Strangers in a Strange Lab: How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others
William Ickes
Abstract
Can we predict how well we will get along with others even before we meet them? According to the research findings reported in this book, we can. This book summarizes decades of research on how personality characteristics affect behavior, thoughts, and feelings in initial interactions. Much of the research was conducted by the author and his colleagues, enabling a first-person account of the reasons for exploring different aspects of personality, the surprises encountered along the way, and the author's attempt to integrate the findings into a more comprehensive pattern. The book first provide ... More
Can we predict how well we will get along with others even before we meet them? According to the research findings reported in this book, we can. This book summarizes decades of research on how personality characteristics affect behavior, thoughts, and feelings in initial interactions. Much of the research was conducted by the author and his colleagues, enabling a first-person account of the reasons for exploring different aspects of personality, the surprises encountered along the way, and the author's attempt to integrate the findings into a more comprehensive pattern. The book first provides background on the unstructured dyadic interaction paradigm — a research method developed to study naturally occurring social interaction in a controlled laboratory setting. The next chapters focus on the roles of specific personal characteristics and personality traits in shaping behavior in initial interactions. The earliest of these chapters concern gender and gender composition, race/ethnicity, birth order, and physical attractiveness. Later chapters concern androgyny; the Big Five traits — extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience; shyness and self-consciousness; and self-monitoring. The final chapter addresses whether, when, and how personality similarity/dissimilarity is important, and proposes a more integrated view of how personality shapes people's initial and longer-term relationships.
Keywords:
personal characteristics,
personality traits,
initial interactions,
gender,
race,
ethnicity,
birth order,
physical attractiveness,
self-consciousness
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2009 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780195372953 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2010 |
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195372953.001.0001 |
