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Examining the consistency of the good target across contexts and domains of personality

University of British Columbia

Good targets are those individuals who are seen more accurately than others (e.g., Human & Biesanz, 2013). The present study examines the extent to which the good target is consistent across domains (i.e., traits and motives) and contexts (i.e., in-person and through writing) as well as how being perceived accurately across these facets is moderated by target well-being. Past research has shown that being seen accurately is related to enhanced well-being, increased social support, reduced loneliness, and person-environment fit (Human & Biesanz, 2013). This research which expands our understanding of how being seen accurately is related to well-being across domains and contexts is an important step. N = 194 participants completed a round-robin forming first-impressions design and wrote short essays on five life domains (see Borkenau, Mosch, Tandler, & Wolf, 2016). Participants also completed a self-report including the following measures of well-being: satisfaction with life (Diener, Emmons, Larsen & Griffin, 1985), relationship satisfaction (Ryff, 1989), and self-esteem (Rosenberg, 1965). An additional 199 participants each read 15 essays using a Latin square design to assess the author’s personality. We used the social accuracy model (SAM; Biesanz, 2010) to allow for detailed analysis of individual differences among targets across traits and motives while maintaining both perceiver and target as random factors. We found support for the theory that the good target generalizes across both contexts and domains and, interestingly, found evidence for a positive target with stronger correlations across all context and domain combinations. While we replicated past results showing the target well-being moderates being seen accurately for traits in person, the moderator effects of target well-being were not consistent for motivations or essays. However, again, we found that target well-being was a more consistent moderator for the positive target, particularly in the writing context.

Text

2019-08-22

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/71410

Psychology

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/