Conduct a personal experiment by joining http://www.youjustgetme.com/. You should earn at least 25 credit points by making your own profile available and by guessing the personalities of other members. Describe your experience of this website with respect to social psychological aspects of personality and social perception.Abstract
A personal experiment was conducted on the site “You Just Get Me”, a project based on Funder's (1999) Realistic Accuracy Model. “You Just Get Me” explores social psychology concepts of personality and social perception with personality assessed against an individual’s profile measuring personality based on the Big 5 inventory. Data was collected online and assessment was carried out by forming online impressions based on a photograph and limited information about their preferences.
Personal experience of assessing personality on “You Just Get Me” illustrated that first impressions were often fairly accurate but not always correct. Personality judgement was made utilising heuristics, facial expression and the information provided by the subject.
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As a psychologist the ability to assess personality is often vital when diagnosing psychological disorders, it makes you better informed about your clients and improves communication (Letzring, 2005). I conducted a personal experiment and assessed fifteen other personalities on You Just Get Me, some with limited success and others with near perfect accuracy. These assessments were quantified against the individual’s self report assessment of their personality.
Social and personality psychology have had a long and close relationship (Funder, 2001) and social psychologist have conducted many studies on how people form impressions of others (Baumeister, 2008) and why we feel and act towards people as we do (Eiser, 1986). Personality judgment studies such as “You Just Get Me” have the ability to gather information on social perceptions to see how accurate our first impression is. It is also able to collect data on how important the face and its expression is as a source of information to judge personality and compare this to other sources of information which we use to form our attitudes about others.
I sought to determine whether my first impressions of others were accurate by guessing the personality of subjects randomly assigned by “You Just Get Me” or available from the first page of listing. Research has determined that human intuition is a poor method for discovering truth and our first impressions are not always accurate as social perceptions can obviously be flawed (Baumeister, 2008). My experience of assessing personality on “You Just Get Me” illustrated that while my first impressions were often fairly accurate they were not always correct. My results suggested that I seemed to be receiving a large amount of information from facial expression and the limited communication provided. My results from assessing different personalities were as follows:
1 nearly perfect assessment
3 extremely high assessments
6 high assessments
2 medium assessments
1 wrong assessment
Accuracy was determined from nearly perfect to wrong and was gauged against the individual’s self concept. Their responses were matched against mine in order to score my impression of the individual against their assessment of their own personality. One critique of this would be that it is entirely reliant on the individual self assessing their personality. Accuracy would be increased if separate personality ratings for the subject had also been obtained from people who knew them well (Funder, 1999). While this would have improved the quality of the personality assessment obviously it would also negatively impact the amount of data that is able to be collected.
Personality cues were limited to some structured communication and in some cases facial expression from a supplied photograph. Information that would normally be available when meeting someone such as posture, movement and tone were not available to make a judgement on. This also meant I was unable to assess a personality from how the individual acted in a social situation or other situational and environmental factors. In a small way this was offset with the provision of some information on their preferences in social situations which did give some clues to extraversion. For the purpose of the research removing the complexity of social situations enabled errors in assumptions to be confirmed easily because the outside stimulus had been restricted (Funder, 1987).
My attitude to others is based on my own experiences (Eiser, 1986) and attitudes. On “You Just Get Me” I was required to make a series of determinations that enabled a personality assessment to be made against the Big 5 inventory. When I was assessing whether someone was a “fashionista” I made assessments against personal stereotypes or heuristics, these were formed on my past interactions with others. I looked at their hairstyle, current style of dress and gender and preconceived perceptions such as the belief that a female was more likely to be fashion conscious. When assessing a male I believed that if they were clean shaven they would be more concerned about there personal appearance and less likely to think “clean and shaven – OK”? Because my results were fairly correct it demonstrated alignment to the view that many stereotypes have “a kernel of truth”. This makes sense as if there wasn’t an element of accuracy we wouldn’t continue to use heuristics (Baumeister, 2008).
Facial expressions are a major source of nonverbal communication and provide meaningful cues in our perceptions of others (Russell, 1997) as they communicate important messages of emotion and personality. Cross-cultural studies have demonstrated that a number of primary emotions are widely recognised by others from our facial expressions (Ekman, 1987) this suggests that psychological meaningful information is encoded in them. Even without meeting the person I was able to pick up enough clues from the photo. There was some support that I was picking up considerable information from the photo because one subject that I selected only had clues on their personality and no photo. In this case my assessment of their personality was not very accurate as my score was closer to “0” than “1”.
