Partner Judgments Research Articles

Accuracy and Bias of Judgments in Romantic Relationships

In this article, I discuss recent research dealing with bias and accuracy of judgments in romantic relationships. First, two components of overall accuracy—directional bias and tracking accuracy—are outlined. Second, a model is described dealing with the causes and consequences of bias and accuracy in partner and relationship judgments, and research is reviewed showing that partners generally exhibit both positive bias and good levels of tracking accuracy. The roles played by various moderating variables (e.g., relationship stage, individual differences) are also discussed. I conclude that bias in relationship judgments is largely functional and that interactions between partners both shape and are shaped by the directional bias and tracking accuracy attendant in relationship and partner judgments.

Perceptions of Partner Sexual Satisfaction in Heterosexual Committed Relationships

Sexual script theory implies that partners' ability to gauge one another's level of sexual satisfaction is a key factor in determining their own sexual satisfaction. However, relatively little research has examined how well partners gauge one another's sexual satisfaction and the factors that predict their accuracy. We hypothesized that the degree of bias in partner judgments of sexual satisfaction would be associated with quality of sexual communication. We further posited that emotion recognition would ameliorate the biases in judgment such that poor communicators with good emotion recognition would make less biased judgments of partner satisfaction. Participants were 84 married or cohabiting heterosexual couples who completed measures of their own and their partners' sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, quality of communication about sexual issues within their relationships, and emotion recognition ability. Results indicated that both men and women tended to be accurate in perceiving their partners' levels of sexual satisfaction (i.e., partner perceptions were strongly correlated with self-reports). One sample t-tests indicated that men's perceptions of their partners' sexual satisfaction were biased such that they slightly underestimated their partners' levels of sexual satisfaction whereas women neither over- nor underestimated their partners' sexual satisfaction. However, the gender difference was not significant. Bias was attenuated by quality of sexual communication, which interacted with emotion recognition ability such that when sexual communication was good, there was no significant association between emotion recognition ability and bias, but when sexual communication was poor, better emotion recognition ability was associated with less bias.

Capturing the Biases of Socially Anxious People by Addressing Partner Effects and Situational Parameters

To expose biases in self-perceptions of people high in social anxiety, information is needed on actual and perceived informant reports following social situations. We measured trait social anxiety (SA) in 90 college students arranged in pairs for “getting acquainted” conversations. Half participated in a small-talk task, where they took turns answering superficial questions; half participated in a closeness-generating task, where questions required gradual increases in self-disclosure. Afterward, students rated themselves and their partner on positive and negative attributes and how they think their partner viewed them. People with high SA judged themselves more negatively and less positively than their partner did (accuracy); when interacting with a partner endorsing low SA, they possessed enhanced negativity biases about how they expected to be viewed (meta-accuracy), and believed their partner's judgments were less positive than their own low self-judgments (perceived dissent). Conversely, people with low SA showed evidence of a self-enhancement bias about the impression they made on low SA strangers. Other moderators of the social cognitions of people with high SA included gender and the social situation (distortions being amplified in men and small-talk conversations). Our findings suggest that the study of SA cannot be understood using decontextualized approaches, instead requiring consideration of the synergy among the person, partner, and situation.

Stereotypes as Shared Beliefs: Effects of Group Identity on Dyadic Conversations

Two experiments examined the influence of stereotypes on dyadic conversations. Undergraduate students listened to a recorded interview of a student who was described as either a member of their in-group or of an out-group. The interview contained stereotype-consistent (SC) and stereotype-inconsistent (SI) descriptions of each group. Participants' conversations about the stimulus person were content-analyzed. One most consistent result was that for the out-group target, participants made more SI than SC utterances and spent more time discussing SI information. The difference between SC and SI utterances disappeared (Study 2) or was reversed (Study 1) for the in-group target. These patterns were observed particularly when the stimulus information contained a balanced combination of SC and SI characteristics. Furthermore, the stereotypicality of the conversations was related not only to the participant's own judgments but also to the partner's judgments. The significance of studying stereotypes as collectively shared intergroup attitudes is discussed.

A Case-Based Approach to the Evaluation of New Audit Clients

Evaluating a potential client is an expensive undertaking. Potential clients are evaluated through extensive interviews, evaluation by in-house industry experts, and preliminary audit planning. The audit partner uses prior experience to make judgments about a prospective client. Decisions about a client have long lasting implications for the auditor and the client. Case-based reasoning is an information technology that can be applied to the evaluation process to broaden and deepen the audit partner's judgments. This paper demonstrates how case-based reasoning can improve the audit acceptance process. The inherent difficulties of new client acceptance are reviewed. An overview of case-based reasoning is provided. We then demonstrate how case-based reasoning can increase the quality of firm specific assessment when evaluating potential audit risk associated with a new client. Finally, we discuss the expected implementation impacts arising from the application of case-based reasoning.

