Oral imagery, accuracy of perceiving others, and performance in Peace Corps training.

Abstract

Psychoanalytic theory suggests that people with oral characteristics should be dependent on others and should develop skills in predicting responses of others. Using previously unacquainted students, experimenters found that males who reported many oral images were better than low-oral males at predicting male personality test responses. Orality was unrelated to accurate perception by males of females or to accuracy of females' interpersonal perception. To corroborate this finding, Peace Corps trainees, previously well acquainted, were studied. Results were identical: Orality was significantly related to accurate interpersonal perception for males predicting males but only in that case. An independent assessment of fitness for Peace Corps work was positively related to both oral imagery and accurate interpersonal perception. The personality characteristics of accurate judges. These results were explained on perceivers of others are not well understood. Because of methodological problems involved in obtaining measures of accuracy of perceiving others (Cronbach, 1955; Shrauger & Altrocchi, 1964), question has not been widely investigated. It is known that an important influence in shaping perceptions of others is the manner in which perceiver structures his interpersonal world fDornbusch, Hastorf, Richardson, Muzzy, & Vreeland, 1965, p. 440]. Psychoanalytic typology provides one model for way in which perceivers structure their perceptual world. Gordon (1966, 1967), using a task that avoided many of pitfalls described by Cronbach and Shrauger and Altrocchi had graduate students in clinical psychology evaluate a sample projective protocol. She found that judges scoring low on a penciland-paper test of anality showed more confidence in their ratings, saw test subject as having fewer healthy aspects, and reported him to be less likable than did high-anal 1 Preparation of this paper was aided by a grant to first author from Foundations' Fund for Research in Psychiatry while he was a visitor for academic year at Hampstead Child-Therapy Clinic, London.