Consistencies And Inconsistencies In Personality Ratings Among Knowledgeable Other Reporters

Most personality assessments rely on self-report, but the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM) proposes that personality may be accurately perceived by others. The strongest reporters of a target's personality besides the target themselves are knowledgeable others. Research supports that spouses exhibit the strongest correspondence between self-reports and other-reports, followed by family members, then friends. This study uses a sample of 197 targets, 197 friends, and 151 family members to examine the consistencies and inconsistencies of personality ratings across nine traits. Based on the literature, I hypothesized that self-family reports and self-friend reports would be positively correlated, and that there would be stronger correlations between self-family reports than between self-friend reports. I also hypothesized that there would be a positivity bias for family reports of the target’s personality, and no significant bias among friend reports the target’s personality, relative to the self-reports. Both sets of knowledgeable others (friend-reporters and family-reporters) were consistent with their personality judgments of the target, with similar average correlations. Parents tended to be positively biased, relative to self-reports, for the traits Extraversion, Agreeableness, Self-Esteem, and Integrity. Friends tended to be negatively biased, relative to self-reports, for the traits Openness to Experience and Intellect.