The Cost of Forming More Accurate Impressions

Does the motivation to form accurate impressions actually improve accuracy? The present work extended Kenny’s (1991, 1994) weighted-average model (WAM)—a theoretical model of the factors that influence agreement among personality judgments—to examine two components of interpersonal perception: distinctive and normative accuracy. WAM predicts that an accuracy motivation should enhance distinctive accuracy but decrease normative accuracy. In other words, the impressions of a perceiver with an accuracy motivation will correspond more with the target person’s unique characteristics and less with the characteristics of the average person. Perceivers randomly assigned to receive the social goal of forming accurate impressions, which was communicated through a single-sentence instruction, achieved higher levels of distinctive self-other agreement but lower levels of normative agreement compared with perceivers not given an explicit impression-formation goal. The results suggest that people motivated to form accurate impressions do indeed become more accurate, but at the cost of seeing others less normatively and, in particular, less positively.