Understanding the role of contextualization in behavioral personality measurement through self-observation and observer reports

A typical finding in multiple studies that explore the relation between personality traits and behavior is that verbal and nonverbal behavior is more strongly related to observer, rather than self-, reports of personality. One explanation is that self- and observer reports capture conceptually different aspects of personality. Self-reports capture one’s ‘Identity’ and observer reports capture one’s ‘Reputation’. Each perspective is assumed to have different insights into one’s verbal and nonverbal behavior. However, a simpler explanation is that personality measures of self- and observer reports are collected in different ways. Self-reports typically include context-free items, whereas observer reports are context-specific, since observers provide their ratings after having watched the ‘self’ performing a specific task. One way to disentangle whether the discrepancy in explained behavioral variance (the relation between personality traits and behaviors) is due to the conceptual differences between Identity and Reputation, or simply the effect of contextualization in personality measurement, is to collect self-observations (along with self- and observer reports). That is, participants watch their own behavior and assess their own personality based on their behavior. In the present, participants took an asynchronous video interview. Then, we collected personality self-reports, self-observations, and observer reports. Finally, we calculated the proportion of personality variance in self-reports, self-observations, and observer reports explained by the verbal, audio, and visual features of the videos. In this way, it is possible to test the possible effect of contextualization in personality measurement.