Content, Context, and Complexity in Personality Trait Perceptions

Abstract: We replicated and extended research on implicit simplicity: the tendency for personality judgments of acquaintances to be of lower dimensionality than those made for self or well-known others. Three hundred participants completed the Big Five Inventory for themselves, two well-known others, and two casual acquaintances, the latter four in a social and an academic/work setting. Correlations among the Big Five traits were higher for casual targets and close academic/work targets than for self or close social targets. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses of BFI items showed that casual and close academic/work targets were predominantly defined by an evaluative dimension. MDS revealed that judgments of Conscientiousness and Openness were rendered in finer detail – perceived trait granularity – for self and close social targets.