SITAR Wiggins Award Winner: Anne-Marie B. Gallrein
Blind Spots in Self-perception – what do we know, and what do others know, about our personality?
Anne-Marie B. Gallrein, M.Sc.
Technische Universität Dresden
Editor’s Note: The research that won the Wiggins award (SITAR conference 2016) is currently under review in an academic journal, therefore the author instead wrote this contribution on earlier research. The author presented parts of it at the SITAR conference 2013.
Having “self-knowledge” about one’s own personality means to correctly perceive “how one typically thinks, feels, and behaves” and “awareness of how those patterns are interpreted by others” (Vazire & Carlson, 2010). Most people assume that they are the best judges of their own personality (Vazire & Mehl, 2008). Indeed, past research showed that people do have considerable insight in that regard (e.g., Vazire & Wilson, 2012). At the same time, however, research also showed that people’s knowledge about themselves is far from perfect (Dunning, 2005; Vazire & Carlson, 2010). It seems that other people can sometimes provide additional information about a person’s characteristics that is not covered by that person’s self-perception (Connelly & Ones, 2010; Vazire, 2010). This research substantiates an idea that was put forward by Luft and Ingham as early as 1955, namely, that others may know something about us that we do not know. They called this phenomenon the “blind spot” in people’s self-perceptions. In my recent research, I addressed this issue.
Investigating self-knowledge of personality requires a criterion variable that (supposedly) measures the target person’s “true” personality (Funder & West, 1993). Often, people’s self-ratings of personality are validated against other measures of the targets’ behavior (Mehl, Gosling, & Pennebaker, 2006; Vazire & Mehl, 2008) or against important life outcomes (Oltmanns & Turkheimer, 2006; Ozer & Benet-Martínez, 2006). While these approaches may be seen as providing ecological validity, it can be difficult to theoretically justify the specific linking of certain behaviors (e.g., smiling) or outcomes with certain personality traits (e.g., is smiling an indicator of agreeableness and/or extraversion?).
The alternative “social reality” approach circumvents this difficulty by using consensual impressions of knowledgeable others (i.e., reputation) as a criterion variable (Hofstee, 1994; Kenny, 2004). While individual others may be wrong in attributing certain characteristics to a particular person, the probability that many others are similarly wrong decreases with how many they are (Leising, Erbs, & Fritz, 2010). For example, if Tim is perceived by all of his seven coworkers as an annoying show-off, there might be a kernel of truth to their perceptions. Additionally, the shared impression that others have of a person (e.g., being an annoying show off) is likely to have important consequences for that person (e.g., Tim not being invited to after-work events; Leising & Müller-Plath, 2009). A person lacking awareness of others’ shared negative impressions may not see any reason to change, perpetuating his or her problematic behaviors. Therefore, the extent to which people are blind to their reputations is important.
The concept of a blind spot originates in Luft and Ingham’s so-called Johari Window (1955). They contrasted self-perceptions (e.g., views that people have about themselves) with other-perceptions (e.g., views that others have of the same people), resulting in a 2x2 table with the following four quadrants (see Figure 1): The free activity area comprises personality characteristics, behavior, and motivations that the self and others are equally aware of. The hidden area (bright spot) is defined by characteristics that are known to the person but not to others (e.g., secret wishes). In contrast, the unknown area encompasses attributes neither the self nor others are aware of. The fourth quadrant, which I focus on here, is the blind area (blind spot): It contains those characteristics of a person that only others, but not the person him- or herself, are aware of. When applying the social reality approach to this model, the blind spot would comprise those characteristics that are consensually attributed to a person by others, without the target being aware of it.
Despite the model’s popularity, empirical research supporting it was scarce for decades. Leising and colleagues (2010) demonstrated that informants (i.e., knowledgeable others) significantly agreed in judging targets' personalities even after controlling for the targets' self-perceptions. However, Leising and colleagues (2010) did not take into account the targets’ “meta-perceptions” (i.e., the targets’ beliefs about how they are perceived by others). Past research suggests that people are quite aware of what others think of them (meta-accuracy; Carlson & Furr, 2009; Carlson et al., 2011). Also, people are able to distinguish between the ways in which they see themselves and the ways in which others see them (meta-insight; Carlson et al., 2011). Thus, the participants in Leising and colleagues’ (2010) study could have been aware of how they were perceived by others, but they simply didn't agree with it. If that was the case, calling them “blind” to some of the ways in which others perceived them would not be appropriate.
