Neuroticism and interpersonal perception: Evidence for positive, but not negative, biases

OBJECTIVE: Personality dispositions predict how individuals perceive, interpret, and react to social interactions with others. A still unresolved question is (a) whether these personality-congruent interpersonal perceptions reflect perception biases, which occur when perceivers' dispositions systematically predict deviations between perceivers' and other people's perceptions of the same interaction, and/or selection effects, which occur when perceivers' dispositions predict their selection of interaction partners, and (b) whether these effects feed back into perceivers' personality. METHOD: Data from 110 psychology freshmen involving repeated assessments of Neuroticism and repeated interpersonal perceptions of social interactions with fellow students were analyzed to address these questions, focusing on Neuroticism. RESULTS: There is evidence for a Neuroticism-related positivity bias in interpersonal perceptions (i.e., perceivers high in Neuroticism tended to make more positive judgments of others' sociability and warmth), but little evidence for personality-congruent selection effects (i.e., Neuroticism-related preferences for interaction partners). The positivity bias did not predict intrapersonal changes in Neuroticism over time, but the selection of specific interaction partners did. CONCLUSIONS: These findings help to shed light on the interpersonal perception dynamics of Neuroticism in a real-life context and add to our understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying the interplay of personality and interpersonal perceptions.