你善于判断他人的性格吗？

Are you a good judge of character? Can you make an accurate judgement of someone's personality based only on your first impression of them? Ironically, the answer lies as much in them as it does in you.

One of the first people to try to identify good judges of character was US psychologist Henry F Adams in 1927. His research led him to conclude that people fell into two groups – good judges of themselves and good judges of others. Adams's research has been widely criticised since then, but he wasn't entirely wrong about there being two distinct types.

More on that in a moment, but first we need to define what a good judge of character is. Is it someone who can read personality or someone who can read emotion? Those are two distinct skills. Emotions such as anger or joy or sadness can generate easily identifiable physical signs. Most of us would probably be able to accurately identify these signs, even in a stranger. As such, most of us are probably good judges of emotion.

In order to be a good judge of personality, however, there needs to be an interaction with the other person, and that person needs to be a 'good target'. 'Good targets' are people who reveal relevant and useful cues to their personality. So this means 'the good judge' will only manifest when reading 'good targets'. This is according to Rogers and Biesanz in their 2019 journal entitled 'Reassessing the good judge of personality'. "We found consistent, clear and strong evidence that the good judge does exist", Rogers and Biesanz concluded. But their key finding is that the good judge does not have magical gifts of perception – they are simply able to "detect and utilise information provided by the good target".

So, are first impressions really accurate? Well, if you're a good judge talking to a 'good target', then it seems the answer is 'yes'. And now we know that good judges probably do exist, more research can be done into how they read personality, what kind of people they are – and whether their skills can be taught.