Evidence of Differential Meta-Accuracy People Understand the Different Impressions They Make

摘要

This article reexamines the prevailing conclusion that people are unaware of the different impressions they make, or that their differential meta-accuracy is poor. This conclusion emerged from research employing contextually undifferentiated designs that may have constrained differences in actual impressions, thereby limiting participants' ability to demonstrate differential metaaccuracy. We argue that an alternative, contextually differentiated approach may reveal evidence for differential metaaccuracy because (a) people tend to behave differently in different social contexts, (b) interaction partners from different social contexts witness differing behaviors and form differing impressions of a target person, and (c) contextual information used to infer the impression one makes on others is relatively differentiated across contexts, resulting in differentiated metaperceptions. We assessed differential meta-accuracy across social contexts (i.e., parents, hometown friends, and college friends) and found that, in contrast to researchers' prevailing conclusion, people can indeed detect the relative impressions they make on others.