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And is there any experimental evidence showing that this method actually works?

by Eliezer 16y ago

rdtsc 16y ago
Well I am not sure what you mean by "works"? It is designed to reveal certain personality traits. As for research, start with the study mentioned in the article. (It is behind a $12 pay-wall. Perhaps you know someone at a university that can get it for you, or your local library might subscribe to the journal. I have access to it, but I will not distribute it.) "Perceiver effects as projective tests: What your perceptions of others say about you." Wood, Dustin; Harms, Peter; Vazire, Simine, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 99(1), Jul 2010, 174-190. Here is an excerpt from the abstract: --- ... results provide compelling evidence that how individuals generally perceive others is a stable individual difference that reveals much about the perceiver's own personality. ---
- mixu 16y ago
  Well, I had a look. Thank you for the reference. It seems like an interesting idea, but I wouldn't use these findings in a casual setting like a job interview. As a lot of reporting on scientific studies, the findings are overstated in the linked blog. (For a quick illustration of "the science news cycle", see: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 ) This just seems a bit too much like a Rorschach test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#Controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#Controversy ), and the interpretation that you can directly come to some conclusion about a job applicant based on what they say about a hypothetical person is even warned against in the actual article: "First, the studies clearly demonstrate that perceiver effects represent more than simply the projection of an individual’s self-image onto other people." Projective tests have their uses in clinical psychology (e.g. with the crazies) - but whether you would want to apply them to normal situations is questionable. "In each study, we found regular relationships between personality traits and perceptions of others. Individuals who perceived others positively reported higher agreeableness (particularly aspects associated with friendliness and low hostility); higher life satisfaction; and lower endorsement of measures of personality disorders, depression, and antisocial attitudes." In other words, the test is likely to tell you two things: first, how positive you are (which is unsurprising, since positivity is almost by definition related to seeing things and others in a positive light) and second whether you are not totally nuts (e.g. positive people are likely to be associated with lower measures of personality disorders, depression and antisocial attitudes). But in non-clinical settings - such as in a job interview? "The magnitude of individual differences in the positivity of perceptions of others is fairly large, and individual differences in perceiver positivity impacted judgments of single targets to a considerable degree." That is, the positivity measure is stable, but there is a lot of variance. This suggests that you don't want to use this for finding out much more than how positive a person is - and if that is your sole criteria in a job interview, good luck! Edit: to clarify that last quote - it basically says that among a normal group of college students, positivity measures have high individual differences and these differences impact judgments to a high degree. So big differences in the results of the measure may be simply explained by individual differences in positivity measures.

And is there any experimental evidence showing that this method actually works?

by Eliezer 16y ago

And is there any experimental evidence showing that this method actually works?

rdtsc 16y ago

Well I am not sure what you mean by "works"? It is designed to reveal certain personality traits. As for research, start with the study mentioned in the article. (It is behind a $12 pay-wall. Perhaps you know someone at a university that can get it for you, or your local library might subscribe to the journal. I have access to it, but I will not distribute it.) "Perceiver effects as projective tests: What your perceptions of others say about you." Wood, Dustin; Harms, Peter; Vazire, Simine, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 99(1), Jul 2010, 174-190. Here is an excerpt from the abstract: --- ... results provide compelling evidence that how individuals generally perceive others is a stable individual difference that reveals much about the perceiver's own personality. ---

mixu 16y ago
Well, I had a look. Thank you for the reference. It seems like an interesting idea, but I wouldn't use these findings in a casual setting like a job interview. As a lot of reporting on scientific studies, the findings are overstated in the linked blog. (For a quick illustration of "the science news cycle", see: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174 ) This just seems a bit too much like a Rorschach test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#Controversy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test#Controversy ), and the interpretation that you can directly come to some conclusion about a job applicant based on what they say about a hypothetical person is even warned against in the actual article: "First, the studies clearly demonstrate that perceiver effects represent more than simply the projection of an individual’s self-image onto other people." Projective tests have their uses in clinical psychology (e.g. with the crazies) - but whether you would want to apply them to normal situations is questionable. "In each study, we found regular relationships between personality traits and perceptions of others. Individuals who perceived others positively reported higher agreeableness (particularly aspects associated with friendliness and low hostility); higher life satisfaction; and lower endorsement of measures of personality disorders, depression, and antisocial attitudes." In other words, the test is likely to tell you two things: first, how positive you are (which is unsurprising, since positivity is almost by definition related to seeing things and others in a positive light) and second whether you are not totally nuts (e.g. positive people are likely to be associated with lower measures of personality disorders, depression and antisocial attitudes). But in non-clinical settings - such as in a job interview? "The magnitude of individual differences in the positivity of perceptions of others is fairly large, and individual differences in perceiver positivity impacted judgments of single targets to a considerable degree." That is, the positivity measure is stable, but there is a lot of variance. This suggests that you don't want to use this for finding out much more than how positive a person is - and if that is your sole criteria in a job interview, good luck! Edit: to clarify that last quote - it basically says that among a normal group of college students, positivity measures have high individual differences and these differences impact judgments to a high degree. So big differences in the results of the measure may be simply explained by individual differences in positivity measures.