Perceived Accuracy of Favorable and Unfavorable Psychological Feedback

1995/02/01 by Peter H. Ditto, Andrea Fox Boardman · 1 citation
Psychology · #Clinical psychology #Control (management) #Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory #Personality #Personality Assessment Inventory #Personality Disorders and Psychopathology #Personality Traits and Psychology #Psychological Treatments and Assessments #Psychology #Social psychology

paper · doi:10.1080/01973533.1995.9646106

openalex publication_date 1995/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30

Abstract

Seventy-nine college students completed a personality inventory and then received a bogus psychological profile that included a highly self-descriptive personality description and a diagnosis based on that description. The personality description was identical for all participants. The diagnostic information varied across two dimensions. Half the subjects received favorable diagnostic feedback indicating that they were particularly resistant to future problems; the other half received unfavorable diagnostic feedback indicating that they were particularly prone to future problems. Half the subjects received information indicating that they were resistant (of prone) to future medical problems; the other half were told that they were resistant (of prone) to future psychological problems. Subjects in a control condition received the personality description with no diagnostic information. Compared to those in favorable feedback conditions, subjects in unfavorable feedback conditions (a) rated both their diagnoses and the overall personality description as less accurate, (b) generated fewer reasons to support the accuracy of their diagnoses, and (c) generated more reasons to support the inaccuracy of their diagnosis. Favorable- and unfavorable-feedback participants did not differ in the perceived accuracy of the individual statements making up the personality description, although unfavorable-feedback subjects remembered fewer' past behavioral instances consistent with the statements. Both theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.

Citations

• Toward a More Precise Definition of “Emotional” and “Intellectual” Insight
• Motivated inference: Self-serving generation and evaluation of causal theories.
• The fallacy of personal validation: a classroom demonstration of gullibility.
• Motivated skepticism: Use of differential decision criteria for preferred and nonpreferred conclusions.
• The case for motivated reasoning.
• Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health.
• The psychology of interpersonal relations.

Cited by

• Self-enhancement [wikipedia]