Some Characteristics of the Good Judge of Personality

Summary Although ratings of subjects and judgments of personality from photographs may, on the average, be highly inaccurate, yet there exist considerable individual differences in the “intuitive” abilities of different judges or raters. Twenty measures of ability to judge personality were obtained for 48 judges, together with a number of measures of intellectual, social-asocial, and artistic tendencies. An extreme absence of consistency was found between the judging tests; the accuracy depends not only on the subject who is judged, but also on the content of the judgment and on the conditions under which the judgment is given. However, the personalities of the good and bad judges manifested fairly uniform characteristics. Good judges of self are more intelligent and possess more sense of humor than the average. Good judges of friends and associates are less socially inclined and less intelligent, but more artistic than good self-judges. Good judges of strangers are distinctly more artistic and intelligent than the average, and, under certain conditions, more asocial.