ABSTRACT
The answer to be offered is that such a study is an investigation into both personality and person perception, since personality traits are as much a social construction of the perceiver as characteristics of the perceived. In this discussion, the personality traits believed by personality theorists to be located within the individual and investigated by trait theorists will be referred to collectively as 'actual personality'. The personality traits that observers believe to be present in the targets of their observations and which are the focus of person perception studies will be referred to as 'perceived personality'. To distinguish operationally between these three interpretations of personality traits, a reliable measure of actual personality was needed against which personality ratings and the conceptual similarity ratings could be compared. Personality traits are therefore neither in the eye of the beholder nor in the personality of the perceived.
