Self-Observation of Social Behavior and Metaperception - APA PsycNET

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1999, Vol. 77, No. 4, 726-734

Copyright 1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-3514/99/S3.00

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Self-Observation of Social Behavior and Metaperception Linda Albright

Thomas E. Malloy

Westfield State College

Rhode Island College

In 3 experiments (Ns = 68, 72, and 101) the authors tested the hypothesis that the opportunity to observe oneself in social interaction increases the accuracy of metaperception (prediction of others' social judgments of oneself). Small groups were videotaped during a decision-making task, after which group members judged each other's social anxiety. Participants watched either the videotape of their group's interaction or a videotape of another group's interaction. After watching the videotape, participants predicted how they were judged by each member of the group. Results from the 3 experiments confirmed the hypothesis that self-observation increases the accuracy of metaperception. Presumably, selfobservation provides objective information about one's behavior, which increases the ability to determine how one is judged by others, assuming self and others share meaning systems.

If people could perceive themselves from the perspective of an observer, would they be better able to determine the impressions they created? The reality of social interaction is that people have direct access to the behavior of those with whom they are interacting but do not have direct access to their own interpersonal behavior. Thus, determining how one's behavior influences others' judgments of oneself, a process Laing, Phillipson, and Lee (1966) called metaperception, is more complex than the process of judging others. Two central questions have been of primary interest in the study of metaperception. One concerns the accuracy of metaperception, or the extent to which people's metaperceptions correspond to others' judgments of them (Cook & Douglas, 1998; DePaulo, Kenny, Hoover, Webb, & Oliver, 1987; Kenny, 1994; Kenny & DePaulo, 1993; Levesque, 1997; Malloy & Albright, 1990; Malloy, Albright, Kenny, Agatstein, & Winquist, 1997; Shechtman & Kenny, 1994), and the other concerns how people determine what others think of them (Kenny & DePaulo, 1993).

source of on-line information about the kinds of impressions he or she is conveying. Second, one must infer how others will use this information to form a judgment. This assessment should not be as difficult, if the self and others share meaning systems for behavior (Kenny, 1991). Kenny (1994) reviewed the empirical research on the degree to which metaperception is accurate (i.e., meta-accuracy). In these studies people's metaperceptions, or predictions of how they were judged, were correlated with other people's actual judgments of them. This review indicated that the average level of metaaccuracy is approximately .5; however, there was a fair amount of variability among these estimates. Excluding studies of highly acquainted individuals (in which the potential for direct or thirdparty verbal feedback is greater), a closer examination of these studies shows that meta-accuracy tends to be high on traits indicating Extraversion (Malloy & Janowski, 1992; Oliver, 1989) but fairly low on other characteristics (Kenny & DePaulo, 1990; Reno & Kenny, 1992). The high level of meta-accuracy on Extraversion is likely due to the observability of the trait (Funder & Dobroth, 1987), even to the actor. That is, assessing the extent to which one participated in a conversation, for example, does not require much inference and therefore allows the actor to determine what information relevant to Extraversion was available to others. Why is meta-accuracy so low for judgments of other personality characteristics? One explanation involves motivation. Metaperception is motivated judgment; people believe that others judge them the way they would like to be seen. Because the behavioral information relevant to other traits of the Big Five is not as directly observable to the actor as it is for Extraversion, its constraint on metaperception is reduced and motivation can play a greater role. However, others do not necessarily judge people the way they would like to be judged, which produces low levels of meta-accuracy. Another explanation involves Campbell's (1996) concept of centrisms, as in egocentrism, ethnocentrism, and so on. Whatever the form, the perceiver ultimately misinterprets the "other" (person, culture, etc.) because the other is judged from the perspective of one's own worldview, which is mistaken for reality itself. From

The process of metaperception is more complex because it involves making a judgment about another person's judgment. Unless one receives direct (and honest) verbal feedback from the other, metaperception requires inference in a two-stage process. First, one must infer what behavioral information is available to others. This assessment is difficult because one does not directly observe oneself and therefore does not have the interpersonal information, such as nonverbal behavior, that is available to observers. DePaulo (1992) noted that the inaccessibility of one's own nonverbal behavior deprives the metaperceiver of an important

Linda Albright, Department of Psychology, Westfield State College; Thomas E. Malloy, Department of Psychology, Rhode Island College. We wish to thank our research assistants: Gregg Bromgard, Maria Farina, Lisa Franco, Kerry French, Wendy Luke, Beth Manhardt, and Kathleen McDermott. Fredric Agatstein provided helpful comments on an earlier version of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Linda Albright, Department of Psychology, Westfield State College, Westfield, Massachusetts 01086. Electronic mail may be sent to l_albright@foma. wsc.mass.edu. 726

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this critical-realist perspective, the effects of centrisms can never be entirely eliminated but can be reduced to a practical degree through various methods that allow the perceiver a glimpse into the worldview of the other. In terms of metaperception, assessment of the observer's judgment of oneself is made from the perspective of the actor, who has limited knowledge of the information available to the observer. In social interaction, the primary visual stimulus for the actor, or metaperceiver, is the partner; the primary visual stimulus for the partner is the actor. As past researchers have demonstrated, visual perspective has an important effect on social perception.