Metaperceptions of bias in intimate relationships.

Meta-awareness of bias in intimate partner judgments was investigated in 3 studies. In Study 1, participants rated fictional partners in happier relationships as more positively biased in their partner perceptions. In Study 2, participants thought their judgments of their own current partners were positively biased and that they were judged by their partners in a positively biased fashion. Using a sample of couples, Study 3 showed that metaperceptions of bias were anchored to actual levels of bias at the individual and relationship levels. In addition, positive bias was accentuated for traits that were more relevant to mate evaluation. These findings (as expected) suggest that positive bias in partner judgments can be a normative and consciously accessible feature of intimate relationships.

Fuzzy Least Squares Regression Analysis for Social Judgment Study

Social judgment data was analyzed using fuzzy least squares regression analysis based on the extension principle. The proposed analysis is new fuzzy least squares regression analysis in which input data, output data, and coefficients are represented by L-R fuzzy numbers. To evaluate data fitness, we propose a fuzzy version of a squared multiple correlation (<I>R</I>2) and conducted an experiment to determine the effect of partial attribute information on the overall evaluation of desirability for a marital partner and personality of a person using fuzzy rating to measure vagueness in social judgment. Participants in the experiment were 90 university students. The result of marital partner judgment indicated that the fuzzy weight of consideration was higher than physical attraction on overall desirability evaluation for a marriage partner. The result of personality judgment indicated that the fuzzy weight of kindness was slightly higher than responsibility in overall desirability for a marriage candidate.

Interpersonal Moral Conflicts Between Couples: Effects of Type of Dilemma, Role, and Partner's Judgments on Level of Moral Reasoning and Probability of Resolution

Forty-two male–female couples completed Kohlberg's test of moral development and made moral judgments about the most recent interpersonal moral conflict they had experienced in their everyday lives. Participants made lower stage moral judgments about their interpersonal moral conflicts than about the dilemmas on Kohlberg's test. The type of interpersonal moral conflict participants experienced and their role in the conflict were related to the types of moral judgments they made. Participants who reported philosophical conflicts made more mature moral judgments than participants who reported antisocial conflicts, especially if their role in the antisocial conflict was that of a transgressor. Conflicts were most likely to be resolved when partners' moral judgments about their conflict were similar in moral maturity. The implications of these findings for models of moral judgment are discussed.

Black sheep and expectancy violation: integrating two models of social judgment

A study of race-based ingroup and outgroup judgment demonstrates the links between two models of social judgment—the ‘black sheep’ effect (Marques, Yzerbyt & Leyens, 1988) and expectancy-violation theory (Jussim, Coleman & Lerch, 1987). White participants had a live interaction with a Black or White partner who contributed to a team success or failure at a game. Partner judgments, perceived expectancy violation, and mood changes indicated a pattern of ingroup polarization, though the race differential was reliable only when targets performed poorly. Consistent with other research, this pattern was most striking among Whites who were highly identified with their racial group. We suggest that racial identification activates favorable within-group judgment standards which, when violated, produce mood decrements and negative evaluations. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Attribution biases and associations between conflict strategies and competence outcomes

This study investigates the extent to which actor‐partner points of view influence the outcomes of conflict messages on perceptions of communicator appropriateness, effectiveness, and global competence. Actors perceived themselves as more competent and appropriate than partners judged them. Correlation analyses revealed that actor‐partner perceptual associations generally were strongest for distributive behaviors (i.e., anger, criticism, sarcasm), then avoidance, and then integration. Regression analyses indicated that the partner's perceptions of the actor's competence were affected more than were actor's self‐rated competence by conflict strategies. Both actor and partner judgments of global competence, general appropriateness, and effectiveness were primarily predicted by integration, and then by distributive behaviors; while specific appropriateness judgments were primarily predicted by distributive behaviors. The findings generally support the attributional approach used to explain actor‐observer judgments of actors’ communicative competence.

