Self-Other Mirroring in Personality Structure

Abstract

Individuals often use their own traits to interpret others’ personalities, but it is unclear if this egocentric tendency extends to the structure of one’s own personality: how traits are organized relative to each other. For instance, individuals who see themselves as simultaneously agreeable and extraverted may perceive these traits as closely linked when judging others. Across three preregistered studies (n = 118; n = 72; n = 49), we tested whether individuals’ own idiographic personality structures predict how they perceive the trait relationships in others. Using representational similarity analysis, we found consistent evidence that self-structure predicted both perceived trait associations among others’ traits and face-based trait judgments. This self-other mirroring effect persisted beyond shared stereotypical beliefs of trait associations, generalized across cultural contexts, and remained stable over time. These findings reveal a previously unexamined form of egocentric bias in person perception, demonstrating how self-concept is associated with social cognition at the structural level beyond trait-level assumptions.