My own recent research was designed to overcome that ambiguity. We investigated whether people have “proper” blind spots in self-perception (i.e., even when accounting for their meta-perceptions). In other words, even if people are aware of some of the ways in which others see them, and even if they are able to distinguish those views from their own self-perceptions, they may still be unaware of some of the consensual perceptions that others have of them. In the following, I give a condensed recap of this research. For more detailed information, please consult the original articles (Gallrein, Holstein, Carlson, & Leising, 2013; Gallrein, Weßels, Carlson, & Leising, 2016).
Methods
Original Study by Gallrein and colleagues (2013): In this study we investigated the existence of a “proper” social reality blind spot. Fifty-six young target persons (53 female), who were recruited at a German University and through the personal social network of two of the authors, participated in this study. These targets recruited 682 informants overall (419 female), with the average target recruiting about ten. Self-perceptions (“I am a person who …), meta perceptions (“Others see me as a person who …”), and other-perceptions (“This is a person who …) were assessed using an item set of our own creation that was supposed to cover the Big Five factors (e.g., “is often worried”). The 37 items were rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Study 1 from the replication study by Gallrein and colleagues (2016): In this study we wanted to replicate the findings from the original study using a broader set of items and a more diverse set of informants, including critical informants that were not recruited by the targets themselves. Seventy-three targets (38 female) were recruited in seminars at a German University. For each target we identified up to three classmates who reported liking the target and up to three classmates who reported not liking the target so much. Additionally, the targets were asked to recruit three informants themselves. Perceptions of the targets’ personalities (self, meta, other) were measured using 107 items that were rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The items covered the Big Five, personality pathology, interpersonal style, self-esteem, and simple adjectives from the natural language.
Study 2 from the replication study by Gallrein and colleagues (2016): In this study, we aimed to replicate the blind spot phenomenon in a different language (i.e., English) and a different culture (i.e., USA). The 129 targets (92 female) were undergraduate students at a Midwestern US university. Each target that was included in the analysis recruited at least three informants. Overall, 545 informants (female = 363) from different contexts (college friend, hometown friend, sibling, roommate, parent, romantic partner, ex-partner) were recruited, the average target recruiting four. Self-, meta- and other-perceptions were measured using the Ten-Item Personality inventory (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) and 19 additional items (e.g., funny, arrogant). The items were rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 15 (strongly agree).
Data analysis
In this presentation, I will focus on the results of person-centered analyses, which were performed in all three studies. This kind of analysis is based on the profile of characteristics that a perceiver attributes to a target (Borkenau & Zaltauskas, 2009; Furr, 2008). Inter-rater agreement is measured by the correlation between the profiles that two perceivers attribute to the same target (with the target possibly being one of those perceivers). The resulting correlations may afterwards be averaged across targets.
We determined the average levels of consensus (i.e., to what extent informants had the same views on their respective targets' personalities), self-other agreement (i.e., to what extent the targets’ self-perceptions agreed with their informants’ perceptions), meta-accuracy (i.e., the extent to which the targets knew how they were perceived by their respective informants), and meta-insight (i.e., the extent to which targets could differentiate between their own self-perceptions and how they were viewed by their informants). In order to control for the different number of observations available, we first computed pairwise correlations between the profiles provided by pairs of individual perceivers, and only then aggregated across targets. For example, the average level of self-other agreement was determined by first correlating each target’s self-perception profile with each individual other-perception profile referring to the same target, and then averaging the resulting correlations within targets and then across targets.
To investigate social reality blind spots, we first simultaneously regressed each informant profile for a target on the respective self- and meta-perception profile and saved the residuals. For example, we individually regressed Igor’s, Ingrid’s and Ina’s profile for Tim on Tim’s self- and meta-perception profiles. This results in three raw residual profiles that do not overlap with Tim’s self- and meta-perception anymore. By averaging these residual profiles (first for each target, and then across targets), one obtains what we would call a normative blind spot profile. It contains the characteristics that are consensually attributed to the average target, without the target attributing the same characteristics to him or herself, and without the target being aware of these attributions by others. In order to obtain distinctive residual profiles (i.e., residual profiles that distinguish a given target from the average target), one has to partial the normative blind spot profile out of each raw residual profile. The primary coefficient of interest in my studies was the average pairwise correlation between distinctive residual profiles. It measures the extent to which two informants attribute the same characteristics to a specific target (as opposed to a random target), without the target attributing the same characteristics to him or herself, and without the target being aware of these attributions by others. Thus, it measures the size of the average social reality blind spot.
