PERSON: A General Model of Interpersonal Perception

A general theoretical model of interpersonal perception called PERSON (personality, error, residual, stereotype, opinion, and norm) is developed. This model reparameterizes a weighted-average model (WAM; Kenny, 1991; Kenny, Albright, Malloy, & Kashy, 1994) into six components. Two of those components refer to categorical information and 4 to behavioral information. Based on a formal model, for which parameters are estimated from previous research studies, several implications are developed. The PERSON model can explain the low level of consensus in person perception, the fact that consensus does not increase with greater acquaintance, the strong stability of interpersonal judgment, the overconfidence effect, and the fact that short-term judgments are sometimes as accurate as long-term judgments. The PERSON model generally predicts that acquaintance is not as important in person perception as generally thought.