On Being and Feeling Transparent: Examining Expressive Accuracy Awareness in First Impressions of Personality and Links to Well-Being

It may be good to both be seen accurately and feel that you are seen accurately by others. Indeed, both actual expressive accuracy – being perceived in line with your personality – and expressive accuracy beliefs – feeling that you are perceived in line with your personality – have been linked to greater well-being. However, expressive accuracy beliefs and actual expressive accuracy have rarely been examined in the same study, leaving two key questions unanswered: 1) do people who tend to be more expressively accurate know that they have this tendency – that is, do people have expressive accuracy awareness, and 2) do expressive accuracy and expressive accuracy beliefs each independently predict well-being? To address these questions, we used a getting-acquainted round-robin design across two studies. In Study 1 (N = 547, Ndyads = 2,878), we examined targets’ global expressive accuracy beliefs and average actual expressive accuracy levels across perceivers, and in Study 2 (N = 200, Ndyads = 964) we examined targets’ dyadic expressive accuracy beliefs and actual accuracy following each getting-acquainted interaction. In both studies, expressive accuracy and expressive accuracy beliefs were positively associated, indicating that people were aware of whether they tended to be viewed accurately both globally (Study 1), and with specific others (Study 2). Well-being was associated with greater expressive accuracy across studies, and with greater global expressive accuracy beliefs in Study 1. Thus, feeling and being seen accurately seem to go hand in hand, and to have independent links with well-being.

在准确感知自身与他人准确感知自己的双重层面上，或许皆能带来益处。事实上，实际的表意准确性——即他人对你的感知与你个性相符——以及表意准确性信念——即感知到自己被他人准确感知——这两者均与更高的幸福感相关联。然而，表意准确性信念与实际表意准确性鲜少在同一研究中得到考察，从而留下了两个关键问题未解：一是那些倾向于具有更高表意准确性的人是否意识到这一倾向——即人们是否拥有表意准确性意识；二是表意准确性与表意准确性信念各自是否独立地预测幸福感？为解答这些问题，我们在两项研究中采用了相互了解的循环设计。在第一项研究（N = 547，Ndyads = 2,878）中，我们考察了目标对象的总体表意准确性信念和感知者平均的实际表意准确性水平；在第二项研究（N = 200，Ndyads = 964）中，我们考察了目标对象的成对表意准确性信念及每次相互了解互动后的实际准确性。在这两项研究中，表意准确性与表意准确性信念均呈正相关，表明人们意识到自己是否倾向于在全球范围内（第一项研究）和与特定他人（第二项研究）中被准确感知。研究发现，幸福感与更高的表意准确性相关，并在第一项研究中与更高的总体表意准确性信念相关。因此，感到被准确感知与实际被准确感知似乎相辅相成，并且与幸福感具有独立的联系。