Does the validity of person judgments depend on the emotional relationship between perceiver and target?

该项目是澄清在何种程度上的准确性的人的判断是由感知器和目标之间现有的情感关系的影响。研究表明，我们倾向于以刻板积极的方式来描述我们喜欢的人。因此，对我们喜欢的人的描述比对我们不喜欢的人的描述更相似。这可能导致正面描述不太准确，因为它们使目标看起来更可互换。在这个项目中，目标人物由几个对目标有不同评价态度的人来描述。然后比较这些描述对目标一年后生活状况的预测程度（这是核心结果变量）。我们期望那些对目标有更严格的判断的法官能够做出目标和他们的亲密朋友都无法做出的准确预测。本研究在三个方面具有相关性：第一，人格研究中的他人判断往往是由非常喜欢目标对象的人提供的。该项目将澄清这种方法可能导致系统性信息丢失的程度。第二，这个项目对社会心理学理论有直接的影响。我们假设，在人际关系调节中存在着一个根本性的冲突：一方面，人们应该致力于获得最准确的他人形象，以便能够预测他们的行为，从而成功地驾驭他们的社会环境。另一方面，人们也希望作为社会群体的成员感到安全和支持。该项目将能够澄清后一个目标有时在何种程度上是以前一个目标为代价来实现的（即，人们是否以过于积极的方式看待亲密的人，以保持群体凝聚力？）第三，该项目将能够显示是否有可能通过访问您通常不会询问他们意见的人的意见来实际了解自己（即，你的批评者）。这将产生一个强有力的实证论据，支持一些最广泛实践的心理干预（例如，360度反馈）。

The project is to clarify the extent to which the accuracy of person judgments is influenced by existing emotional relationships between perceivers and targets. Research has shown that we tend to characterize the people we like in stereotypically positive ways. Therefore, descriptions of people we like resemble each other more than descriptions of people we do not like. This could result in positive descriptions being less accurate because they make targets appear more interchangeable. In this project, target persons are described by several others who differ in their evaluative attitudes towards the targets. The descriptions are then compared in regard to how well they predict the targets' life circumstances one year later (this is the central outcome variable). We expect that judges who see targets more critically are able to make accurate predictions that neither the targets nor their close friends could make. The study is relevant in three respects: First, other-judgments in personality research are very often provided by people who like the target persons very much. The project will clarify the extent to which this approach may lead to a systematic loss of information. Second, the project has direct implications for social psychological theory. We assume that there is a fundamental conflict in interpersonal relationship regulation: On the one hand, people should aim to obtain most accurate images of other people, in order to be able to predict their behavior, and thus navigate their social environments successfully. On the other hand, people would also like to feel secure and supported as members of social groups. The project will be able to clarify the extent to which the latter goal is sometimes accomplished at the cost of the former (i.e., do people perceive close others in overly positive ways, in order to preserve group cohesion?). Third, the project will be able to show whether it is possible to actually learn something about yourself by accessing the views of people you would not normally ask for their opinions (i.e., your critics). This would yield a strong empirical argument in favor of some of the most widely practised kinds of psychological intervention (e.g., 360 degree feedback).