PERCEPTIONS OF BEHAVIORAL CONSISTENCY - ARE PEOPLE AWARE OF THE ACTOR-OBSERVER EFFECT

Actors view behavior relevant for personality traits as more variable than observers do. This study was designed to replicate this actor-obs erver effect (AOE) in a common-target paradigm; test whether actors, o bservers, or both are intuitively aware of the AGE; and examine the ef fects of social projection on people's awareness of the AOE. Within ea ch actor-observer pair, subjects described the actor on a series of tr ait adjectives and rated the consistency of relevant behavior. They th en predicted the other person's ratings. The AOE emerged, and actors, but not observers, were aware of the effect. On average, actors correc tly predicted that observers rated actors' behavior as more consistent than actors themselves did. Correlational analyses showed that actors and observers were equally prone to project their own ratings to thei r matched partners.