DO PEOPLE KNOW-HOW THEY BEHAVE - SELF-REPORTED ACT FREQUENCIES COMPARED WITH ONLINE CODINGS BY OBSERVERS

Behavioral acts constitute the building blocks of interpersonal percep tion and the basis for inferences about personality traits. How reliab ly can observers code the acts individuals perform in a specific situa tion? How valid are retrospective self-reports of these acts? Particip ants interacted in a group discussion task and then reported their act frequencies, which were later coded by observers from videotapes. For each act, observer-observer agreement, self-observer agreement, and s elf-enhancement bias were examined. Findings show that (a) agreement v aried greatly across acts; (b) much of this variation was predictable from properties of the acts (observability, base rate, desirability, B ig Five domain); (c) on average, self-reports were positively distorte d; and (d) this was particularly true for narcissistic individuals. Di scussion focuses on implications for research on acts, traits, social perception, and the act frequency approach.