Erika N. Carlson

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at University of Toronto

Imagining a narcissist likely calls to mind someone who thinks that they are well-liked and admired—perhaps unrealistically so. But are narcissists’ beliefs about how others see them systematically too positive? Across four samples (total N = 1,537) that included different contexts (group vs. dyadic) and levels of acquaintanceship (new acquaintance...

Imagining a narcissist likely calls to mind someone who thinks that they are well-liked and admired—perhaps unrealistically so. But are narcissists’ beliefs about how others see them systematically too positive? Across four samples (total N = 1,537) that included different contexts (group vs. dyadic) and levels of acquaintanceship (new acquaintance...

Feeling accepted by others is a fundamental human motive and an important marker of successful social interactions. This interpersonal perception, known as meta-liking, is especially relevant during adolescence, when peer relationships deepen and expand. However, knowledge is limited regarding meta-liking formation in initial social interactions. T...

Objective and Background How do targets shape consensus in impression formation? Targets are known to play an outsized role in the accuracy of first impressions, but their influence on consensus has been difficult to study. With the help of the recently developed extended Social Relations Model, we explore the structure and correlates of individual...

Objective The psychological profile of the moral person might depend on whose perspective is being used. Here, we decompose moral impressions into three components: (a) Shared Moral Character (shared variance across self‐ and informant reports), (b) Moral Identity (how a person uniquely views their morality), and (c) Moral Reputation (how others un...

Objective People differ in how positively they tend to see others' traits, but people might also differ in how strongly they apply their perceptual styles. In two studies ( Ns = 355, 303), the current research explores individual differences in how variable people's first impressions are across targets (i.e., within‐person variability), how and why...

People differ in how positively they tend to see others’ traits, but people might also differ in how strongly they apply their perceptual styles (Kenny et al., 2023). In two studies (Ns = 355, 303), the current research explores individual differences in how variable people’s first impressions are across targets (i.e., within-person variability), h...

The psychological profile of the moral person might depend on whose perspective is being used. Here, we decompose moral impressions into three components: a) Shared Moral Character (shared variance across self- and informant-reports), b) Moral Identity (how a person uniquely views their morality), and c) Moral Reputation (how others uniquely view t...

To what extent do individuals differ in understanding how others see them and who is particularly good at it? Answering these questions about the “good metaperceiver” is relevant given the beneficial outcomes of meta-accuracy. However, there likely is more than one type of the good metaperceiver: One who knows the specific impressions they make mor...

To what extent do individuals differ in understanding how others see them and who is particularly good at it? Answering these questions about the “good meta-perceiver” is relevant given the beneficial outcomes of meta-accuracy. However, there likely is more than one type of the good meta-perceiver: one who knows the specific impressions they make m...

Unlabelled: The past two decades have established that people generally have insight into their personalities, but less is known about how and why self-knowledge might vary between individuals. Using the Realistic Accuracy Model as a framework, we investigate whether some people make better "targets" of self-perception by behaving more consistentl...

Are people's metaperceptions, or their beliefs about how others perceive them, too positive, too negative, or spot on? Across six samples of new acquaintances (total N = 1,113) and/or well-known acquaintances (total N = 1,336), we indexed metabias (i.e., the mean-level difference between metaperceptions and impressions) on a broad range of attribut...

This research aims to further our understanding of the processes of metaperception formation and meta-accuracy by introducing the positivity-specificity model to metaperception, which can be used to disentangle two components of trait metaperceptions: metapositivity (attitudes) and trait-specificity (substance). In two North American samples (Sampl...

People have characteristic ways of perceiving others’ personalities. When judging others on several traits, some perceivers tend to form globally positive and others tend to form globally negative impressions. These differences, often termed perceiver effects, have mostly been conceptualized as a static construct that taps perceivers’ personal ster...

People have characteristic ways of perceiving others’ personalities. When judging others on several traits, some perceivers tend to form globally positive and others tend to form globally negative impressions. These differences, often termed perceiver effects, have mostly been conceptualized as a static construct that taps perceivers’ personal ster...

