SEEING OURSELVES AS OTHERS SEE US

Abstract

Participants' descriptions of their own communication behavior were found to correlate very poorly with descriptions contributed by peers, subordinates, and superiors in a large corporate organization. Participants' responses reflected an egocentric bias in their tendency to rate themselves higher than others rated them. Also, strong intrarater consistency reflected the possible influence of raters' implicit perceptions of role-related communicative behavior. We concluded that self and other attributions of communicative behavior, since they tended not to agree, pose further questions regarding the use of rating scales in communication research. It appears that we often do not see ourselves as others see us, and this finding may be especially problematic for researchers who rely exclusively on one type of rating procedure.