Results
Results are summarized in Table 1. In line with previous research (Carlson & Furr, 2009; Carlson et al., 2011; Connelly & Ones, 2010), our targets showed substantial levels of self-other agreement and meta-accuracy, and their self-perceptions overlapped strongly with their own meta-perceptions. The informants agreed well with one another in describing their respective targets (we do not distinguish between normative and distinctive agreement for these analyses, as they are not the focus of interest here). Also in line with previous research (Carlson et al., 2011), the targets were able to distinguish between their own self-perceptions and others perceptions of them (meta-insight). Most important, however, we found clear evidence for the existence of a social reality blind spot in the average person. In all three studies, the average correlation between distinctive residual profiles was significantly different from zero (around r = .20). Notably, there was considerable variation between targets in how large the correlation between distinctive residual profiles was (range across studies: rmin = -.13, rmax = .73).
Across studies we also found that the normative blind spot profile correlated strongly with the social desirability of the items (r1 = .93, r2 = .88; in Gallrein et al.’s (2016) Study 2 a measure of social desirability was missing). In contrast, the average distinctive residual profile for a given target tended to be neutral in terms of evaluation.
Table 1. Average pairwise profile agreement between self-, other- and metaperception and on blind spot characteristics in both publications of Gallrein et al. (2013, 2016)
My own recent research was designed to overcome that ambiguity. We investigated whether people have “proper” blind spots in self-perception (i.e., even when accounting for their meta-perceptions). In other words, even if people are aware of some of the ways in which others see them, and even if they are able to distinguish those views from their own self-perceptions, they may still be unaware of some of the consensual perceptions that others have of them. In the following, I give a condensed recap of this research. For more detailed information, please consult the original articles (Gallrein, Holstein, Carlson, & Leising, 2013; Gallrein, Weßels, Carlson, & Leising, 2016).
Methods
Original Study by Gallrein and colleagues (2013): In this study we investigated the existence of a “proper” social reality blind spot. Fifty-six young target persons (53 female), who were recruited at a German University and through the personal social network of two of the authors, participated in this study. These targets recruited 682 informants overall (419 female), with the average target recruiting about ten. Self-perceptions (“I am a person who …), meta perceptions (“Others see me as a person who …”), and other-perceptions (“This is a person who …) were assessed using an item set of our own creation that was supposed to cover the Big Five factors (e.g., “is often worried”). The 37 items were rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).
Study 1 from the replication study by Gallrein and colleagues (2016): In this study we wanted to replicate the findings from the original study using a broader set of items and a more diverse set of informants, including critical informants that were not recruited by the targets themselves. Seventy-three targets (38 female) were recruited in seminars at a German University. For each target we identified up to three classmates who reported liking the target and up to three classmates who reported not liking the target so much. Additionally, the targets were asked to recruit three informants themselves. Perceptions of the targets’ personalities (self, meta, other) were measured using 107 items that were rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The items covered the Big Five, personality pathology, interpersonal style, self-esteem, and simple adjectives from the natural language.
Study 2 from the replication study by Gallrein and colleagues (2016): In this study, we aimed to replicate the blind spot phenomenon in a different language (i.e., English) and a different culture (i.e., USA). The 129 targets (92 female) were undergraduate students at a Midwestern US university. Each target that was included in the analysis recruited at least three informants. Overall, 545 informants (female = 363) from different contexts (college friend, hometown friend, sibling, roommate, parent, romantic partner, ex-partner) were recruited, the average target recruiting four. Self-, meta- and other-perceptions were measured using the Ten-Item Personality inventory (Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003) and 19 additional items (e.g., funny, arrogant). The items were rated on a scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 15 (strongly agree).
Data analysis
In this presentation, I will focus on the results of person-centered analyses, which were performed in all three studies. This kind of analysis is based on the profile of characteristics that a perceiver attributes to a target (Borkenau & Zaltauskas, 2009; Furr, 2008). Inter-rater agreement is measured by the correlation between the profiles that two perceivers attribute to the same target (with the target possibly being one of those perceivers). The resulting correlations may afterwards be averaged across targets.
We determined the average levels of consensus (i.e., to what extent informants had the same views on their respective targets' personalities), self-other agreement (i.e., to what extent the targets’ self-perceptions agreed with their informants’ perceptions), meta-accuracy (i.e., the extent to which the targets knew how they were perceived by their respective informants), and meta-insight (i.e., the extent to which targets could differentiate between their own self-perceptions and how they were viewed by their informants). In order to control for the different number of observations available, we first computed pairwise correlations between the profiles provided by pairs of individual perceivers, and only then aggregated across targets. For example, the average level of self-other agreement was determined by first correlating each target’s self-perception profile with each individual other-perception profile referring to the same target, and then averaging the resulting correlations within targets and then across targets.
