Increased Meta-Perceptions of Agreeableness and Extraversion Predict Partner Satisfaction
Meta-perceptions are defined as judgments made by the self about what others think about the self. There are certain areas of personality research that may benefit from the use of meta-perceptions in addition to self- or informant-perceptions. This research predicted partner satisfaction from meta-perceptions of personality provided by a representative community sample of 325 romantic couples from St. Louis, Missouri.
It was found that in meta-perceptions of the Big Five personality domains, agreeableness and extraversion were significantly more predictive of partner satisfaction than self-perceptions. Results suggest that for certain life outcomes meta-perceptions provide the most useful information. The implications of these findings are that researchers and clinicians may be able to gather more useful information quickly about a person and the type of outcome that they are interested in, if they take into account which perspective they should ask for while using questionnaires. Future research will continue to investigate which perspectives best predict what outcomes.
For more information, visit the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) website.
–Josh Oltmanns
Villanova University
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