A New Scale for Scoring the Bernreuter Personality Inventory

Abstract

Two studies with American students demonstrated the utility of interpersonal theory in social psychological research. The hypothesis in Study 1, following Mead's (1934) interactionist viewpoint, was that others' perceptions of an individual relate to how that individual thinks these others view him and that these reflexive self-perceptions are subsequently linked with an individual's self-perceptions. This conceptualization corrected Shrauger and Schoeneman's (1979) erroneous parallelism between self-images and reflected perceptions and between self-images and others' actual perceptions. It extended previous works by using interpersonally based self- and other-acceptance measures, a “naturalistic” setting, and repeated measurements. Three of four regression analyses supported the hypothesis. Study 2 was conducted to investigate further significant differences found between the self-and other-acceptance measures. As predicted from Sullivan's (1953) interpersonal theory, individuals considered it more important to be viewed as accepting of others than of self, although their other-acceptance schemata was, in general, more poorly defined.