To investigate social reality blind spots, we first simultaneously regressed each informant profile for a target on the respective self- and meta-perception profile and saved the residuals. For example, we individually regressed Igor’s, Ingrid’s and Ina’s profile for Tim on Tim’s self- and meta-perception profiles. This results in three raw residual profiles that do not overlap with Tim’s self- and meta-perception anymore. By averaging these residual profiles (first for each target, and then across targets), one obtains what we would call a normative blind spot profile. It contains the characteristics that are consensually attributed to the average target, without the target attributing the same characteristics to him or herself, and without the target being aware of these attributions by others. In order to obtain distinctive residual profiles (i.e., residual profiles that distinguish a given target from the average target), one has to partial the normative blind spot profile out of each raw residual profile. The primary coefficient of interest in my studies was the average pairwise correlation between distinctive residual profiles. It measures the extent to which two informants attribute the same characteristics to a specific target (as opposed to a random target), without the target attributing the same characteristics to him or herself, and without the target being aware of these attributions by others. Thus, it measures the size of the average social reality blind spot.
Results
Results are summarized in Table 1. In line with previous research (Carlson & Furr, 2009; Carlson et al., 2011; Connelly & Ones, 2010), our targets showed substantial levels of self-other agreement and meta-accuracy, and their self-perceptions overlapped strongly with their own meta-perceptions. The informants agreed well with one another in describing their respective targets (we do not distinguish between normative and distinctive agreement for these analyses, as they are not the focus of interest here). Also in line with previous research (Carlson et al., 2011), the targets were able to distinguish between their own self-perceptions and others perceptions of them (meta-insight). Most important, however, we found clear evidence for the existence of a social reality blind spot in the average person. In all three studies, the average correlation between distinctive residual profiles was significantly different from zero (around r = .20). Notably, there was considerable variation between targets in how large the correlation between distinctive residual profiles was (range across studies: rmin = -.13, rmax = .73).
Across studies we also found that the normative blind spot profile correlated strongly with the social desirability of the items (r1 = .93, r2 = .88; in Gallrein et al.’s (2016) Study 2 a measure of social desirability was missing). In contrast, the average distinctive residual profile for a given target tended to be neutral in terms of evaluation.
Table 1. Average pairwise profile agreement between self-, other- and metaperception and on blind spot characteristics in both publications of Gallrein et al. (2013, 2016)
Discussion
Our research suggests that people, on average, do have social reality blind spots. The respective effect size was largely consistent across three independent samples, across different types of informants (target nominated, recruited by the research team), across different sets of personality-descriptive items (e.g., Big Five, self-esteem, interpersonal style, personality pathology) and across two different languages and cultures. Thus, ‘‘the typical person is not aware of some of the unique ways in which he or she is consensually perceived by others” (Gallrein et al., 2013, p. 469).
However, our studies also suggest the existence of individual differences in this regard: The size of the distinctive blind spots varied considerably between targets. Some people seem to be relatively well in touch with how they are perceived by their social environment, whereas other people seem not to have much of a clue. Future research should therefore address (a) possible reasons for, and (b) possible consequences of such inter-individual differences. It seems likely that the amount and quality of interpersonal feedback may account for some of these differences (Bollich, Johannet, & Vazire, 2011; Srivastava, 2012). One of the classic paths to knowing one’s own reputation is asking others how one is viewed by them. We would expect people with greater access to honest feedback from others to have smaller distinctive blind spots. But honest feedback may sometimes be difficult to come by in daily life, due to social norms and politeness rules (DePaulo & Bell, 1996; Fay, Jordan, & Ehrlinger, 2012). Additionally, people are prone to create environments in which they primarily receive self-assuring or self-enhancing feedback (Hepper & Sedikides, 2012; Swann, 1983), rather than honest feedback.
In regard to consequences, it seems likely that not knowing one’s reputation may make it difficult for a person to change those behaviors that are seen as undesirable by others. For example, if Tim tends to interrupt and lecture others, he may be perceived as “bossy”, and thus others may avoid him. As long as nobody honestly tells him about other people’ shared perceptions of his behavior, however, he may never know what the problem is, and thus not get a chance to change his behaviors accordingly. Unfortunately, there may be a systematic negative association between the perceived undesirability of a person’s personality pattern, and the probability that the person will ever receive honest feedback in regard to it (Leising & Müller-Plath, 2009). In other words, the persons most in need of honest interpersonal feedback may be the least likely to receive it. This may be one of the mechanisms perpetuating undesirable patterns of social behavior.
