It’s not easy to judge ourselves, study finds

When psychologists study personality, they usually base their selection of participants on self-assessment — that is, on how individuals rate their own personality characteristics.

But are we accurate when asked to describe ourselves, or would it be better to ask someone else what we’re like?

That depends to some extent on which traits we’re talking about.

Simine Vazire at the University of California Davis asked 165 participants to rate themselves on a number of personality traits.

She also asked four of their friends to do the same.

Participants then completed behavioural tests to measure these traits more objectively.

She found that accuracy of judgment varied across traits, for example, while the individual was the best judge of how anxious/ moody they were, their friends were more accurate when it came to their IQ and creative abilities.

Adam Grant at the University of Pennsylvania explains this phenomenon in a recent issue of The Atlantic.

The easier it is to judge a trait through behaviour — extroversion is a good example — the more accurate is everyone’s judgment.

However, when a trait isn’t so easy to observe, for example anxiety, you’re likely to judge yourself more accurately.

But if a quality is considered good — for example, high intelligence or generosity — we tend to overestimate it in ourselves, and if it’s undesirable, such as dishonesty, we’re likely to underestimate how strongly it features.

Another reason we misjudge character — our own and that of others — is that we’re unlikely to recall all the information we know, nor treat each incident equally and objectively.

Computers, on the other hand, can “remember” everything and give each piece of information equal and objective weight when examined.

That’s why Wu Youyou and colleagues at Cambridge and Stanford universities found computers to be significantly more accurate than humans when judging the personality characteristics of 86,000 volunteers.

Whereas humans based their judgments on results of a 100-item self-report questionnaire, computers used a volunteer’s digital footprint — for example, “Likes” on Facebook and personal websites.

The results showed that computers knew more about our personality than we and others know about ourselves.

So, what is the best way to understand yourself as accurately as possible?

For traits that don’t easily show themselves in outward behaviour, trust yourself.

However, when it comes to those qualities with a heavy social loading

— either highly acceptable or very undesirable — ask a friend or someone you trust to judge you honestly, without feeling the need to build you up or shield you from hard truths.

Finally, when justifying your judgments, think a bit more like a computer, and look at concrete examples and hard evidence rather than relying on feelings.