Non verbal communication expresses emotion, conveys our attitudes and our personality traits (Cunningham, 1977). When assessing personality I looked for facial indicators that fit my assumptions of personality traits. For example, I hold the opinion that a smiling attractive person is more likely to be an extroverted personality and is more likely to be open, warm and enthusiastic, this stereotype generally proved to be correct. While this heuristic tended to be accurate research has proven that extraversion is the easiest of the personality traits to judge accurately (Evans, undated).
It is also recognised that there are gender differences (Carlson, 1975) and this has caused us to form gender stereotypes. Males are generally perceived to be more independent, dominant and aggressive (Hofstede, 2005) and I was more likely to score them higher as “a closeted world dominator”. I would also normally stereotype the males to be a beer drinker, to be a “realist” and to be “a deep thinker”. When assessing the personality of females I saw them as being more emotional, sensitive and gentle (Hofstede, 2005). I drew assumptions of them better at “multi-tasking”, more likely to be an idealist and to be more trusting than males.
There are cultural rules on how we can display emotion and cultural differences in display rules, body language, and emotion work can lead to misunderstandings (Baumeister, 2008). For this experiment it was difficult to assess whether this influenced some of my assessments. Even though the while the subjects often came from different countries they were all from white western backgrounds. My responses to some of the questions such as beer drinking may have been slanted to Australian culture.
Personal experience of assessing personality on “You Just Get Me” illustrated that first impressions were often fairly accurate but not always correct. Personality judgement was made utilising heuristics, facial expression and the information provided by the subject.
______________________________________
As a psychologist the ability to assess personality is often vital when diagnosing psychological disorders, it makes you better informed about your clients and improves communication (Letzring, 2005). I conducted a personal experiment and assessed fifteen other personalities on You Just Get Me, some with limited success and others with near perfect accuracy. These assessments were quantified against the individual’s self report assessment of their personality.
Social and personality psychology have had a long and close relationship (Funder, 2001) and social psychologist have conducted many studies on how people form impressions of others (Baumeister, 2008) and why we feel and act towards people as we do (Eiser, 1986). Personality judgment studies such as “You Just Get Me” have the ability to gather information on social perceptions to see how accurate our first impression is. It is also able to collect data on how important the face and its expression is as a source of information to judge personality and compare this to other sources of information which we use to form our attitudes about others.
I sought to determine whether my first impressions of others were accurate by guessing the personality of subjects randomly assigned by “You Just Get Me” or available from the first page of listing. Research has determined that human intuition is a poor method for discovering truth and our first impressions are not always accurate as social perceptions can obviously be flawed (Baumeister, 2008). My experience of assessing personality on “You Just Get Me” illustrated that while my first impressions were often fairly accurate they were not always correct. My results suggested that I seemed to be receiving a large amount of information from facial expression and the limited communication provided. My results from assessing different personalities were as follows:
1 nearly perfect assessment
3 extremely high assessments
6 high assessments
2 medium assessments
1 wrong assessment
Accuracy was determined from nearly perfect to wrong and was gauged against the individual’s self concept. Their responses were matched against mine in order to score my impression of the individual against their assessment of their own personality. One critique of this would be that it is entirely reliant on the individual self assessing their personality. Accuracy would be increased if separate personality ratings for the subject had also been obtained from people who knew them well (Funder, 1999). While this would have improved the quality of the personality assessment obviously it would also negatively impact the amount of data that is able to be collected.
Personality cues were limited to some structured communication and in some cases facial expression from a supplied photograph. Information that would normally be available when meeting someone such as posture, movement and tone were not available to make a judgement on. This also meant I was unable to assess a personality from how the individual acted in a social situation or other situational and environmental factors. In a small way this was offset with the provision of some information on their preferences in social situations which did give some clues to extraversion. For the purpose of the research removing the complexity of social situations enabled errors in assumptions to be confirmed easily because the outside stimulus had been restricted (Funder, 1987).
My attitude to others is based on my own experiences (Eiser, 1986) and attitudes. On “You Just Get Me” I was required to make a series of determinations that enabled a personality assessment to be made against the Big 5 inventory. When I was assessing whether someone was a “fashionista” I made assessments against personal stereotypes or heuristics, these were formed on my past interactions with others. I looked at their hairstyle, current style of dress and gender and preconceived perceptions such as the belief that a female was more likely to be fashion conscious. When assessing a male I believed that if they were clean shaven they would be more concerned about there personal appearance and less likely to think “clean and shaven – OK”? Because my results were fairly correct it demonstrated alignment to the view that many stereotypes have “a kernel of truth”. This makes sense as if there wasn’t an element of accuracy we wouldn’t continue to use heuristics (Baumeister, 2008).
