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Category: Project

Description: People tend to differ from one another in how they generally perceive others. These individual differences in a person’s judgment were introduced as perceiver effects by Kenny (1994). It is commonly acknowledged that perceiver effects are highly relevant as they may strongly influence a variety of psychological processes and outcomes in person judgment. However, surprisingly little research has been done to understand the basic structure of perceiver effects, and the consensus among these studies is limited. While some results indicate that individuals show trait-specific perceiver effects, others suggest there is a rather general tendency to perceive others more positively or negatively, and that individuals differ in the degree to which they tend to agree or disagree with items irrespective of their content (acquiescence). The main goal of the current project is to replicate the results of recent research by Rau et al. (in preparation) with a new, independent sample. We expect that all three of the above-mentioned factors, i.e. trait-specificity, positivity, and acquiescence influence the ways in which individuals generally perceive others.