> How do you know that someone who looks callous and aggressive on online questionnaires is actually callous and aggressive?
You don't, but it's also not necessary. It's impossible to objectively assess someone's subjective experience, the best we can do is look at groups of people and attempt to find reliable indicators.
The point is that some people will over-emphasize any given trait, and others will under-emphasize it, so on average it evens out.
Think of color perception for a similar conundrum. How can you be sure that the red you see is the same as everybody else is seeing?
>> How can you be sure that the red you see is the same as everybody else is seeing?
I can't, but my understanding is that if we all agree to call a certain frequency of visible light "red", the frequency won't change because some people perceive it in a different way than others. Neither will measuring the frequency depend on how people perceive it.
That seems to me to be a more consistent definition of "red" than the definitions of personality traits that are discussed here.
You don't, but it's also not necessary. It's impossible to objectively assess someone's subjective experience, the best we can do is look at groups of people and attempt to find reliable indicators.
The point is that some people will over-emphasize any given trait, and others will under-emphasize it, so on average it evens out.
Think of color perception for a similar conundrum. How can you be sure that the red you see is the same as everybody else is seeing?