Person Perception and Self-Awareness: Knowledge of Influences on One's Own Judgments

Recent claims that people have no insight into the influences on their own beliefs, decisions, and behavior are overstated. In our research 96 judges watched 50 short interviews and rated the interviewees' intelligence, friendliness, or deceptiveness. They later estimated how the interviewees' characteristics had influenced their judgments. The correlation of the interviewees' characteristics with each judge's ratings is a measure of the degree to which the characteristics influenced that judge. Judges were moderately accurate at estimating the impact of characteristics on their judgments, with the mean correlation between the actual influence and their estimates being 42. To control for judges' use of a priori theories of causation, we had observers who did not see interviews or make person-perception judgments estimate how these characteristics would have influenced their judgments if they had made them. Judges' self-awareness remains even after controlling for observers' estimates of effects. Although judges showed self-awareness, their beliefs about what influenced them were also shaped by a priori theories about what should have influenced them. The degree of their selfawareness varied with the person-perception judgments they had made and the characteristics they were assessing.