Facial expressions are a major source of nonverbal communication and provide meaningful cues in our perceptions of others (Russell, 1997) as they communicate important messages of emotion and personality. Cross-cultural studies have demonstrated that a number of primary emotions are widely recognised by others from our facial expressions (Ekman, 1987) this suggests that psychological meaningful information is encoded in them. Even without meeting the person I was able to pick up enough clues from the photo. There was some support that I was picking up considerable information from the photo because one subject that I selected only had clues on their personality and no photo. In this case my assessment of their personality was not very accurate as my score was closer to “0” than “1”.
Non verbal communication expresses emotion, conveys our attitudes and our personality traits (Cunningham, 1977). When assessing personality I looked for facial indicators that fit my assumptions of personality traits. For example, I hold the opinion that a smiling attractive person is more likely to be an extroverted personality and is more likely to be open, warm and enthusiastic, this stereotype generally proved to be correct. While this heuristic tended to be accurate research has proven that extraversion is the easiest of the personality traits to judge accurately (Evans, undated).
It is also recognised that there are gender differences (Carlson, 1975) and this has caused us to form gender stereotypes. Males are generally perceived to be more independent, dominant and aggressive (Hofstede, 2005) and I was more likely to score them higher as “a closeted world dominator”. I would also normally stereotype the males to be a beer drinker, to be a “realist” and to be “a deep thinker”. When assessing the personality of females I saw them as being more emotional, sensitive and gentle (Hofstede, 2005). I drew assumptions of them better at “multi-tasking”, more likely to be an idealist and to be more trusting than males.
There are cultural rules on how we can display emotion and cultural differences in display rules, body language, and emotion work can lead to misunderstandings (Baumeister, 2008). For this experiment it was difficult to assess whether this influenced some of my assessments. Even though the while the subjects often came from different countries they were all from white western backgrounds. My responses to some of the questions such as beer drinking may have been slanted to Australian culture.
From the “You Just Get Me” research it is important to identify why some personalities are easier or harder to guess than others. The site lists the pictures of these members but does not propose why this occurs. From the results I downloaded it seems that it is easier to assess the personality of those people that hold strong opinions ie. scores “0” or “5” against a criterion then those that are in the middle ie. score “3”.
While for each of the members I had guessed I was able to download their ratings against each of the assessment items I wasn’t able to download my own to see if they were a similar personality to me. Hastorf and Bender (1952) proposed that self perception is a potential reason for close judgment of character, other research has disputed this theory (Schafer, 1976). “You Just Get Me” is capturing data to see whether this is a contributing factor as they ask whether the subject you are assessing is like anyone you know.
Certainly some people are better able to decode what another persons trait and behavioural tendencies (Hall, 2001). Because people vary in their abilities to judge others, the site lists members who have been the best judges of personality from selecting random members to guess from. It would be interesting to discover why some assessors are more interpersonal sensitive than others. The information that is being gathered from this research may be able to identify whether there is a correlation between certain personality traits that make a good judge of personality. The current assumption is that good judges of personality have more social knowledge and the ability to use this effectively (Funder, undated). I would also suggest your level of empathy which is able to be to be measured by your emotional intelligence would be a contributing factor.
The accuracy of social judgment is an important subject (Funder, 1987) and it would have been interesting to see how my judgments ranked against others and whether I am average for my personality type. It would also be interesting to be involved in a research that involved face to face observation of others in order to compare this to online assessment.
Self Assessment
Theory: I looked at social psychology concepts of social perception and judgment, communication, personality and stereotypes.
Research: My research was widespread and involved looking at Funder’s Realistic Accuracy Model, the Big 5 personality theory and Hofstede’s cultural insights. I also read about Ekman’s studies of emotions and facial expressions and Evan’s work on “You Just Get Me” and forming personality impressions from online profiles.
Written Expression: I believe my essay is easy to read and understand but the readability index calculator begs to differ!
Word Count: 1472
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 16
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 24
Word Count: 1472
Flesch-Kincaid Grade level: 16
Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease score: 24
On-line Engagement: My online engagement has increased and I have posted a number of posts and made seven comments on other blogs. I still found the online engagement a difficult process because it was foreign to anything I have done before but I stuck with it!
Appendix I
WHAT IS YOU JUST GET ME?
http://www.youjustgetme.com/ is a project based on Funder's (1999) Realistic Accuracy Model (Evans, undated) and studies how well people read each other's personalities. It gathers information by inviting members to play an interactive personality game based on the Big Five theory of personality. The purpose of the game is to correctly assess other people's personalities and have others guess your personality, an accuracy score is then derived based on how close your guesses about the person were.