But even honest feedback is not necessarily a recipe for behavioral change. For example, critical feedback that is not in line with the recipient’s self-image is often perceived as less accurate (Kernis & Sun, 1994) and thus easily dismissed. Moreover, current research on meta-accuracy suggests that there are benefits and costs of being aware of how one is perceived by others (Carlson, 2016) - mostly benefits for the others but not only benefits for the targets. Future research should investigate whether interpersonal feedback is actually capable of reducing blind spots in self-perception, what consequences go along with such a reduction, and whether and how it may have positive consequences for the self and others. More generally speaking, the next important step in this line of research should be to investigate whether (i.e., under what circumstances) and how people’s awareness of others’ (consensual) impressions of them should be promoted.
Additionally, it should be noted that the average distinctive blind spot profile is largely neutral in evaluative tone. Thus, people seem not only to be unaware of their undesirable characteristics, but of their desirable characteristics as well. There seems to be very little research addressing such “hidden strengths”, and we suggest future studies should deal with this issue investigating how people could benefit (e.g., well-being) from getting to know their so far unknown positive characteristics.
References
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Borkenau, P., & Zaltauskas, K. (2009). Effects of self‐enhancement on agreement on personality profiles. European Journal of Personality, 23, 107-123.
Carlson, E. N. (2016). Meta-accuracy and relationship quality: Weighing the costs and benefits of knowing what people really think about you. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111, 250–264. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000107
Carlson, E. N., & Furr, R. M. (2009). Evidence of Differential Meta-Accuracy People Understand the Different Impressions They Make. Psychological Science, 20, 1033–1039. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02409.x
Carlson, E. N., Vazire, S., & Furr, R. M. (2011). Meta-insight: do people really know how others see them? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 831–846. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0024297
Connelly, B. S., & Ones, D. S. (2010). An other perspective on personality: Meta-analytic integration of observers’ accuracy and predictive validity. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 1092–1122. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021212
DePaulo, B. M., & Bell, K. L. (1996). Truth and investment: Lies are told to those who care. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71, 703–716. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.4.703
Dunning, D. (2005). Self-insight: Roadblocks and detours on the path to knowing thyself. Psychology Press.
Fay, A. J., Jordan, A. H., & Ehrlinger, J. (2012). How Social Norms Promote Misleading Social Feedback and Inaccurate Self-Assessment. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6, 206–216. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00420.x
Funder, D. C., & West, S. G. (1993). Consensus, Self-Other Agreement, and Accuracy in Personality Judgment: An Introduction. Journal of Personality, 61, 457–476. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1993.tb00778.x
Furr, R. M. (2008). A framework for profile similarity: Integrating similarity, normativeness, and distinctiveness. Journal of personality, 76, 1267-1316.
Gallrein, A.-M. B., Holstein, M., Carlson, E. N., & Leising, D. (2013). You spy with your little eye: People are “blind” to some of the ways in which they are consensually seen by others. Journal of Research in Personality, 47, 464–471. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2013.04.001
Gallrein, A.-M. B., Weßels, N. M., Carlson, E. N., & Leising, D. (2016). I still cannot see it – A replication of blind spots in self-perception. Journal of Research in Personality, 60, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.10.002
Gosling, S. D., Rentfrow, P. J., & Swann, W. B. (2003). A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains. Journal of Research in Personality, 37, 504–528. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0092-6566(03)00046-1
Hepper, E. G., & Sedikides, C. (2012). Self-enhancing Feedback. In R. M. Sutton, M. J. Hornsey, & K. M. Douglas (Eds.), Feedback: The communication of praise, criticism, and advice (pp. 43–56). New York: Peter Lang.
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Leising, D., Erbs, J., & Fritz, U. (2010). The letter of recommendation effect in informant ratings of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 668–682. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0018771
Leising, D., & Müller-Plath, G. (2009). Person–situation integration in research on personality problems. Journal of Research in Personality, 43, 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2009.01.017
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Mehl, M. R., Gosling, S. D., & Pennebaker, J. W. (2006). Personality in its natural habitat: Manifestations and implicit folk theories of personality in daily life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 90, 862–877. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.90.5.862
Oltmanns, T. F., & Turkheimer, E. (2006). Perceptions of self and others regarding pathological personality traits. In R. F. Krueger & J. L. Tackett (Eds.), Personality and psychopathology (pp. 71–111). New York: Guilford Press.