Some people tend to be especially accurate about the personality impressions they make, but is meta-accuracy a consistent tendency that spans levels of acquaintanceship, or is it only observed within levels of acquaintanceship? Three studies suggested that meta-accuracy is consistent among close others but not across new acquaintances and close oth...

People's beliefs about how other people perceive their personality tend to be fairly accurate, but how does accuracy arise? The current research answers this question by testing three potential sources of meta-accuracy: the person forming the metaperception (i.e., the metaperceiver), the person forming a judgment about the metaperceiver (i.e., the...

A core component of social anxiety is the constant concern about what others think of the self. Could such metaperceptions—beliefs about how others view the self—play a role in relationship initiation attempts? In the present research, we examined whether metaperceptions may contribute to why people higher in social anxiety experience difficulties...

When judging others' personalities, perceivers differ in their general judgment tendencies. These perceiver effects partly reflect a response bias but are also stable and psychologically important individual differences. However, current insights into the basic structure of perceiver effects are ambiguous with previous research pointing to either a...

When judging others’ personalities, perceivers differ in their general judgment tendencies. These perceiver effects partly reflect a response bias but are also stable and psychologically important individual differences. However, current insights into the basic structure of perceiver effects are ambiguous with previous research pointing to either a...

This handbook reviews theory and research on the accuracy of personality judgments. The various chapters explain the major theoretical models that guide research in this area, describe various methodological approaches to evaluating accuracy, and review recent empirical findings. Topics considered include moderators of accuracy including judge, tar...

People with personality disorder (PD) symptoms tend to report and have partners who report lower quality relationships with them. Using a large community sample of romantic couples, the current research tested whether the established link between PD symptoms and partner-reported relationship quality was attenuated by meta-accuracy (insight into the...

Social and personality psychologists are often interested in the extent to which similarity, agreement, or matching matters. The current article describes response surface analysis (RSA), an approach designed to answer questions about how (mis)matching predictors relate to outcomes while avoiding many of the statistical limitations of alternative,...

Objective: Problematic interpersonal behavior might stem from and be maintained by the beliefs people have about how others see them (i.e., metaperceptions). The current study tested whether people with interpersonal problems formed more or less accurate metaperceptions about their personality (meta-accuracy), if they thought others saw them in mo...

Impressions of moral character are among the most relevant and consequential; yet, people do not always see eye to eye with others about their moral character. Is self-other disagreement about moral character associated with interpersonal costs, and are these costs uniquely associated with moral impressions? To answer these questions, judges (N ¼ 1...

People use metaperceptions, or their beliefs about how other people perceive them, to initiate and maintain social bonds. Are accurate metaperceptions associated with higher quality relationships? In four studies, the current research answers this question but considers the possibility that the self might not experience the same relational benefits...

Do psychologically adjusted individuals know what other people think about them? Participants rated their own personality and levels of intrapersonal and interpersonal adjustment and also estimated how a new acquaintance and friends perceived them on core personality traits. These individuals rated the participant’s personality and friends describe...

We are constantly forming impressions about those around us. Social interaction depends on our understanding of interpersonal behavior - assessing one another's personality, emotions, thoughts and feelings, attitudes, deceptiveness, group memberships, and other personal characteristics through facial expressions, body language, voice and spoken lan...

Gallrein, Carlson, Holstein, and Leising (2013) tested a novel form of so called “blind spots” as conceived in the social reality paradigm that contrasts self- and metaperception with one’s reputation (i.e., the consensual impression one makes). They found that people are not always aware of the unique views that others have of them, providing evid...

Olfaction is the primary sensory modality involved in social cognition among rodents. Eusocial naked mole-rats live in large subterranean colonies with different castes and subcastes of individuals showing unique behavioural profiles. Thus, these animals are constantly faced with social decisions, which are key to colony maintenance and survival. P...

Do people with personality problems have insight into how others experience them? In a large community sample of adults (N = 641), the authors examined whether people with personality disorder (PD) symptoms were aware of how a close acquaintance (i.e., a romantic partner, family member, or friend) perceived them by measuring participants' metaperce...