I joined http://www.youjustgetme.com/Rebecca and ended up with 32 credit points by making my profile available for others to guess and by guessing the personalities of others. I was able to make a judgement on their personality by answering a series of questions, I could then “pay” 5 credit points to download and compare what I had guessed and what the person had said to see how accurate I was.
http://www.youjustgetme.com/ also provides you with an individual assessment of your personality against the Big 5 Traits:
* Neuroticism
* Extraversion
* Openness to Experience
* Agreeableness
* Conscientiousness
“OCEAN” or the Big five has been designed to measure the 5 trait dimensions that many theorist believe are all that required to provide a full description of personality.
This research study is able to look at social perception clearly as it has brought together a large pool of people, across many cultures to form an impression on others based purely on physical appearance (generally a photo is provided) and a broad description of them with a series of informative statements.
Appendix I
WHAT IS YOU JUST GET ME?
http://www.youjustgetme.com/ is a project based on Funder's (1999) Realistic Accuracy Model (Evans, undated) and studies how well people read each other's personalities. It gathers information by inviting members to play an interactive personality game based on the Big Five theory of personality. The purpose of the game is to correctly assess other people's personalities and have others guess your personality, an accuracy score is then derived based on how close your guesses about the person were.
I joined http://www.youjustgetme.com/Rebecca and ended up with 32 credit points by making my profile available for others to guess and by guessing the personalities of others. I was able to make a judgement on their personality by answering a series of questions, I could then “pay” 5 credit points to download and compare what I had guessed and what the person had said to see how accurate I was.
http://www.youjustgetme.com/ also provides you with an individual assessment of your personality against the Big 5 Traits:
* Neuroticism
* Extraversion
* Openness to Experience
* Agreeableness
* Conscientiousness
“OCEAN” or the Big five has been designed to measure the 5 trait dimensions that many theorist believe are all that required to provide a full description of personality.
This research study is able to look at social perception clearly as it has brought together a large pool of people, across many cultures to form an impression on others based purely on physical appearance (generally a photo is provided) and a broad description of them with a series of informative statements.
Appendix II
REFERENCES
Baumeister, R.F. & Bushman, B. J. (2008) Social Psychology and Human Nature (1st ed.) Belmont, CA:Thomson Wadsworth.
REFERENCES
Baumeister, R.F. & Bushman, B. J. (2008) Social Psychology and Human Nature (1st ed.) Belmont, CA:Thomson Wadsworth.
Carlson, R. (1975) Personality. Annual Review of Psychology 26, 393-414.
Cunningham, M.R. (1977) Personality and the structure of the nonverbal communication of emotion. Journal of Personality 45:4, 564–584
Eiser, J.R. (1986) Attitudes, cognition and social behaviour. Melbourne:Cambridge University Press
Ekman P., Friesen, W.V., O’Sullivan, M., Chan, A. Diacoyanni-Tarlatzis, I., Heider, K., Krause, R., LeCompte, W.A., Pitcairn, T., Ricci-Bitti, P. E., Scherer, K., Tomita, M., & Tzavaras, A. (1987). Universals and cultural differences in the judgements of facial expressions of emotion. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 53, 712-171.
Evans, D.C. (undated) Forming personality impressions from online profiles: A research issue illustrating the science of social computing http://www.psychster.com/library/EvansGosling_GROUP07.pdf Retrieved 28/10/07
Funder, D.C. (2001) Personality. Annual Review of Psychology, 52 197-221.
Funder, D.C. (1999) Personality Judgment: A realistic approach to person perception. Marrickville:Academic Press
Funder, D.C. (1987) Errors and mistakes: Evaluating the accuracy of social judgement. Psychology Bulletin 1 75-90.
Hall, J. and Bernieri, F. eds (2001) Interpersonal sensitivity: Theory and measurement. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Hofstede, G. & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Letzring, T., Wells, S. and Funder, C. (2005) Information and personality judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74:6
Russell, J V. and José Miguel Fernández-Dols, J-M (ed) (1997) The Psychology of Facial Expression. Cambridge Sydney:University Press
Schafer, R.., Brait, R.,& Bohlen, J.M. (1976) Self-Concept and the Reaction of a Significant Other: A Comparison of Husbands and Wives. Sociological Inquiry 46:1, 57–65.
Hofstede, G. & Hofstede, G. J. (2005). Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Letzring, T., Wells, S. and Funder, C. (2005) Information and personality judgment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74:6
Russell, J V. and José Miguel Fernández-Dols, J-M (ed) (1997) The Psychology of Facial Expression. Cambridge Sydney:University Press
Schafer, R.., Brait, R.,& Bohlen, J.M. (1976) Self-Concept and the Reaction of a Significant Other: A Comparison of Husbands and Wives. Sociological Inquiry 46:1, 57–65.
Above is a concept map depicting my understanding of the many variables involved.
