The Incremental Validity of Average State Self-Reports Over Global Self-Reports of Personality

Abstract

Personality traits are most often assessed using global self-reports of one's general patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. However, recent theories have challenged the idea that global self-reports are the best way to assess traits. Whole Trait Theory postulates that repeated measures of a person's self-reported personality states (i.e., the average of many state self-reports) can be an alternative and potentially superior way of measuring a person's trait level (Fleeson & Jayawickreme, 2015). Our goal is to examine the validity of average state self-reports of personality for measuring between-person differences in what people are typically like. In order to validate average states..