The road to the unconscious self not taken: Discrepancies between self‐ and observer‐inferences about implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues

Abstract

To what extent can individuals gain insight into their own or another person's implicit dispositions? We investigated whether self-perceivers versus neutral observers can detect implicit dispositions from nonverbal behavioural cues contained in video feedback (cue validity) and whether these cues are in turn used as a valid basis for explicit dispositional inferences (cue utilization). Across three studies in the domains of extraversion and anxiety we consistently obtained reliable cue validity and cue utilization for neutral observers but not for self-perceivers. An additional measure of state inferences in Study 3 showed that one reason for the lack of mediation in self-perceivers is their reluctance to use their state inferences as a basis for more general trait inferences. We conclude that people have a 'blind spot' with respect to the nonverbal behavioural manifestations of their unconscious selves, even though neutral observers may readily detect and utilize this information for dispositional inferences.

Sources of Variance in Personality Facets: A Multiple-Rater Twin Study of Self-Peer, Peer-Peer, and Self-Self (Dis)Agreement

“…This interpretation is in line with studies showing that peer reports on personality provide significant incremental variance over self-ratings in predicting personality-relevant criteria (Fiedler, Oltmanns, & Turkheimer, 2004;Mount, Barrick, & Strauss, 1994). A recent study found evidence that self-raters do not pay as much attention to or make as much use of available behavioral information cues as observers (Hofmann, Gschwender, & Schmitt, 2009). It appears that other-ratings predict observable personality-relevant behavior better than self-ratings.…”

“…Future research on personality traits should aim at finding testable ways to resolve whether rater-specific variance in self-reports is essential, artificial, or both. Other methods, such as implicit measures (Hofmann et al, 2009), real-life measures of act frequencies (Vazire & Mehl, 2008), or measures of endophenotypes (Ebstein, 2006;Plomin et al, 2008), might be useful to rule out rater biases (e.g., response styles, self-enhancement, and self-deception). Because peers see targets only in limited contexts, collecting assessments from each rater across contexts and from different raters within each context may additionally rule out contextual effects on personality judgments (Kraemer et al, 2003).…”

Others Sometimes Know Us Better Than We Know Ourselves

“…If processing selfknowledge implicitly were merely a matter of efficiency, we should be able to increase the congruence between our explicit and implicit self-views simply by focusing our attention on the behavioral manifestations of our implicit personality. Contrary to this prediction, participants who watched themselves on video did not bring their explicit self-views more in line with their implicit personality, despite the fact that strangers who watched the same videos were able to detect the implicit aspects of the targets' personalities (Hofmann, Gschwendner, & Schmitt, 2009). Thus, it seems that our motives sometimes lead us to ignore aspects of our personality that others can detect.…”

Using Indirect Measurement Tasks to Assess the Self–Concept of Personality: A Systematic Review and Meta–Analyses

“…Interestingly, however, these observations in the extraversion domain and for the facets aggressiveness and general causality orientation are all confirmed by moderated predictive validity results found in several studies in the extraversion domain. Extraversion‐related criterion behaviour was only predicted by implicit extraversion when the criterion behaviour was observed by the experimenter, but not when the behaviour was reported by the participants themselves (Hirschmüller et al, ; Hofmann, Gschwendner, et al, ). In our opinion, this issue needs further consideration in new studies, as well as in the other personality domains.…”