Cognitive Conflict, Transmission, and Justification: Conservation Attainment through Dyadic Interaction

Abstract Seventy-seven nonconserver-conserver dyads and 53 nonconserver-nonconserver dyads were given a conservation of length task which encouraged conflicting judgments from the nonconserving dyad. Ss were boys and girls aged 4 through 8. Control tasks for social dominance/compliance were also administered. All sessions were videotaped. The nonconserver-nonconserver dyads did not tend to produce the correct answer by perspective coordination and showed little posttest gain. Nonconservers who had been paired with conservers showed posttest gain on length, mass, liquid, and number conservation problems. Being the winner of an interaction session was associated with opposing the partner's judgment and with producing justifications in conserver-nonconserver dyads, but only with social compliance in nonconserver-nonconserver dyads. Justifications in support of conservation judgments were invariably by logical principles but very rarely so in support of nonconservation judgments. The results are discussed in terms of the relative importance of cognitive conflict and transmission as crucial social experiences in cognitive development, and in terms of the possibility that nonconservers may lack the notion of objective correctness relative to conservers.

Dyadic Interaction in a Logical Reasoning Problem Requiring Inclusion Ability

This study involved a test of the hypothesis that dyadic performance is superior to the performance of children working alone because children in dyads are able to cooperatively coordinate their different perspectives. A novel task requiring inclusion reasoning was given to children 4--8 years old working in dyads and working alone. Dyadic performance was not superior and correct dyadic solution was frequently based on the incorrect child's compliance with the correct partner's judgment, a finding that is consistent with results of previous studies. Thus, the hypothesis was not supported because children working together did not do better than children working alone, and correct dyadic solutions were sometimes based on compliance rather than on cooperative coordination of perspectives.

A Judgment-Based Definition of Materiality

Over a decade ago, professional judgment as applied to the determination of materiality was characterized as a black box (Bernstein [1967]). Since then a number of researchers have attempted to peer inside this black box. The objectives have been to determine how various factors affect materiality judgments and why highly trained professionals with extensive experience often reach different conclusions in similar situations. In a recent paper (Moriarity and Barron [1976]), we suggested a methodology which seems to hold promise as a means to open the black box. In this paper, we describe the next methodological step which we have taken and describe an application of the methodology. This paper may be viewed in terms of (1) the substantive questionmateriality; (2) the methodology-an application of conjoint analysis; (3) an application of judgment research; (4) a field study of audit partner judgments; and (5) a research technology having significant implications for future research on the substantive question. We believe that the primary contribution of the paper is point (5)-an illustration of a methodology having significant implications for accounting research. The field study itself provides two additional contributions: (1) it illustrates the application of the methodology to professional judgment in accounting, and (2) its findings are consistent with those of a large body of judgment research studies (e.g., Slovic and Lichtenstein [1971] and Libby

Some Situational Factors Improving Cognitive Conflict Reduction and Interpersonal Understanding

An important program of psychological laboratory research on cognitive conflict is based on Hammond's (1965) lens model. Most representative of this work is the triple-system case in which two persons conflict in their judgments on a mutual task of known structure and properties. Built into this case are two constraints reflecting characteristics of some conflict settings: task outcome feedback and the requirement that the conflicting parties reach a consensus. Minimal conflict reduction is evidenced in these experiments because the demands of outcome feedback orient the subjects to adapt to the changing policy dictated by the task rather than that defined by the other person. To examine the situational limits of these findings, a study was designed for a double-system case comprised of the two policy makers, but in which the structure and properties of the task are undetermined. Hence, no feedback was provided; moreover, joint judgments were made optional. Another deviation from the paradigm involved selecting subjects with already divergent belief systems rather than inducing discrepant policies through different training. Results clearly demonstrated considerable conflict reduction when persons with socially acquired opposing policies, which happened to be linear, were simply allowed free discussion and were not evaluated by task-accuracy feedback. Afterwards, subjects privately made another series of judgments as well as predictions of their partner's judgments. Overall, subjects sustained the substantial level of agreement achieved and revealed an even higher degree of assumed similarity. Limitation of the findings in view of the uniformly linear policies tested is emphasized.

Private and Public Conformity After Being Agreed and Disagreed with

Ninety-six subjects were randomly assigned to cells in a 3 x 2 x 2 factorial design. Manipulated variables were: (a) the frequency (high, medium, or low) with which a partner's judgment coincided with that of the subject during the first series, (b) the independence/nonindependence' of the partner's coinciding or noncoinciding judgments, and (c) the private/public character of the subject's response to influence during a later series. Major findings were as follows: (1) the more frequently that subjects were agreed with during the first series, the more frequently they conformed during the second series; (2) this conformity pattern was no less clear when subjects responded privately than when they responded publicly; (3) nonindependent partners were evaluated less favorably than independent partners, but they elicited just as much conformity; (4) overall, confidence during the first series was positively related to influencibility during the second series.