Visual Perspective and Social Perception

Causal Attribution The classic actor-observer bias in attribution was first articulated by Jones and Nisbett (1972). On the basis of a number of empirical studies, Jones and Nisbett suggested that "there is a pervasive tendency for actors to attribute their actions to situational requirements, whereas observers tend to attribute the same actions to stable personal dispositions" (p. 80). Watson's (1982) review of the experimental tests of the actor-observer bias indicated that this proposition has received strong empirical support. According to Jones and Nisbett, there are three possible sources of this attributional bias. First, the actor and the observer have different information available to them. For example, actors have more information about themselves and how their behavior varies in different situations. Second, actors and observers process the available information differently because they have different visual orientations. For the actor the environment is figure, whereas the actor is ground; for the observer the actor is figure against the ground of the environment. Thus, the environment is more salient for the actor; the actor is more salient for the observer. Third, observers are more motivated to attribute behavior to personality traits, because of their need for prediction and control. Jones and Nisbett proposed that differential salience of information was the primary basis of the actor-observer bias. In a study of the effect of visual perspective, Taylor and Fiske (1975) experimentally manipulated informational salience by varying observers' points of view. Despite the fact that the actors' dominance in the conversation was constrained to be equal, Taylor and Fiske found that judgments of causal dominance were affected by the observers' visual perspectives. Thus, differential salience of information produced attributional bias not only between actors and observers, but also between observers with different points of view. If visual perspective does play a primary causal role in the actor-observer attributional bias, then providing the actor with the observer's visual perspective and the observer with the actor's perspective should reduce the bias. In his classic study, Storms (1973) manipulated and reversed actors' and observers' points of view. Two actors were videotaped while engaging in a brief, unstructured conversation. An observer sat behind each actor and faced the opposite actor. In one experimental condition the actors and observers saw no videotape, and in a second condition actors and observers saw a videotape that merely repeated their original orientations. Attributions made by these participants evidenced the typical actor-observer bias. In a third experimental condition,

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actors and observers saw a videotape from a different visual perspective: Actors watched themselves and observers watched the other actor. Storms found that these actors attributed their behavior more to personal dispositions and less to the situation than did the observers. Thus, the opportunity to see oneself from the observer's perspective yielded judgments more congruent with the observer's.

Observation of Self and Self-Perception In addition to the research on attribution, several empirical studies have been conducted testing the general hypothesis that the opportunity to observe oneself from an observer's visual perspective affects one's self-perception. These studies have been conducted primarily with people seeking therapy for marital or personal adjustment problems. One of the earliest controlled studies examined the effect of "self-confrontation" on the accuracy of the self-concept (Braucht, 1970). In this study, groups of 4 - 6 patients from one of two psychiatric wards engaged in a 15-20-min discussion of their reactions to the treatments they were receiving. Pretest measures of self-concept included both how they perceived themselves and how they thought others perceived them. After completing these measures some participants watched a videotape of the discussion, whereas others did not. Posttest measures showed that self-confrontation increased the accuracy of both measures of self-concept. In this study, the criterion for accuracy of self-perception was the consensual ratings of three staff members who also watched the videotape. In a related study, Griffiths and Gillingham (1978) also showed an effect of self-observation on the accuracy of self-ratings using Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory scores as the validity criterion. Observation of oneself may also increase the relationship between self-ratings and metaperceptions. Doerr and Carr (1982) had undergraduate students make judgments of themselves as they saw themselves (self-ratings) and as others would see them (metaperceptions) using the Leary Interpersonal Check List (Leary, 1956). Some participants engaged in a structured interview during which they either were or were not videotaped; others engaged in a nonsocial task during which they either were or were not videotaped. Doerr and Carr found the greatest congruency between self-ratings and metaperceptions among those who watched a videotape of themselves being interviewed. The research on the effect of self-observation through videotape in marital therapy has been less clear. In these studies couples either do or do not watch a videotape of themselves in a therapy session. Neither Padgett (1983) nor Fichten (1984) found a main effect of self-observation on self-ratings, although Padgett did find a Video X Type of Therapy Interaction effect. It should be noted, however, that the underlying premise in these studies is that therapy, including self-observation through videotape, should enhance self-esteem. Thus, these studies tested the hypothesis that observation of self and spouse increase the favorability, as opposed to accuracy, of the self-rating. Padgett's review of the literature indicates that self-observation increased self-ratings in some studies and decreased self-ratings in others. The inconsistency of results in this literature may support the hypothesis that selfobservation affects the accuracy, not the favorability, of selfratings. Indeed, Edelson and Seidman (1975) found that selfobservation was associated with greater change in self-perception among married couples.

