Person Perception and Personality Pathology

Abstract

Studies of person perception (people's impressions and beliefs about others) have developed important concepts and methods that can be used to help improve the assessment of personality disorders. They may also inspire advances in our knowledge of the nature and origins of these conditions. Information collected from peers and other types of informants is reliable and provides a perspective that often differs substantially from that obtained using questionnaires and interviews. For some purposes, this information is quite useful. Much remains to be learned about the incremental validity (and potential biases) associated with data from various kinds of informants.

Fig. 1

Relative strength of self-report and peer report in predicting early separation from military service, for 10 types of personality-disorder features. (Strength of association between self- and peer-nominated traits and risk for early termination is expressed as a chi-square test of the log-rank Wilcoxon.)