THE BEST
OF YOUR LIFE
CONNECTIONS
Meet the Real You
You think you know yourself—but your
friends may know you even better
Get ready to apologize. You’ve been
correcting your friends’ opinions
of you for years—but they were likely
right all along. In a recent study at
Washington University in St. Louis,
people took a series of tests (such as
an IQ exam) and rated themselves on
a 40-question personality scale—eval-
uating their neuroticism, extrover-
sion, and intellect. They then briefly
met with friends and strangers, who
rated them on the same scale. The
study subjects more accurately rated
their internal emotional traits, which
makes sense: It’s hard for
others to know what you’re
feeling. But friends more
accurately rated intellectual
traits. And strangers were as good as
friends and the subjects themselves
when judging extrovert traits such as
leadership and talkativeness.
We’re less accurate judges than our
friends are of our intelligence and
creativity because those are hard to
evaluate objectively, says researcher
Simine Vazire, Ph.D., assistant profes-
sor of psychology at the university. So
if your loved ones opine about how
you feel, feel free to reject their opin-
ions. But if they comment on your
personality—whether you’re funny,
for instance—be open-minded, even
if you disagree. “Don’t believe ev-
erything you think about yourself,”
Vazire says. “Personality is not who
you think you are; it’s who you are.”
—Leslie Quander Wooldridge
