Psychology Commons^™

The Information Used To Judge Supportiveness Depends On Whether The Judgment Reflects The Personality Of Perceivers, Objective Characteristics Of Targets Or Their Unique Relationships, Brian Lakey, Catherine Lutz, Alan Scoboria

Psychology Faculty Publications

People who judge their relationships as more supportive enjoy better mental health than people who judge their relationships more negatively. We investigated how people made these judgments; specifically, how people weighed different types of information about targets under three different conditions: when judgments reflected the personality of perceivers, the objective characteristics of targets, and the unique relationships between perceivers and targets. Participants (i.e., perceivers) judged the same four videotaped targets on personality, similarity to perceivers and likely supportiveness. As in previous research, perceivers based their judgments on perceived target similarity to perceivers, and on target personality. However, how perceivers weighed …