David Funder is visiting from University of California Riverside and will give a talk on Thursday 22 March. Here is his outline:

Accuracy in personality judgment: A (very) long view

In this talk, I plan to provide an overview of more than 30 years of research on accuracy in personality judgment, describing how it evolved over time and the conclusions I have reached. My research began with four questions (1) Are judgments of personality always or mostly wrong? (2) When are they most likely to be right? (3) How is accurate personality judgment possible? (4) How can personality judgments become more accurate? I believe a few decades of research have shown that the answers are (1) no (2) when the judge, target, trait and information are “good”; (3) Accurate judgment is possible when relevant information is available to the judge, who detects it and utilizes is correctly; (4) Expand opportunities for relevant information to be emitted, available, detected and correctly interpreted. Finally, I will note that when one has answered one’s research questions to one’s own satisfaction, it is probably time to find a new topic.