DIFFERENTIATION IN PERSONALITY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE SELF AND OTHERS

Previous studies of the tendency to describe one's own personality or the personality of another in a differentiated, nuanced way have asses sed differentiation in terms of number of ascribed traits. Findings ha ve been inconsistent and conclusions compromised by failure to conside r a key component of differentiation-the relationships between attribu ted characteristics. In the two studies reported in this article, the magnitude of the correlations between personality scale descriptions o f a target was taken as an inverse indicator of differentiation. In bo th Study 1, which employed scales from the Personality Research Form ( Jackson, 1974), and Study 2, which employed scales from the NEO PI-R ( Costa and McCrae, 1992), participants showed greater differentiation i n descriptions of themselves than of others and greater differentiatio n in descriptions of liked than of disliked persons. Participants also revealed a tendency to describe familiar persons in a less differenti ated way than persons whom they knew less well. This pattern of findin gs is well-accommodated by Berscheid et al.'s (1976) 'outcome dependen cy' formulation which proposes that the more vulnerable our welfare to another person's influence, the greater our motivation to construe th at person's behavior in dispositional terms. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.