This article presents an overview of the current state of knowledge in personality judgment research. We address (1) the words and phrases that people use to describe one another and themselves, (2) research in the “variable-centered” tradition, which investigates judgments of targets by perceivers on single traits, and (3) research investigating judgments of targets by perceivers on whole profiles of traits. Our focus is on inter-rater agreement, accuracy, and bias. We also provide (4) an outlook regarding important research questions that remain to be answered in this field. Although we consider our attempt to jointly identify the most robust evidence in the field to be largely successful, we acknowledge that the process of consensus building was fairly difficult. Thus, we close with a number of concrete suggestions for making such collaborative-writing processes as constructive as possible.
We present the first version of the Visual Argument Structure Tool (VAST), which may be used for jointly visualizing the semantic, conceptual, empirical and reasoning relationships that constitute arguments. Its primary purpose is to promote exactness and comprehensiveness in systematic thinking. The system distinguishes between concepts and the words (“names”) that may be used to refer to them. It also distinguishes various ways in which concepts may be related to one another (causation, conceptual implication, prediction, transformation, reasoning), and all of these from beliefs as to whether something IS the case and/or OUGHT to be the case. Using these elements, the system allows for formalizations of narrative argument components at any level of vagueness vs. precision that is deemed possible and/or necessary. This latter feature may make the system particularly useful for attaining greater theoretical specificity in the humanities, and for bridging the gap between the humanities and the “harder” sciences. However, VAST may also be used outside of science, to capture argument structures in e.g., legal analyses, media reports, belief systems, and debates.
This study is part of the German Language Development Study's prospective longitudinal research programme on infants from birth until the age of 3 years. Thirty‐four infants were retrospectively classified into two groups (normal/delayed) by their language skills at 2.5 years of age. Frequency spectrograms and melodies of about 11,000 cries from the first 16 weeks of life were analysed using a CSL 4400. A Melody Complexity Index was calculated at monthly intervals. Infants with less than 45% complex melodies in their cries during the second month were found to be almost five times more likely to develop a language delay as infants with a higher proportion. For infants above the cut‐off of .45, development of a language delay condition could be ruled out with a probability of 89%. Although the results need to be interpreted cautiously, the data indicate a possible relation between early melody development and later language outcome.
Clinical diagnoses are impossible without referring to normative assumptions about what is desirable functioning. In this paper, the authors explicate the implicit normative assumptions that seem to have guided the formulation of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM–IV) personality disorder (PD) criteria. Then the authors discuss various conceptual reference frames in which such assumptions may be grounded: (1) a given diagnostician's personal value system, (2) the expectations of the culture in which a person currently lives, (3) the expectations of the culture in which a person was raised, (4) models of “natural” personality functioning that are rooted in evolution theory, and (5) the presence of distress and/or impairment. In accordance with Wakefield (1992a , 2006 ), the authors argue that PD diagnoses necessarily involve both an evolutionary and a cultural component. If PDs were defined completely in cultural terms, investigating their biological underpinnings would be nonsensical. In addition, the values of any specific culture should not be given too much weight, because cultural expectations may themselves be harmful. Future editions of DSM should define personality pathology in less culture-relative terms, and address the inevitable issue of values more explicitly.
The present work explores how accuracy and bias in person perception change with the level of liking that the perceiver holds toward the target person. Specifically, we studied whether dislike affects (a) the social desirability of judgments (positivity bias), (b) the extent to which the target is described like an average person (normative accuracy), and (c) the extent to which the judgment reflects the given target’s characteristics in particular (distinctive accuracy). Eighty-four participants watched four target persons on video, after receiving bogus feedback on how positively or negatively those targets had supposedly evaluated them. The participants reciprocated negative bogus evaluations showing a marked decrease in reported liking for the respective target. Most important, dislike was consistently associated with lower positivity bias, greater normative accuracy, and lower distinctive accuracy across two validation measures (i.e., self-reports and informant reports of target persons).
We investigated how consensus and accuracy in judgments of people’s intelligence are affected by different procedures for obtaining group judgments. Watching videos of previously unacquainted targets reading a brief text, 65 triads of 3 judges judged the intelligence of 54 targets. The targets’ actual intelligence was assessed via tests of verbal and nonverbal cognitive abilities. In Condition 1, each triad member judged each target’s intelligence independently, and then the individual judgments were averaged. In Condition 2, two members of a triad revealed their judgments, and the third member then heralded the group’s judgment. In Condition 3, the judges discussed their impressions with one another, and then jointly announced a judgment they had agreed upon. Judgments became less accurate over time across conditions (fatigue effect), and more favorable in Condition 3. Communication between judges resulted in higher consensus, and judges assumed that discussion-based judgments were more accurate. However, accuracy did not really differ systematically between conditions. We discuss the implications of these results for applied contexts.
