Abstract
A total of 171 American college students participated in two studies of personality self-ratings. Subjects rated their conscientiousness, outgoingness, and their variability on these dimensions, then provided ratings for specific situations, or returned one day for three successive weeks to rate their daily behavior for the same traits. General self-ratings for both dimensions correlated with an average rating across 19 situations about .70 and with an average rating for three different days about .60. Ratings of subjective variability on each dimension were unrelated to actual variation across time or situations. Results suggest that general ratings do represent an “intuitive average” across finite instances but that trait variability is not accurately judged.
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