Perceiver Effects as Projective Tests: What Your Perceptions of Others Say about You

In three studies, we document various properties of perceiver effects—or how an individual generally tends to describe other people in a population. First, we document that perceiver effects have consistent relationships with dispositional characteristics of the perceiver, ranging from self-reported personality traits and academic performance to well-being and measures of personality disorders, to how liked the person is by peers. Second, we document that the covariation in perceiver effects among trait dimensions can be adequately captured by a single factor consisting of how positively others are seen across a wide range of traits (e.g., how nice, interesting, trustworthy, happy, and stable others are generally seen). Third, we estimate the one-year stability of perceiver effects and show that individual differences in the typical perception of others have a level of stability comparable to that of personality traits. The results provide compelling evidence that how individuals generally perceive others is a stable individual difference that reveals much about the perceiver’s own personality

In Search of Our True Selves: Feedback as a Path to Self-Knowledge

How can self-knowledge of personality be improved? What path is the most fruitful source for learning about our true selves? Previous research has noted two main avenues for learning about the self: looking inward (e.g., introspection) and looking outward (e.g., feedback). Although most of the literature on these topics does not directly measure the accuracy of self-perceptions (i.e., self-knowledge), we review these paths and their potential for improving self-knowledge. We come to the conclusion that explicit feedback, a largely unexamined path, is likely a fruitful avenue for learning about one’s own personality. Specifically, we suggest that self-knowledge might be fully realized through the use of explicit feedback from close, knowledgeable others. As such, we conclude that the road to self-knowledge likely cannot be traveled alone but must be traveled with close others who can help shed light on our blind spots

Longitudinal Intergroup Contact Effects on Prejudice Using Self- and Observer-Reports

Longitudinal effects of intergroup contact on prejudice were investigated in a sample of 65 young adults (Sample 1) and a sample of their close friends (Sample 2, N = 172), adopting a full cross-lagged panel design. We first validated the self-report measure of intergroup contact from sample 1 with observer ratings from sample 2 by demonstrating that self-reports and observer ratings of contact were highly correlated. Moreover, we obtained significant cross-lagged effects of intergroup contact on prejudice with both contact measures, thereby providing a second validation for the use of self-reports of intergroup contact. Finally, by the use of latent change modeling we demonstrated that, although no overall significant change in contact and prejudice over time was found, there was meaningful variation in absolute change in the individual levels of intergroup contact and prejudice. In particular, some individuals showed increases while others showed decreases in contact or prejudice across time. Moreover, higher levels of intergroup contact at Time 1 were followed by larger subsequent decreases in prejudice between Time 1 and Time 2, and changes in contact were significantly and negatively related to changes in prejudice. Methodological implications of the findings are discussed

Why Did It Take So Many Decades for the Behavioral Sciences to Develop a Sense of Crisis Around Methodology and Replication?

For several decades, leading behavioral scientists have offered strong criticisms of the common practice of null hypothesis significance testing as producing spurious findings without strong theoretical or empirical support. But only in the past decade has this manifested as a full-scale replication crisis. We consider some possible reasons why, on or about December 2010, the behavioral sciences changed

Looking our limitations in the eye: A call for more thorough and honest reporting of study limitations

The replication crisis and subsequent credibility revolution in psychology have highlighted many suboptimal research practices such as p‐hacking, overgeneralizing, and a lack of transparency. These practices may have been employed reflexively but upon reflection, they are hard to defend. We suggest that current practices for reporting and discussing study limitations are another example of an area where there is much room for improvement. In this article, we call for more rigorous reporting of study limitations in social and personality psychology articles, and we offer advice for how to do this. We recommend that authors consider what the best argument is against their conclusions (which we call the “steel‐person principle”). We consider limitations as threats to construct, internal, external, and statistical conclusion validity (Shadish et al., 2002), and offer some examples for better practice reporting of common study limitations. Our advice has its own limitations — both our representation of current practices and our recommendations are largely based on our own metaresearch and opinions. Nevertheless, we hope that we can prompt researchers to write more deeply and clearly about the limitations of their research, and to hold each other to higher standards when reviewing each other's work