ARP 2011 Featured posters about dating

ASSOCIATION for RESEARCH in PERSONALITY
2nd Biennial Conference / Riverside, California / June 16-18, 2011

Featured posters about dating

Symposium 8.4:
"Personality and meta-accuracy: A social relations model approach"
Mitja D. Back / University Mainz, Germany
Meta-accuracy – how well we know how others view us – is an important but seldom studied domain of interpersonal abilities.
Following a personality-oriented social relations model approach, four distinct kinds of individual differences in meta-accuracy can be distinguished:
Generalized meta-accuracy (differences in how well one knows how others view oneself),
Perceiver meta-accuracy (differences in how well others know how one generally views them),
and two forms of dyadic meta-accuracy (differences in how well one knows others unique impression of oneself, differences in how well others know one's own unique impressions of them).
Individual differences in meta-accuracy were investigated using three realistic interpersonal designs: an observation of one complete group of freshmen at zero and long-term acquaintance (Study 1), interactions of unacquainted students in small discussion groups (Study 2), and singles in speed-dating sessions (Study 3).
Results show that (a) meta-accuracies are generally small at zero acquaintance but (b) systematically increase with level of acquaintance. Moreover, (c) there was substantial variance in metaaccuracies across individuals and (d) these individual differences were differentially predicted by personality. Results underline the use of a componential approach to individual differences in the accuracy of interpersonal perceptions.
Future prospects for the study of personality and meta-accuracy are discussed.



Poster 2.09
"Evaluative Organization of Self- and Partner Knowledge in Relationships Founded Online"
Patrick Mayfield & Alicia Limke / University of Central Oklahoma
This project examines evaluative organization of self- and partner knowledge in the context of online dating and relationships in general.
Previous research (e.g. Showers & Zeigler-Hill, 2004; Showers & Limke, 2006) has suggested that evaluative organization at Time 1 predicts the stability of the relationship at Time 2, especially if the relationship experiences conflict in the interim. In the current study, approximately 103 participants completed the Evaluative Organization Inventory (EOI; Limke & Mayfield, 2010), an electronic version of the card sorting task used to assess evaluative organization (cf. Showers, 1992) and measures of relationship satisfaction and relationship closeness.
Preliminary results suggest that there are differences in 'default' styles of evaluative organization for individuals who meet their relationship partners online and individuals who meet their relationship partners in other ways. Results are also consistent with previous studies suggesting the vulnerability associated with compartmentalization of self- and partner knowledge as well as the ability to predict relationship outcomes by evaluative organizational style.