Narcissists crave respect and admiration. Do they attain the status and popularity they crave, or do they just think that they do? In two studies (Ns = 133 and 94), participants completed the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, described themselves on core personality traits (e.g., extraversion), and were described by an informant on those traits....

Self-reports and clinician reports of personality pathology are often less accurate or diagnostic of pathology than are acquaintances' reports. The current commentary outlines how clinicians and researchers might tap into the information acquaintances have about clients by asking clients to describe how other people might describe them.

In personality research, the term ‘‘blind spot’’ (Luft & Ingham, 1955) denotes personality characteristics that people are not aware of, but that are consensually attributed to them by others. Our investigation revealed evidence for (a) a normative blind-spot (i.e., characterizing the average target) and (b) distinctive blind-spots (i.e., character...

Do people know when they can trust their metaperceptions (i.e., their beliefs about how they are seen)? The current study is the first to examine whether people can recognize which of their metaperceptions are more or less accurate, and it examines the source of this “resolution.” In two samples, we assessed meta-accuracy, or the degree to which pe...

People's beliefs about their personality, or how they typically think, feel, and behave, correspond somewhat to objective accuracy criteria. Yet recent research has highlighted the fact that there are many blind spots in self-knowledge and that these blind spots can have fairly negative consequences. What can people do to improve self-knowledge? Th...

Reports an error in "You probably think this paper's about you: Narcissists' perceptions of their personality and reputation" by Erika N. Carlson, Simine Vazire and Thomas F. Oltmanns (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011[Jul], Vol 101[1], 185-201). The correlations reported in the original Table 4 and in the text on pages 192 and 193...

Self-reports of personality provide valid information about personality disorders (PDs). However, informant reports provide information about PDs that self-reports alone do not provide. The current article examines whether and when one perspective is more valid than the other in identifying PDs. Using a representative sample of adults 55 to 65 year...

Narcissists describe themselves as narcissistic (e.g., arrogant). Do they have self-insight, or do they simply misunderstand the behavioral manifestations or consequences of narcissism? With two samples (undergraduates N = 86, 65% female, M age = 20; MTurk N = 234, 62% female, M age = 35), the current paper investigates whether narcissism is associ...

This chapter explores the narcissist from the inside and out by examining the ways in which narcissists see themselves, their beliefs about how others see them, and the ways they are actually seen by others in several social contexts. Narcissists show surprising insight into their negative and narcissistic qualities.

Although people can accurately guess how others see them, many studies have suggested that this may only be because people generally assume that others see them as they see themselves. These findings raise the question: In their everyday lives, do people understand the distinction between how they see their own personality and how others see their...

Do narcissists have insight into the negative aspects of their personality and reputation? Using both clinical and subclinical measures of narcissism, the authors examined others' perceptions, self-perceptions, and meta-perceptions of narcissists across a wide range of traits for a new acquaintance and close other (Study 1), longitudinally with a g...

Most people believe that they know themselves better than anyone else knows them. However, a complete picture of what a person is like requires both the person’s own perspective and the perspective of others who know him or her well. People’s perceptions of their own personalities, while largely accurate, contain important omissions. Some of these...

The intuition that we have privileged and unrestricted access to ourselves – that we inevitably know who we are, how we feel, what we do, and what we think – is very compelling. Here, we review three types of evidence about the accuracy of self-perceptions of personality and conclude that the glass is neither full nor empty. First, studies comparin...

Can we trust our beliefs about the first impressions we make? The current article addresses this question by assessing “idiographic” meta-accuracy, or people’s ability to detect how another person views their characteristic pattern of traits, and people’s awareness of their level of meta-accuracy. Results from two samples suggest that people do ach...

This article reexamines the prevailing conclusion that people are unaware of the different impressions they make, or that their differential meta-accuracy is poor. This conclusion emerged from research employing contextually undifferentiated designs that may have constrained differences in actual impressions, thereby limiting participants' ability...

Physiologic reactivity to racially rejecting images was assessed in 35 young adults (10 males, 25 female) from African-American backgrounds using the startle probe paradigm. In a laboratory setting, participants viewed 16 images depicting racial rejection, racial acceptance, nonracial negative, and nonracial positive themes. While viewing these ima...