The accuracy of strangers ' consensual judgments of personality based on "thin slices " of targets' nonverbal behavior were examined in relation to an ecologically valid criterion variable. In the 1st study, consensual judgments of college teachers ' molar nonverbal behavior based on very brief (under 30 s) silent video clips significantly predicted global end-of-semester student evaluations of teachers. In the 2nd study, similar judgments predicted a principal's ratings of high school teachers. In the 3rd study, ratings of even thinner slices (6-s and 15-s clips) were strongly related to the criterion variables. Ratings of specific micrononverbal behaviors and ratings of teachers ' physical attractiveness were not as strongly related to the criterion variable. These findings have important implications for the areas of personality judgment, impression formation, and nonverbal behavior. The ability to form impressions of others is a critical human skill. "This remarkable capacity we possess to understand something of the character of another person, to form a conception of him as a human being... with particular characteristics forming a distinct individuality is a precondition of social life " (Asch, 1946, p. 258). In the present article, we show that

Economists usually assume that monetary incentives improve performance, and psychologists claim that the opposite may happen. We present and discuss a set of experiments designed to test these contrasting claims. We found that the effect of monetary compensation on performance was not monotonic. In the treatments in which money was offered, a larger amount yielded a higher performance. However, offering money did not always produce an improvement: subjects who were offered monetary incentives performed more poorly than those who were offered no compensation. Several possible interpretations of the results are discussed. I.

this article was aided by National Institutes of Health Grant MH52391 and by a scholarship from the German National Scholarship Foundation. We thank David Buss, Kenneth Craik, Samuel Gosling, Anna Graybeal, and Sean Massey for their helpful comments on previous versions of this article. We are indebted to Geetha Desikan, Kim Fisher, Beth Henary, Allison McClure, John McFarland, Kristy Orr, Nathalie Shook, Monica Sidarous, Mary-Beth Sylvester, and Sara Webb for their help in collecting the data and transcribing the audiotapes

In this research the authors examined whether conversational dynamics occurring within the first 5 minutes of a negotiation can predict negotiated outcomes. In a simulated employment negotiation, microcoding conducted by a computer showed that activity level, conversational engagement, prosodic emphasis, and vocal mirroring predicted 30 % of the variance in individual outcomes. The conversational dynamics associated with success among high-status parties were different from those associated with success among low-status parties. Results are interpreted in light of theory and research exploring the predictive power of “thin slices” of behavior (N. Ambady & R. Rosenthal, 1992). Implications include the development of new technology to diagnose and improve negotiation processes.

accuracy issues more directly. Moreover, this research attracts a great deal of attention because of what many take to be its dismal implications for the accuracy of human social reasoning. These implications are illusory, however, because an error is not the same thing as a "mistake. " An error is a judgment of an experimental stimulus that departs from a model of the judgment process. If this model is normative, then the error can be said to represent an incorrect judgment. A mistake, by contrast, is an incorrect judgment of a real-world stimulus and therefore more difficult to determine. Although errors can be highly informative about the process of judgment in general, they are not necessarily relevant to the content or accuracy of particular judgments, because errors in a laboratory may not be mistakes with respect to a broader, more realistic frame of reference and the processes that produce such errors might lead to correct decisions and adaptive outcomes in real life. Several examples are described in this article. Accuracy issues cannot be addressed by research that concentrates on demonstrating error in relation to artificial stimuli, but only by research that uses external, realistic criteria for accuracy. These criteria might include the degree to which judgments agree with each other and yield valid predictions of behavior. The accuracy of human social judgment is a topic of obvious

Personality has been conceptualized from a variety of theoretical perspectives, and at various levels of abstraction or breadth (John, Hampson, & Goldberg, 1991; McAdams, 1995). Each of these levels has made unique contributions to our understanding of individual differences in behavior and experience. However, the number of personality traits, and scales designed to measure them, escalated without an end in sight (Goldberg, 1971). Researchers, as well as practitioners in the field of personality assessment, were faced with a bewildering array of personality scales from which to choose, with little guidance and no overall rationale at hand. What made matters worse was that scales with the same name often measure concepts that are not the same, and scales with different names often measure concepts that are quite similar. Although diversity and scientific pluralism are useful, the systematic accumulation of findings and the communication among researchers became difficult amidst the Babel of concepts and scales. Many personality researchers had hoped that they might devise the structure that would transform the Babel into a community speaking a common language. However, such an integration was not to be achieved by any one researcher or by any one theoretical perspective. As Allport once put it, “each assessor has his

Although skeptics continue to doubt that most people are “ideological, ” evidence suggests that meaningful left-right differences do exist and that they may be rooted in basic personality dispositions, that is, relatively stable individual differences in psychological needs, motives, and orientations toward the world. Seventy-five years of theory and research on personality and political orientation has produced a long list of dispositions, traits, and behaviors. Applying a theory of ideology as motivated social cognition and a “Big Five ” framework, we find that two traits, Openness to New Experiences and Conscientiousness, parsimoniously capture many of the ways in which individual differences underlying political orientation have been conceptualized. In three studies we investigate the relationship between personality and political orientation using multiple domains and measurement techniques, including: self-reported personality assessment; nonverbal behavior in the context of social interaction; and personal possessions and the characteristics of living and working spaces. We obtained consistent and converging evidence that personality differences between liberals and conservatives are robust, replicable, and behaviorally significant, especially with respect to social (vs. economic) dimensions of ideology. In general, liberals are more open-minded, creative, curious, and

In this chapter, we discuss current trends in the assessment of intelligence and personality that we believe have implications for the future of these disciplines. However, the present is always illuminated by the past; indeed, sometimes it is comprehensible only when seen in the context of antecedent events. Therefore, when possible, we identify some of the threads that tie current controversies to previous debates. Although we believe that the issues we have identified will help shape future developments, we refrain, for the most part, from specific speculations about the future of intelligence and personality assessment. Very near term predictions are easy: things will stay much the same as they are now. In some cases, we might even make reasonable predictions slightly further out by extrapolation. Our reading of others ’ past predictions about the future of psychological theory and research, though, is that interesting predictions (i.e., those that are more than simple extrapolations) usually look at best charmingly naive in retrospect. We present this chapter in three major sections, one focusing primarily on the assessment of intelligence, one focusing primarily on the assessment of personality, and one addressing issues at the intersections of intelligence and personality. The juxtaposition of our discussions of assessment in intelligence and personality illustrates both points of contact and points of real difference between the two domains, which we discuss in a final section. The structures of this chapter reflect our personal, no doubt somewhat idiosyncratic, views of what is important to say about each domain. As it turns out, we find ourselves with a little to say about a lot in the intelligence domain and a lot to say about a little in the personality domain. Others would certainly choose other emphases.

This paper describes an integrative approach to marital and family therapy in which psychodynamic (particularly object relations), family systems, and behavioral (particularly cognitive--behavioral) theory are blended in a flexible and tailored therapeutic approach. Human personality in its most significant contexts is a consistent focus. Background factors in the development to the approach and illustrative case materials are included

We report on an experiment in assigning personality to embodied agents reciting lines from modern poems. Three potential personality cues are investigated: gaze, speech and eyebrow movements.