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Method


The Present Research The research described above suggests that the opportunity to observe oneself interacting with another person reduces attributional bias and increases the accuracy of the self-rating among people seeking therapy for personal adjustment problems. The present research tested the hypothesis that the opportunity to observe oneself in social interaction enhances the ability to judge how one is perceived by others. Theoretically, if differences in stimulus information account for some of the discrepancy between the way one thinks one is judged and the way one is actually judged by others, then allowing people to view themselves from the perspective of others should increase meta-accuracy. The present research included three studies in which groups of 3-6 unacquainted persons participated in a 15-min discussion of a particular social issue while being videotaped. After this group discussion, participants made judgments of each other on traits indicating social anxiety. When these measures were completed, participants watched a videotape of themselves, a videotape of a different group engaged in a discussion of the topic, or a videotape of other members of their group. After viewing the videotape, participants made judgments about how members of their group judged them on traits indicating social anxiety. Although there are a number of studies of the effect of selfobservation through videotape feedback on self-ratings, the question of which particular dimensions are affected has received little, if any, attention. Thus, we had no empirical basis on which to select the dimensions on which participants would judge each other. The opportunity to observe oneself in a social situation probably does not provide information concerning all aspects of self and interpersonal perception. More likely, certain interpersonal situations provide information relevant to particular aspects of social judgment. The interpersonal situation in the present research involved participating in a task-oriented discussion with a small group of previously unacquainted people. In this situation, aspects of social anxiety, such as nervousness, tension, and confidence, are relevant interpersonal dimensions on which people are likely to vary. Further, the opportunity to observe oneself through videotape should provide information relevant to social anxiety, because many behaviors associated with social anxiety are nonverbal (Schlenker & Leary, 1982). The salience of one's nonverbal behavior clearly differs between the actor and the observer, and the experimental manipulation was designed to affect this salience. Therefore, the trait dimensions on which perceivers made interpersonal judgments and metaperceptions were those associated with social anxiety. We predicted that the metaperceptions of social anxiety among those who were given the opportunity to view themselves on videotape would be more accurate than those who did not observe themselves. In others words, we predicted that people will be better able to judge how they are viewed by others when they have the opportunity to see themselves from the other's visual perspective. Support for this prediction would suggest that a portion of the discrepancy between one's metaperception and the partner's actual perception is due to differences in stimulus information.

Participants Participants in Study 1 were 68 undergraduates enrolled in various psychology courses at Westfield State College who received course credit for taking part in a so-called "group problem-solving" study. These participants were assigned to 16 groups of 4 to 6 people with whom they were unacquainted. Participants in Study 2 were 72 undergraduates enrolled in various psychology courses at Westfield State College who received course credit for their participation in a group problem-solving study. These participants were assigned to 18 groups of 3 to 5 unacquainted people. Participants in Study 3 were 193 undergraduates from Rhode Island College who volunteered for a group problem-solving study. These participants were assigned to 52 groups of 3 to 5 unacquainted persons.

