Confidence in personality impressions of others in leisure and work contexts: The role of implicit theories of leisure as expressive behaviour

Abstract

A person perception experiment was conducted to examine people's confidence in their personality impressions of others engaged in leisure compared to work contexts. University students (99 females and 87 males) between the ages of 18 and 45 (M =21.8) assessed the personality of a male or female target person shown engaging in four different activities in photographs that were labelled either work or leisure. Participants’ (perceivers') perceptions of the target's intrinsic motivation, confidence in their assessments, and leisure and work attitudes were measured. ANOVA and regression analyses determined that work attitudes moderated the context‐confidence relationship. Perceivers for whom work was highly central in their lives were equally confident of their personality assessments of targets in both work and leisure contexts. Perceivers for whom work was less central had greater confidence in their personality impressions of a target person engaging in leisure than in work. Structural equation modelling confirmed that for these latter participants, targets engaged in leisure contexts were perceived to be more intrinsically motivated, which fully mediated the influence of context on confidence. The findings suggest that the implicit theories people have about work and leisure can influence their confidence in the personality impressions they form of others engaged in leisure.