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Self- and Observer Reports of Personality

Michael C. Ashton & Kibeom Lee

Annual Review of Psychology2025https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020124-115044review
AJG 4ABDC A*
Weight
0.57

Abstract

People's personality trait levels are often assessed by obtaining self-reports or observer (informant) reports on questionnaires (inventories). When the target person is closely acquainted with the observer-as in the case of spouses, close relatives, or close friends-several findings are obtained for full-length measures of the Big Five (Five-Factor Model) or HEXACO personality factors. First, mean scores tend to be comparable between self-reports and observer reports, although Openness to Experience tends to be higher in self-reports than in observer reports. Also, self/observer agreement (in the sense of convergent correlations) tends to be rather high, albeit somewhat lower for cooperation-related traits (HEXACO Honesty-Humility, HEXACO Agreeableness, Big Five Agreeableness) than for other traits. Finally, Openness to Experience and Honesty-Humility (and, to some extent, Big Five Agreeableness) show some degree of similarity and assumed similarity between closely acquainted persons.

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https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020124-115044

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@article{michael2025,
  title        = {{Self- and Observer Reports of Personality}},
  author       = {Michael C. Ashton & Kibeom Lee},
  journal      = {Annual Review of Psychology},
  year         = {2025},
  doi          = {https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-020124-115044},
}

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Self- and Observer Reports of Personality

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Evidence weight

0.57

Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40

F · citation impact0.57 × 0.4 = 0.23
M · momentum0.78 × 0.15 = 0.12
V · venue signal0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03
R · text relevance †0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20

† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.