Personality Evaluated: What Do People Like and Dislike About Themselves and Their Friends?

Sun, Jessie, Rebecca Neufeld, Paige Snelgrove, and Simine Vazire. 2020. “Personality Evaluated: What Do People Like and Dislike About Themselves and Their Friends?.” PsyArXiv. September 26. doi:10.31234/osf.io/4sgna

Abstract: What do people think are their best and worst personality traits? Do their friends agree? Across three samples, 463 college students (“targets”) and their friends freely described two traits they liked and two traits they disliked the most about the target. Coders categorized these open-ended trait descriptions into high or low poles of broad trait domains and judged whether targets and friends reported the same specific best and worst traits. Best traits reflected only the socially desirable poles of the major trait domains (especially high agreeableness and extraversion), whereas worst traits reflected both poles (e.g., high extraversion: “loud”; high agreeableness: “people-pleaser”), and especially low emotional stability (particularly from the targets’ perspective). Overall, targets and friends mentioned similar kinds of best and worst traits, and agreed to a moderate extent on what the targets’ best and worst traits were. These results highlight the mixed blessings of various personality traits.