DO PEOPLE KNOW-HOW OTHERS VIEW THEM - AN EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL ACCOUNT

Meta-accuracy is the extent to which people know how others see them. Following D. A. Kenny and L. Albright (1987), we show how the social r elations model (SRM) can be used to investigate meta-accuracy. The res ults from 8 SRM studies involving 569 subjects are reviewed. We argue that people determine how others view them not from the feedback that they receive from others but from their own self-perceptions. Consiste nt with this argument are the findings that (a) people overestimate th e degree of consistency in the ways that different targets view them a nd (b) people are better at understanding how others generally view th em than how they are uniquely viewed by specific individuals.