Congruence of Others' and Self-Judgments of Personality

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the self-other congruence and self-other agreement. Self-other congruence can be classified according to its relevance to one or the other of the two reasons just mentioned for finding such congruence important. Most research can be placed along a continuum that is labeled as ranging from "sociological" through "social psychological" to "personality" perspectives. Sociological approaches to self-other congruence emphasizes the social construction and consequences of the self-image, whereas psychological perspectives are more likely to attend to the possibility that self and others' views might actually characterize what a person is like. From the sociological perspective, the self does not exist outside the minds of those who behold it; it is little more than an arbitrary social construct. Self-other agreement can be assessed in two fundamentally different ways. It is important to keep in mind that the term "agreement" can have two entirely different and independent meanings. One involves the analysis of mean differences. On the other hand, the other one involves the analysis of correlations. The first kind of analysis compares the mean placement of each descriptive item between others' and self-descriptions. The second kind of analysis computes correlations between others' and self-judgments, either holistically or one item at a time.