Similarity of trait construal and consensus in interpersonal perception

This study examined the roles of similarity of trait construal and length of acquaintanceship in interpersonal consensus. Pairs of roommates were asked to rate a mutual acquaintance on six ambiguous traits and to describe their behavioral definitions of those traits. They were then asked to rate the acquaintance again, once on the basis of their own definition of the trait and then on the basis of their roommate’s definition of the trait. Consensus was greater when roommates based their judgments on the same, shared trait definitions than when they based their judgments on their own unshared trait definitions. Furthermore, those roommates who reported similar trait construals exhibited significantly higher consensus in their initial unrestricted judgments of the mutual acquaintance than did those whose trait construals were dissimilar. Length of acquaintance appeared unrelated to similarity of trait construal and consensus. Discussion focuses on trait construal, interpersonal agreement, and social judgment.     

The fundamentality of group principles and perceived group entitativity

We argue that the level of consensus about a set of social identity principles, and their perceived fundamentality, can influence the degree to which members perceive their group as an entity. This idea was explored through an experiment in which participants judged the entitativity of specific (in)groups on the basis of the distribution of the opinions held by their members about three identity-related principles that participants had previously rated for fundamentality. The results demonstrated that the more fundamental a principle was judged to be in comparison to other principles, the more important consensus about that principle was for producing group entitativity, relative to consensus about other principles.     

Consensus effects in categorization decisions

A previous study (Gilat et al., J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 3 (1997) 83) has shown that the incentive to reach consensus can raise the tendency to rely on base rates in signal detection decisions and can reduce the probability that less likely events will be accurately classified. This phenomenon was named the “consensus effect”. The current study assesses the conditions under which this effect develops and in particular the effects of information about the game and of the incentive structure on the learning process. The results of three experiments show that the learning process slows when participants have information about the actual state of nature. This finding is captured by a reinforcement learning model with the assumption that information narrows the distribution of the initial propensities for choosing among cutoffs. The results are further evidence for the utility of the combination of learning models and analyses of cognitive processes for the prediction of decision making in situations involving multiple players.     

Information quality in personality judgment: The value of personal disclosure

We examined the relative quality of different types of information and its effects on accuracy in personality judgment. Three hundred and forty-four unacquainted undergraduates participated in a small group round-robin rating scheme. In one condition, participants were asked to disclose three things that were very important to them in life. In a second condition, participants were asked to disclose three distinctive personal facts: things that differentiated them from others. We found that (a) people believed values information was more personality-relevant than facts information and (b) although there was no clear advantage for one condition over the other in terms of generalized accuracy, there were some differences across conditions for specific traits. Implications for the study of information quality in personality judgment are discussed.     

The common morality in communitarian thought: reflective consensus in public policy

I explore the possible meanings that the notion of the common morality can have in a contemporary communitarian approach to ethics and public policy. The common morality can be defined as the conditions for shared pursuit of the good or as the values, deliberations, traditions, and common construction of the narrative of a people. The former sense sees the common morality as the universal and invariant structures of morality while the second sense is much more contingent in nature. Nevertheless, the communitarian sees both aspects as integral in devising solutions to public policy problems. I outline how both meanings follow from communitarian philosophical anthropology and illustrate how they work together when addressing a question such as that of providing universal health insurance in the United States. The common morality forms the basis of building an implicit consensus that is available to and reaffirmed by the shared reflections of the citizenry.     

Insight in frontotemporal dementia: conceptual analysis and empirical evaluation of the consensus criterion "loss of insight" in frontotemporal dementia

The objective of this study was to suggest a new formulation of the core research diagnostic consensus criterion "loss of insight" in frontotemporal dementia (FTD). Eight patients with FTD (diagnoses made by interviews, medical and neuropsychological examination, CT scan, and regional cerebral glucose metabolism measured by positron emission tomography (PET) participated in the study). The results indicated that insight was present in three out of eight patients, and that insight appears to be a heterogeneous concept. Two types of insight emerged: Emotional insight associated with frontotemporal functions, and cognitive insight, related to posterior cognitive functions. These results suggest that loss of insight should not serve as a core criterion on FTD, but serves well as a supportive criterion of the disease.     

Impressions of World of Warcraft players’ personalities based on their usernames: Interobserver consensus but no accuracy

Millions of people interact in the context of massively-multi-player-online-role-play-games (MMORPGs). Here we address whether MMORPG usernames convey accurate information about users’ personalities. Impressions based on email addresses show some accuracy but MMORPG’s are different because they provide little accountability, with little expectation that users will ever meet in person. We assessed consensus and accuracy in impressions based on 1357 (153 females) World of Warcraft users. Ratings of the usernames in terms of the Big Five dimensions yielded strong consensus (mean ICC = .46) but low accuracy (mean r = .01). Lens-model analysis suggest that features of the usernames have little validity, but observers used them anyway. Discussion focuses on why results might differ from those based on email addresses.     

Eight Decades of Employment Interview Research: A Retrospective Meta-review and Prospective Commentary

Abstract

This article presents a critical review and commentary on eight decades of research into the employment interview. Two alternative theoretical perspectives are identified from the body of empirical studies into the interview: the objectivist-psychometric perspective and the subjectivist-social perception perspective. Criticisms of both are presented, and calls are made for additional research into impression management behaviour, dysfunctions in interviewer decision-making, and situational power effects at interview. The article concludes with a cautiously optimistic evaluation of the interview research paradigm but emphasizes the requirement for future research efforts to be concentrated upon integrative theory-building in conjunction with ongoing empirical studies.