Ozer, D. J., & Benet-Martínez, V. (2006). Personality and the Prediction of Consequential Outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401–421. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.57.102904.190127
Srivastava, S. (2012). Other People as a Source of Self-Knowledge. In S. Vazire & T. D. Wilson (Eds.), Handbook of self-knowledge (pp. 90–104). New York: Guilford.
Swann, W. B. (1983). Self-verification: Bringing social reality into harmony with the self. In S. Jerry & A. G. Greenwald (Eds.), Psychological perspectives on the self; Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Vazire, S. (2010). Who knows what about a person? The self–other knowledge asymmetry (SOKA) model. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 98, 281–300. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017908
Vazire, S., & Carlson, E. N. (2010). Self-Knowledge of Personality: Do People Know Themselves? Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 4, 605–620. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2010.00280.x
Vazire, S., & Mehl, M. R. (2008). Knowing me, knowing you: The accuracy and unique predictive validity of self-ratings and other-ratings of daily behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1202–1216. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013314
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Our research suggests that people, on average, do have social reality blind spots. The respective effect size was largely consistent across three independent samples, across different types of informants (target nominated, recruited by the research team), across different sets of personality-descriptive items (e.g., Big Five, self-esteem, interpersonal style, personality pathology) and across two different languages and cultures. Thus, ‘‘the typical person is not aware of some of the unique ways in which he or she is consensually perceived by others” (Gallrein et al., 2013, p. 469).
However, our studies also suggest the existence of individual differences in this regard: The size of the distinctive blind spots varied considerably between targets. Some people seem to be relatively well in touch with how they are perceived by their social environment, whereas other people seem not to have much of a clue. Future research should therefore address (a) possible reasons for, and (b) possible consequences of such inter-individual differences. It seems likely that the amount and quality of interpersonal feedback may account for some of these differences (Bollich, Johannet, & Vazire, 2011; Srivastava, 2012). One of the classic paths to knowing one’s own reputation is asking others how one is viewed by them. We would expect people with greater access to honest feedback from others to have smaller distinctive blind spots. But honest feedback may sometimes be difficult to come by in daily life, due to social norms and politeness rules (DePaulo & Bell, 1996; Fay, Jordan, & Ehrlinger, 2012). Additionally, people are prone to create environments in which they primarily receive self-assuring or self-enhancing feedback (Hepper & Sedikides, 2012; Swann, 1983), rather than honest feedback.
In regard to consequences, it seems likely that not knowing one’s reputation may make it difficult for a person to change those behaviors that are seen as undesirable by others. For example, if Tim tends to interrupt and lecture others, he may be perceived as “bossy”, and thus others may avoid him. As long as nobody honestly tells him about other people’ shared perceptions of his behavior, however, he may never know what the problem is, and thus not get a chance to change his behaviors accordingly. Unfortunately, there may be a systematic negative association between the perceived undesirability of a person’s personality pattern, and the probability that the person will ever receive honest feedback in regard to it (Leising & Müller-Plath, 2009). In other words, the persons most in need of honest interpersonal feedback may be the least likely to receive it. This may be one of the mechanisms perpetuating undesirable patterns of social behavior.
But even honest feedback is not necessarily a recipe for behavioral change. For example, critical feedback that is not in line with the recipient’s self-image is often perceived as less accurate (Kernis & Sun, 1994) and thus easily dismissed. Moreover, current research on meta-accuracy suggests that there are benefits and costs of being aware of how one is perceived by others (Carlson, 2016) - mostly benefits for the others but not only benefits for the targets. Future research should investigate whether interpersonal feedback is actually capable of reducing blind spots in self-perception, what consequences go along with such a reduction, and whether and how it may have positive consequences for the self and others. More generally speaking, the next important step in this line of research should be to investigate whether (i.e., under what circumstances) and how people’s awareness of others’ (consensual) impressions of them should be promoted.
Additionally, it should be noted that the average distinctive blind spot profile is largely neutral in evaluative tone. Thus, people seem not only to be unaware of their undesirable characteristics, but of their desirable characteristics as well. There seems to be very little research addressing such “hidden strengths”, and we suggest future studies should deal with this issue investigating how people could benefit (e.g., well-being) from getting to know their so far unknown positive characteristics.
References
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