To thine own self be true: psychological adjustment promotes judgeability via personality-behavior congruence

Well-adjusted individuals are highly judgeable in that their personalities tend to be seen more accurately than the personalities of less adjusted individuals (Colvin, 1993a, 1993b; Human & Biesanz, 2011a). The mechanisms behind this effect, however, are not well understood. How does adjustment facilitate judgeability? In the present video-perceptions study, we examined potential mechanisms through which adjustment could promote judgeability at 3 stages of the Realistic Accuracy Model (RAM; Funder, 1995): (a) cue relevance, (b) cue availability, and (c) cue detection. We found that well-adjusted individuals were more judgeable because they provided more relevant cues: Specifically, well-adjusted individuals behaved more in line with their distinctive personalities, which in turn led them to be seen more accurately. In contrast, neither cue availability nor detection could sufficiently account for the link between adjustment and judgeability. In sum, well-adjusted individuals are more judgeable because to their own selves, they are true.