Perceiving Others’ Personalities: Examining the Dimensionality, Assumed Similarity to the Self, and Stability of Perceiver Effects Sanjay Srivastava University of Oregon Steve Guglielmo Brown University Jennifer S. Beer University of Texas at Austin In interpersonal perception, “perceiver effects” are tendencies of perceivers to see other people in a particular way. Two studies of naturalistic interactions examined perceiver effects for personality traits: seeing a typical other as sympathetic or quarrelsome, responsible or careless, and so forth. Several basic questions were addressed. First, are perceiver effects organized as a global evaluative halo, or do perceptions of different traits vary in distinct ways? Second, does assumed similarity (as evidenced by self-perceiver correlations) reflect broad evaluative consistency or trait-specific content? Third, are perceiver effects a manifestation of stable beliefs about the generalized other, or do they form in specific contexts as group-specific stereotypes? Findings indicated that perceiver effects were better described by a differentiated, multidimensional structure with both trait-specific content and a higher order global evaluation factor. Assumed similarity was at least partially attributable to trait-specific content, not just to broad evaluative similarity between self and others. Perceiver effects were correlated with gender and attachment style, but in newly formed groups, they became more stable over time, suggesting that they grew dynamically as group stereotypes. Implications for the interpretation of perceiver effects and for research on personality assessment and psychopathology are discussed. Keywords: social perception, perceiver effects, informant reports, self-perception, Halo effect What a most extraordinary child!” Then she frowned. She’s “glad” I punished her, and I “mustn’t feel bad one bit,” and she’s going to “love to live” with me! Well, upon my soul! —Eleanor H. Porter, Pollyanna In Eleanor Porter’s novel Pollyanna, the title character deals with the ups and downs of life by playing the “glad game,” in which she strives to always see the good in every situation and in every person. To a modern psychologist’s eye, the glad game combines several distinct mental processes and attributes, includ- ing optimism, reappraisal, and self-efficacy beliefs. The word Pollyannaish has evolved in everyday language into a synonym for an extreme and rigidly positive outlook, but psychologists recog- nize that even within relatively normal populations, people may exhibit some Pollyanna-like tendencies to varying degrees. In the present investigation, we examined an aspect of Pollyanna’s outlook: tendencies or biases in perceiving other people’s personalities. Specifically, we investigated perceptions of a typical “other”—tendencies to believe that other people are responsible or careless, supportive or quarrelsome, open-minded or closed. These general perceptions of others—what we call perceiver effects (after Kenny, 1994)—are important to understand for a variety of reasons. Methodologically, many studies rely on informant reports as a data source (Kraemer et al., 2003; Vazire, 2006), and a model of perceiver effects can enhance researchers’ understanding of how such reports are formed. Substantively, biases and distortions in perceptions of others have been theorized to be part of a variety of intra- and interpersonal processes, individual differences, and forms of psycho- pathology (e.g., Benjamin & Wonderlich, 1994; Gara et al., 1993). We focused our investigation on interpersonal perceptions of the personality traits from the Big Five model (John & Srivastava, 1999). In one cross-sectional study and one longitudinal panel study, we tested a series of interrelated questions about perceiver effects. First, are perceiver effects organized as a global evaluative halo, or are perceptions of different traits affected by different factors? Second, is assumed similarity (believing that others have similar traits as the self) trait specific, or does it simply reflect a broad similarity-of-evaluative tone? Third, do perceiver effects reflect a stable concept of the generalized other, and/or are they reshaped in relation to new social contexts as group-specific stereotypes? We begin by more formally defining the perceiver effect, and then we review theories and evidence related to our three central questions. Perceiver Effects: Definitional and Conceptual Issues Our definition of perceiver effects comes from the social rela- tions model (SRM; Kenny, 1994; Kenny & La Voie, 1984). The Sanjay Srivastava, Department of Psychology, University of Oregon; Steve Guglielmo, Department of Psychology Brown University; Jennifer S. Beer, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. Data collection for Study 2 was funded in part by a Sigma Xi grant in aid of research awarded to Sanjay Srivastava and by a University of California, Berkeley, Sigma Xi chapter grant and a Graduate Women in Science grant awarded to Jennifer S. Beer. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sanjay Srivastava, Department of Psychology, 1227 University of Oregon, Eu- gene, OR 97403-1227. E-mail: sanjay@uoregon.edu Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2010 American Psychological Association 2010, Vol. 98, No. 3, 520 –534 0022-3514/10/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0017057 520