Moderators of self-other agreement: Reconsidering temporal stability in personality

Accurate prediction requires information not only about central tendencies but also about variability. In personality prediction, however, most research as focused on trait-level central tendencies. Pre-viously proposed moderators of personality prediction are all conceptually similar in comparing an individual's central tendency in response patterns with that of the normative person. This article proposes an alternative: Trait-level prediction is enhanced by measuring the temporal stability of response patterns within persons. Across 2 studies, individuals with temporally stable response patterns had higher self-other agreement on conscientiousness and extraversion than did individuals with less temporally stable patterns. By comparison, ormatively based variables (interitem variabil-ity, scalability, or construct similarity) did not moderate self-other agreement. The implications for personality structure, assessment, and prediction are discussed. A fundamental task of personality research is to determine how to conceptualize and measure personality so as to better understand and predict behavior. During the 1970s, personality researchers undertook a major reassessment of the relationship between traits and behavior. Dissatisfied with what Mische