| There has historically been a plethora of research showing that personality judgments are
generally accurate and that people do rely on stereotypes during general person perception. This
is the first attempt to combine these areas of research and investigate how stereotypes impact the
accuracy of personality judgments about specific persons. It was predicted that accuracy would
be impacted both by how consistent an individual is with their group’s stereotype and by how
much the individual making the judgments relies on stereotype information. It was also predicted
that individuals with less favorable views towards a group would use less individuating
information and rely on their own negative stereotypes more, resulting in less accuracy overall.
Three samples were recruited from both ISU and MTurk. One sample (n = 51) was used to create
a stereotype profile for White non-Hispanic cisgender males and females based on items of the
BFI-2. A second sample (n = 35) gave self-reports on their personality and were video recorded
while talking about their life. These videos were then shown to the final sample (n = 209) who
rated the personalities of those in the video. All ratings were compared against the stereotype
profiles to assess stereotype consistency in personalities and judgments. Results supported the
idea that accuracy is impacted both by how consistent an individual is with their group’s
stereotype and by how much the individual making the judgments relies on stereotype
information, but also found that in general, judges who made judgments that were less consistent
with stereotypes also made more accurate judgments. There was no evidence to suggest that
favorability towards a specific group meaningfully impacted accuracy. Additionally, there was
not a significant difference in how accurately judges rated male or female targets, or how
STEREOTYPE USE DURING PERSONALITY JUDGMENT
x
stereotype-consistent male and female judges were. However, there was a significant difference
how stereotype-consistent judgments were of male and female targets and a moderate effect in
how stereotype-consistent male and female targets were. Overall, results indicate that those who,
on average, made less stereotype-consistent judgments were more accurate.
Keywords: personality judgment, judgment accuracy, stereotypes, race, gende |