Procedure and Measures In the three studies, groups of participants were assigned randomly to an experimental condition in which they viewed a videotape of their own group's interaction or a control condition in which they viewed a videotape of another group's discussion of the same topic. Study 3 also included an additional control condition in which participants viewed a videotape of other members of their own group, specifically excluding themselves. We collected these data to rule out the possibility that the increased accuracy in the experimental condition was due to a second exposure to feedback from other group members. In Studies 1 and 2, there were equal numbers of groups in the experimental and control conditions (8 and 8, 9 and 9, respectively). Study 3 consisted of 12 groups in the experimental condition, 13 groups in the control condition, and 27 groups in the additional control condition. The identical experimental manipulation of visual perspective was used in the three studies; however, subtle variations in some procedures and tasks did occur and are noted when appropriate. On arrival for the study, participants were led to a room with three to six chairs (depending on the group size) arranged in a semicircle at one end of a table (or at opposite ends of the table in the additional control condition), were invited to sit in any available chair, and were given an informed-consent document to read and sign if they agreed to participate. The experimenter then read a statement to the participants that the study involved group decision making and that they would be requested to discuss a particular controversial social issue, consider several questions, and make a consensual group decision for each question. The experimenter informed the participants that once he or she left the room, they should introduce themselves to each other by stating their names, academic majors, residential information, and preferences for leisure activities. Following these introductions, they were to read the description of the issue and the questions, discuss the issue, and make a group decision for each of the questions within a 15-min period. The experimenter gave each participant a written description of the controversial topic, indicated he or she would return in 15 min, and then left the room. The primary purpose of requesting participants to discuss these issues was to stimulate social interaction so that they would have a basis on which to later judge each other. The issue to be discussed was different in each study. In Study 1, participants were presented with a classic lifeboat problem in which they were to decide which 8 of 13 people should be allowed on the lifeboat. These decisions were based on brief descriptions of each of the 13 people on the boat. In Study 2, participants were asked to consider the social problem of homelessness and were asked to make decisions regarding changes in federal spending to alleviate the problem. In Study 3, participants were asked to consider the social issue of assisted suicide and to make decisions concerning whether assisted suicide should be legal or illegal. They were also requested to justify their decision. In each study, the group was required to record their decision and write a narrative that described the basis of the group decision.

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SELF-OBSERVATION AND METAPERCEPTION In Studies 1 and 2, the experimenter videotaped the group interaction through a one-way mirror in an adjacent room. The videocamera was mounted on a tripod and positioned behind the one-way mirror at a distance of approximately 10 feet (3.05 m) from the group. In Study 3, discussions were videotaped in the same room in which the interactions occurred and the camera was mounted on a tripod approximately 14 feet (4.27 m) from the group. In the additional control condition, two cameras were positioned at either ends of the table and focused on participants at the other end. After 15 min, the recording was terminated and the experimenter returned to the participants. Participants were then escorted to a larger adjacent room (Studies 1 and 2) and were seated around a large table at a distance of at least 8 feet (2.44 m) from each other, or they were escorted to different isolated cubicles (Study 3). The experimenter then gave each participant a form that contained instructions asking them to make judgments regarding the issue that was discussed and the nature of the group's interaction. These filler items contained questions regarding participants' personal opinions about the issue, their perceptions of how much disagreement existed in the discussion, and their perceptions of the similarity between each group member's position on the issue to their own position.

as socially competent. The relationship effect refers to the way an individual uniquely judges another, controlling for the way the individual typically judges others and the way that individual is typically judged by others. Variance in the relationship effect reflects the tendency for some dyad members to uniquely judge the other as socially anxious, whereas others do not. Because the phenomenon of interest in this research occurs at the individual level of analysis, only the perceiver and target effects are relevant. In the present analysis the relationship and error components were pooled. The variance of target effects measures agreement or consensus when multiple perceivers make trait ratings of multiple targets. The variance of perceiver effects in metaperceptions measures individual differences in people's predictions of others' judgments of them. A detailed discussion on the correlation of variance components in the estimation of meta-accuracy can be found in Kenny (1994).

Following these measures, participants rated (using 5-point equalinterval scales) the other members of their group on bipolar trait dimensions designed to measure judgments of social anxiety. In Study 1 the following trait dimensions were selected to indicate social anxiety: calm (1) to nervous (5) and confident (1) to unconfident (5). Study 2 included the following dimensions: calm (1) to nervous (5), confident (1) to unconfident (5), direct (1) to indirect (5), and relaxed (1) to tense (5). Study 3 included the following traits dimensions: calm (1) to nervous (5), tactful (1) to blunt (5), confident (1) to unconfident (5), and relaxed (1) to tense (5). All of these traits are subsumed by Factor IV (Emotional Stability) in Goldberg's (1990) classification system. Following the trait ratings, groups in the experimental condition watched the videotaped recording of their own group discussing the issue, whereas groups in the control condition viewed the 15-min interaction of another group discussing the same controversial issue. Participants in the additional control condition viewed a videotape of other members of their own group, excluding themselves. In all of the conditions, the lights in the room were turned off to reduce any discomfort those in the experimental groups may have experienced because of watching themselves on videotape in the presence of virtual strangers. In all three studies, after viewing the videotape, participants made predictions (i.e., metaperceptions) of how the other group members rated them on each of the traits on which they judged each other. After these measures, they were debriefed and thanked for their participation.

