Measuring the accuracy of self-perceptions of personality : Theoretical and methodological challenges, 2

In order to examine people's self-knowledge of their personality, we must tackle several theoretical and methodological problems. First, we need to ask, what does it mean to know one's personality? This may include knowing one's level of various personality traits, knowing one's behavior, and knowing how one comes across to others (i.e., one's reputation). Next, we face the "criterion problem" - how do we obtain the "ground truth" about these aspects of a person's personality? In order to evaluate the accuracy of people's self-perceptions of their personality, we must have a criterion against which to compare their self-perceptions, and this criterion cannot be based on self-reports. Thus, we must obtain reliable and valid non-self-report measures of personality (e.g., based on naturalistic behavior or informant reports). Finally, we need to decide how much accuracy is a lot. How accurate should self-reports be before we can say that people have self-knowledge?