuracy does not directly address real-life outcomes for people who have, or lack, this skill. The present article summarizes literature pointing to behavioral correlates of interpersonal accuracy and illustrates when and why interpersonal accuracy is related to favorable interaction outcomes. There seems to be no specific behavior associated with high interpersonal accuracy. Instead, interpersonal accuracy seems to foster behavioral adaptability, the ability to change one’s behavior to match the expectations of the social interaction partner. This behavioral adaptability might be responsible for the positive interaction outcomes related to interpersonal accuracy. We illustrate the mechanism and boundary conditions underlying and framing how interpersonal accuracy affects interaction outcomes and discuss future directions in research on interpersonal accuracy.
Abstract Objectives The present research is concerned with the relation between accuracy in judging targets' affective states and accuracy in judging the same targets' personality traits. In two studies, we test the link between these two types of accuracy with the prediction that accuracy of judging traits and of judging states will be associated when fundamental affective qualities are shared. Method In Study 1, affective states and personality traits of 29 targets were rated by 124 judges whose individual accuracy was scored as the correlation between their ratings and target criterion scores (across targets). In Study 2, a comparable analysis was done using 30 different targets and 330 different judges. Results Accuracy in judging distressed affect was significantly positively correlated with accuracy in judging Neuroticism in both studies, as well as in a meta‐analysis across the two studies. Accuracy in judging positive affect was significantly positively correlated with accuracy in judging Extraversion in one of the two studies, with the meta‐analysis across the two studies being significant. Conclusions These findings provide preliminary evidence for a new model (State and Trait Accuracy Model) that outlines when concordance in accuracy across traits and states should be expected.
