Neuroticism and interpersonal perception: Evidence for positive, but not negative, biases

Abstract

Objective Personality dispositions predict how individuals perceive, interpret, and react to social interactions with others. A still unresolved question is (a) whether these personality‐congruent interpersonal perceptions reflect perception biases, which occur when perceivers' dispositions systematically predict deviations between perceivers' and other people's perceptions of the same interaction, and/or selection effects, which occur when perceivers' dispositions predict their selection of interaction partners, and (b) whether these effects feed back into perceivers' personality. Method Data from 110 psychology freshmen involving repeated assessments of Neuroticism and repeated interpersonal perceptions of social interactions with fellow students were analyzed to address these questions, focusing on Neuroticism. Results There is evidence for a Neuroticism‐related positivity bias in interpersonal perceptions (i.e., perceivers high in Neuroticism tended to make more positive judgments of others' sociability and warmth), but little evidence for personality‐congruent selection effects (i.e., Neuroticism‐related preferences for interaction partners). The positivity bias did not predict intrapersonal changes in Neuroticism over time, but the selection of specific interaction partners did. Conclusions These findings help to shed light on the interpersonal perception dynamics of Neuroticism in a real‐life context and add to our understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying the interplay of personality and interpersonal perceptions.

Associations Among Monoamine Neurotransmitter Pathways, Personality Traits, and Major Depressive Disorder

“…According to twin studies, the heritability of trait neuroticism is approximately 40%, with 15% to 37% caused by single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) variations (177). High trait neuroticism is associated with sensitivity to stress and negative emotional experiences, as well as with excessive worry, emotional vulnerability, and increased emotional exhaustion (178), all of which can impact an individual's physical activity (179), perception (180,181), and emotion (182). An early meta-analysis of GWASs analyzing over 106,000 individuals identified nine neuroticism-associated loci (including the ionotropic kainate 3 glutamate receptor, Kelchlike protein 2, and corticotropin-releasing hormone receptor 1).…”

What Makes for a Pleasant Social Experience in Adolescence? The Role of Perceived Social Interaction Behavior in Associations Between Personality and Momentary Social Satisfaction

“…Their momentary satisfaction with social interactions should thus depend mainly on the perception of other. Importantly, this can include both negative (e.g., Finn et al, 2013) and positive (Hannuschke et al 2020) momentary perceptions.…”

“…Despite the presence of all these rich studies that have examined the complex relationships between personality, interpersonal dynamics, and relationship experiences, we identified four limitations that we aimed to address with our study: First, many studies took place in a laboratory setting (e.g., Berry & Hansen, 2000;McNulty, 2008;Vater & Schröder-Abé, 2015), leaving unknown the extent to which the results could be generalized to real-life interactions. Second, using university students at zero-acquaintance (e.g., Berry & Hansen, 2000;Morse et al, 2015), psychology freshmen (e.g., Geukes et al, 2017;Hannuschke et al, 2020), or married couples (e.g., McNulty, 2008), only specific types of relationships, social interactions, and life circumstances have been studied. Third, some studies (Caughlin et al, 2000) have used retrospective accounts of interpersonal behavior, interpretations of behavior in hypothetical scenarios (Finn et al, 2013), or aggregated data (Wilson et al, 2015), thus complicating any conclusions that could be drawn about the associations between momentary perceptions and corresponding satisfaction with specific interactions or relationships.…”

Explaining the Longitudinal Interplay of Personality and Social Relationships in the Laboratory and in the Field: The PILS and the CONNECT Study

“…; e.g., [58,165,166]) Do such potential changes gradually evolve (e.g., based on certain gradually changing behavioral and mental state dynamics) or do they quickly become apparent given specific events (e.g., characterized by specific novel behavioral or mental states; e.g., [53,167])? Based on intensive and longitudinal approaches that capture the expressions of personality and social relationships at multiple time points and perhaps more intensively during the initial phases of relationship emergence, stabilization, and change can be modeled, and the behavioral and interpersonal processes underlying these dynamics can be unraveled (e.g., [168,169]).…”

“…In We provide open material with detailed descriptions of PILS and CONNECT in the Open Science Framework (PILS: osf.io/q5zwp [85]; CONNECT: osf.io/2pmcr [86]). By providing open code in our publications on PILS and CONNECT data, we have already made (i.e., [78,[158][159][160][161]163,[168][169][170][171][172][173][174][175][176]179,180,182]) and will continue to make public all analytical codes needed to comprehend and reproduce the results presented in our articles (e.g., R codes, Mplus codes; see osf.io/5tw8b/ for this paper). Herewith, we also provide open data for the all descriptive and exemplary analyses (also see osf.io/zj38h/) to actually offer other researchers the opportunity to reproduce the published results with the provided analytical code.…”