Reading focus
Syllabus: How Do We Describe and Measure Individual Differences?
Compare the accuracy of self-ratings and informant ratings across behaviors, and follow the analyses asking whether each source adds information beyond the other.
Why you’re reading it. Test the assumption that self-report is the best evidence about a person, using a criterion that does not depend on either set of ratings.
A question to consider. Learners and their friends both rate how often each learner studies with other people. If the ratings disagree, what would the team need, beyond the ratings themselves, to decide which is more accurate—or whether each is accurate about something different?
Why this reading
Researchers and laypeople often treat people as the best authorities on their own behavior. This study tests that assumption against a criterion independent of anyone’s ratings: everyday behavior sampled by an unobtrusive audio recorder.
Before you read
An informant is someone who rates a target person, here a close friend, parent, or romantic partner. Accuracy is measured as the correlation between ratings and a criterion. The electronically activated recorder (EAR) captured 30-second sound clips about every 12.5 minutes, which coders scored for behaviors such as talking, laughing, or watching TV. The Johari window classifies what is known to the self, to others, to both, or to neither. Unique or incremental validity asks whether one source predicts the criterion beyond another.
Read for
- Contrast the lay beliefs about self-knowledge in Study 1 with the test of actual accuracy in Study 2.
- Examine why the authors sought a criterion that is both independent of the ratings and representative of daily life, and how the EAR attempts to meet both goals.
- Follow the regression analyses asking whether self-ratings and informant ratings each predict behavior beyond the other, and notice how results vary across behaviors.
Consider afterwards
- Self-ratings were more accurate for arguing, and informants for talking one-on-one and attending lectures. What features of a behavior might make it more visible to oneself or to others?
- If self-ratings and informant ratings are about equally accurate on average, what does a researcher lose by relying on self-report alone?
Editorial context
Study 2 involved about 80 undergraduates at one U.S. university, rated by up to three close others, and 20 acoustically detectable behaviors sampled over four days. The criterion therefore covers a limited range of relatively concrete behaviors; it does not capture thoughts, feelings, or higher-level acts such as helping or competing, as the authors discuss. Ratings compared each target with “the average person,” a vague reference point. Average accuracy correlations were modest, about .26 for each source, and the small sample limited tests of differences between them. The study concerns ratings of specific behaviors rather than broad traits; Vazire’s later self–other knowledge asymmetry model proposes when selves and others should each know more.