What you say about others says a lot about you
By IANSTuesday, August 3, 2010
WASHINGTON - How positively you see others reflects how happy, kind-hearted and emotionally stable you are.
“Your perceptions of others reveal so much about your own personality,” says Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest University, who led the study.
The researchers discovered particularly strong links between positively judging others and how enthusiastic, happy, kind-hearted, courteous, emotionally stable and capable the person describes oneself and is described by others, according to a Wake Forest release.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, was co-authored by Peter Harms of the University of Nebraska and Simine Vazire of Washington University in St. Louis.
The study also found that how positively you see other people shows how satisfied you are with your own life and how much you are liked by others.
Conversely, negative perceptions of others are linked to higher levels of narcissism and anti-social behaviour.
“Given that negative perceptions of others may underlie several personality disorders, finding techniques to get people to see others more positively could promote the cessation of behaviour patterns associated with different personality disorders simultaneously,” Wood says.
Raters in the study consisted of friends rating one another, college freshmen rating those they knew in their dormitories and fraternity and sorority members rating those in their organisation.
