Some traits are easier to judge accurately than others. The ‘good trait’ is the more visible trait, Such as sociability, talkativeness and other traits related to extraversion. These traits are judged with higher levels of inter-judge agreement than less visible traits such as ruminative styles and habits. More visible traits are easier to see.
‘Good information’ is the amount and kind of information obtained in personality judgments. It is suggested that more is usually better (Funder, 1996). Also personality judgments by close acquaintances, tend to agree much better with each other and with self judgments, than judgements by strangers. The quality of information refers to how, different kinds of information, gathered through different types acquaintanceship (e.g. as a friend or co-worker), contribute to judgement accuracy. It is important for the information to be specifically relevant to the traits that one is trying to judge.
Interobserver reliability refers to the consistent agreement between observers of the same events. When observers/raters see almost the same thing and their judgments correlate highly with each other across many ratings, they are said to have high interobserver reliability. Acquiring high interobserver reliability demands the judges to be thoroughly trained in how to observe what they are observing
(Carver & Scheier, 2000)
This experiment was designed to test the validity of personality impressions, through observing and measuring the differences between the personalities of Captain James T. Kirk and Captain Jean-luc Picard in relation to the trait of communicativeness. The hypothesis is that perceived personality traits will be reflected in observed behaviour, and that behavioural data will confirm that Captain Picard is more Communicative and Captain Kirk is less communicative.
Method
Participants:
The participants for this experiment were second year psychology students randomly assigned to lab groups who participated compulsorily as part of a lab exercise. The class was randomly split up into four groups with four or five people in each group, both male and female participants were involved and all were of a mixed age.
Materials:
The experiment was carried out using three different scenes of Star trek on the same video tape these scenes were played thru a projector. The first scene featured both Captains Kirk and Picard; the second only featured Captain Kirk and the third Captain Picard. All scenes were 15min long. Instructions for the first scene and scoring sheets for the other two were also provided in the participant’s lab book. The lab tutor provided verbal instructions (and recorded traits on the whiteboard after the first scene) and results were recorded using pens.
Results
CAPTAIN PICARD
(Table 1)
CAPTAIN KIRK
(Table 2)
Interobserver reliability calculations were done based on scores for student A, for the number of times each coded behaviour occurred in the separate videos for both Captain’s Kirk and Picard. Firstly for Captain Picard, for coded behaviour one ‘Appropriate verbal responses’, student A gave him a 6 and the other three people in the group gave him an 17, 11, and 7. Therefore, the interobserver reliability of student A for coded behaviour one is .50, this is determined by calculating the percentage of people within a group who scored within one point of an individuals score. For the coded behaviour ‘Explanations and clarifications’ student A gave him 8 and the other three gave him 16, 10, and 6 therefore the interobserver reliability for coded behaviour two was .00. Lastly, for the coded behaviour ‘Solicits views of others’ student A gave him 0 and the other three gave him 8, 3, and 4. Interobserver reliability for coded behaviour three was .00.
This is then repeated for Captain Kirk
Tests on the hypothesis were also done to see if the data confirmed the group’s hypothesis that ‘Perceived personality traits will be reflected in observed behaviour, that Captain Picard is more communicative and Captain Kirk is less communicative.’
For the first coded behaviour ‘Verbal responses’ student A’s results for Captain Picard was 6 and for Captain Kirk 9 the average rating for the group was (m = 10) for Captain Picard and (m = 7) for Captain Kirk these results support the hypothesis. For the second coded behaviour Explanations/ clarifications student A’s ratings for Captain Picard was 8 and Captain Kirk was 3. The average rating for the group, for Captain Picard was (m = 10) and for Captain Kirk (m = 4) the results support the hypothesis. For the third coded behaviour ‘Solicits views of others’, student A’s result for Captain Picard was 0 and for Captain Kirk 2. The groups average rating for Captain Picard was (m = 4) and for captain Kirk (m = 3) these results support the hypothesis.
Procedure:
The tutor informed the participants that they would first be watching a video of Star Trek, featuring both Captain Kirk and Captain Picard. The participants were also asked to note down how Captain Kirk and Captain Picard’s personalities were different, whilst watching the first video, the participants were asked to share their notes of the differing personality traits of both captain Kirk and Picard. The participants were then randomly assigned to groups (by the tutor) by numbering all the students in the lab class from one to four until everyone had a number, then combining the same numbers to form groups. Each group had to pick a personality
trait to perform trait contrasts. The four participants that chose the trait communicative were informed by the tutor that they had to formulate a conceptual definition for the trait. This was ‘The degree in which a person demonstrates good communication skills.’ They also had to formulate a hypothesis, concerning the difference between the two captains on the trait. This was ‘Perceived personality traits will be reflected in observed behaviour. Behavioural data will confirm that Captain Picard is more communicative and Captain Kirk is less communicative.’ The participants then had to form an operational definition to test their hypothesis. They had to operationalize their assigned trait (communicative) in terms of concrete, observable, behavioural indicators. The indicators had to be countable and no more than three could be used. The four participants chose 1) Number of times that a person demonstrates good listening by giving verbal responses that are appropriate and reasonable. 2) Number of times that a person uses explanations and clarifications.
3) Number of times that a person solicits the view of others. The four participants were then separated so our results could be collected independently. They then had to write in each coded behaviour down the side of the scoring sheet for Captain Kirk and again for Picard. The participants then watched the second Star trek scene featuring captain Kirk and had to make a tally next to the coded behaviour each time it occurred, this was again repeated for the third scene featuring Captain Picard. The participants each had to total the number of times the behaviour occurred for each coded behaviour First for Captain Kirk then for Captain Picard. The participants then joined back into the same groups and were instructed to record all the totals, so that each participant would have four totals for each coded behaviour. This was done for both Captain Kirk and Picard. The results were then analysed by each student, who had to calculate interobserver reliability and test the hypothesis.
Discussion
All the results gained by the group showed some degree of support for the hypothesis; it cannot be totally concluded from these results due to a number of confounding variables in this study. That Captain Picard was more communicative and Captain Kirk less communicative
References
Funder, D.C. (1996). Personality assessment II: Personality judgment in daily life. In D. M. Funder, The personality puzzle (pp. 123 – 129). New York: W.W.
Norton &Company
Carver, C. S. & Scheier, M. F. (2000) Perspectives on personality. (4th Ed.) A Pearson Education Company, M. A., U. S. A.