In all of the studies, analyses of the interpersonal judgments and the metaperceptions on the traits serving as indicators of social anxiety were conducted using the computer program SOREMO (Kenny, 1995), which performs a social relations analysis. A social relations analysis partitions the variance in dyadic data into the component sources described above. In this research, the social relations analysis was used to estimate the variance of the target effects on trait judgments, which is the measure of consensus (see Kenny, Albright, Malloy, & Kashy, 1995, for a detailed discussion of this measure), and the variance of the perceiver effects in metaperceptions. Given person/s judgment of person i on trait X (Equation 1), Xjt is equal to a grand mean (M) plus person / s perceiver effect on the judgment (a^), plus person i's target effect on the judgment (j3,), plus person/s unique reaction to ;', which is combined with random error (ey7). Likewise, given person i's metaperception o f / s trait judgment (Equation 2), YLj is equal to a grand mean (M) plus person i's perceiver effect in metaperception (a,), plus person/s target effect on the metaperception (/3y), plus person i's unique reaction to j , which is combined with random error (e^). So the first step in the analysis was to decompose both the social anxiety trait ratings (Equation 1) and the metaperceptions (Equation 2) into the following sources of variability within groups:

Results General Analysis Strategy

Research Design In all studies, individual participants were nested within discussion groups, and groups were nested within experimental conditions. Within the groups, participants made judgments of others on traits indicating social anxiety and predictions (i.e., metaperceptions) of others' judgments of them on the same traits. A design in which responses (in this case, trait ratings and metaperceptions) of all members of a group to one another are measured is called a round-robin, which has been used extensively in interpersonal perception research (Kenny, 1994). Within each group of participants in Studies 1,2, and 3 there was a round-robin data structure. A round-robin data structure provides sufficient information to estimate three sources of variance in social judgments: perceiver, target, and relationship. The perceiver effect refers to the way an individual judges others in general. Variance in the perceiver effect reflects the tendency, for example, for some individuals to generally judge others as socially anxious, whereas other individuals generally judge others as socially competent. The target effect refers to the way an individual is judged by others in general. Variance in the target effect reflects the tendency for some individuals to be seen as socially anxious, whereas others tend to be seen

:lt = M + aj + /3, + eji

(1)

and Y,j = M + a, + j3, +

(2)

After this decomposition of trait ratings and metaperceptions into component sources of perceiver and target, the accuracy of metaperception (i.e., meta-accuracy) was estimated directly from the data using the standard least squares covariance of the target effect on judgments (j3,-) and the perceiver effect (a,) on metaperceptions (Kenny & DePaulo, 1993). This covariance measures metaaccuracy at the individual level of analysis, or generalized metaaccuracy, which refers to the extent to which people know how they are judged by other people in general. These covariances were standardized as correlations using standard procedures for this transformation. Generalized meta-accuracy is conceptually and statistically distinct from dyadic meta-accuracy (Kenny, 1994), which refers to the extent to which people know how they are


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uniquely judged by specific others. Because this research included groups of strangers engaged in interaction for the first time, the focus was restricted to generalized meta-accuracy. In the present research, the primary focus was not on determining the overall level of accuracy in metaperception, but rather on the difference in the accuracy of metaperception as a function of the experimental manipulation. That is, we were interested in whether the opportunity to observe one's social behavior affects the accuracy of predictions of how one is consensually judged by others. Therefore, the focus of the analysis was on the effect of the experimental manipulation when the variance of the target component in trait judgments (cr^) is greater than zero in an absolute sense, because if this variance is zero, then meta-accuracy is necessarily precluded.

Consensus as a Necessary Condition for Meta-Accuracy To accurately predict others' consensual judgments of oneself, those others must show some degree of consensus in their judgments. If others did not consensually judge the target to some degree, then the metaperceiver would have nothing stable to predict. In other words, consensus (i.e., 0) is a necessary logical and mathematical condition for the occurrence of generalized meta-accuracy. Why would there be no consensus in some groups? A social relations analysis assumes that traits are normally distributed across individuals. As group size increases, the probability of sampling the full range of the distribution increases. Because groups in our study were small, restriction in range (and therefore variance) occurred in some groups. As a result, we developed an analysis strategy to control for an absence of consensus, thereby increasing statistical power. A schematic guide to the analytical strategy is presented in Table 1, and the computational procedures are described below. First, for each group of participants in each of the three studies, we estimated the target variances in social judgments for each Table 1 A Guide to the Computational Procedures Traits Group

1

3

C(a/3)

XX

1

2 3

2

Averages within group

0 0

x 0

g x x x Average across groups Note, g = group. Dots represent elements in the matrix. Pattern of results is hypothetical. An x is target variance greater than 0, and / are traits on which estimates of variance and covariance are based (total traits T is always a 2) within a group. A 0 indicates target variance equals zero on a trait judgment. C(a,-/3,-) is the average within-groops meta-accuracy covariance, aa is the average within-groups perceiver variance in metaperception, and