Accuracy in judging personality is important in clinical assessment, applied settings, and everyday life. Personality judgments are important in assessing job candidates, choosing friends, and determining who we can trust and rely on in our personal lives. Thus, the accuracy of those judgments is important to both individuals and organizations.
In examining personality judgment, Personality Judgment takes a sweeping look at the field's history, assumptions, and current research findings. The book explores the construct of traits within the person-situation debate, defends the human judge in the face of the fundamental attribution error, and discusses research on four categories of moderators in judgment: the good judge, the judgeable target, the trait being judged, and the information on which the judgment is based.
Spanning two decades of accuracy research, this book makes clear not only how personality judgment has come to its current standing but also where it may move in the future.
Key Features
- Covers 20 years worth of historical, current and future trends in personality judgment
- Includes discussions of debatable issues related to accuracy and error. The author is well known for his recently developed theoy of the process by which one person may render an accurate judgment of the personality traits of another
Acknowledgments.
Approaching Accuracy:
Curiosity and Its Fulfillment.
What Is Accuracy?
Chapter Organization.
The Importance of Accuracy.
Three Propositions.
Social and Personality Psychology: Separation and Integration.
Renewed Research on Accuracy.
The Agenda of Accuracy Research and Plan for the Book.
The Very Existence of Personality:
Does Personality Exist?
The Situational Onslaught.
The Response.
Do Personality Traits Explain Anything?
Personality Reaffirmed.
Error and Accuracy in the Study of Personality Judgment:
Evolution of Research on Accuracy and Error.
Accuracy in Human Social Judgment.
Toward a Rapprochement between Error and Accuracy.
Methodological and Philosophical Considerations:
The Lessons of Cronbach.
The Criterion Problem.
Interjudge Agreement.
Behavioral Prediction.
General Issues of Design and Analysis.
Conclusion.
The Process of Accurate Personality Judgment:
The Realistic Accuracy model.
The Structure of RAM.
Implications of the Realistic Accuracy Model.
The Four Steps to Accurate Personality Judgment.
Multiple Cues and Multiple Traits.
The Goals of RAM.
Moderators of Accuracy:
The Good Judge.
The Good Target.
The Good Trait.
Good Information.
Interactions among Moderators.
Conclusion.
Self-Knowledge:
Self-Perception versus Other-Perception.
Application of RAM to Self-Judgment.
Prospects for Improving Accuracy:
Relevance.
Availability.
Detection.
Utilization.
The Judge's Situation.
References.
Index.
Brody: PERSONALITY (1988, ISBN: 0-12-134845-8)
