EMPATHIC ACCURACY

People are motivated to understand each other's psychological states a s well as each other's personality traits. As a consequence, the more traditional study of accuracy in trait inference can be complemented b y, and potentially benefit from, the insights provided by the more rec ent study of empathic accuracy. Findings in this area suggest that fut ure research should devote more attention to (a) the history of the pe rceiver-target relationship; (b) the perceiver's desired future relati onship with the target; (c) the possibility that perceivers have littl e or no ''metaknowledge'' regarding their own empathic ability; and (d ) the possibility that, under certain conditions, perceivers might be motivated to be inaccurate, rather than accurate, in their inferences about other people's dispositions.