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                                            INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY PERCEPTION FROM TEXT 
                                                                                                           MESSAGES 
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                               A Thesis  
                                                                                                                     by 
                                                                                                NICHOLAS RHOADES 
                                                                                                                        
                                   
                                   
                                   
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                        Submitted to the Graduate School 
                                                                                           at Appalachian State University 
                                                                   in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of 
                                                                                                    MASTER OF ARTS 
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                           August 2017 
                                                                                               Department of Psychology 
                                                                                                                        
                                   
                                   
                                   
                                                                                         
                                   
                                                                                                                        
                                                   
          
          
          
           INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY PERCEPTION FROM TEXT 
                          MESSAGES 
                              
                              
                              
                              
                           A Thesis  
                             by 
                        NICHOLAS RHOADES 
                           August 2017 
             
          
          
          
         APPROVED BY:  
             
          
                                 
         Rose Mary Webb, Ph.D. 
         Chairperson, Thesis Committee 
          
          
                                 
         Andrew R. Smith, Ph.D. 
         Member, Thesis Committee 
          
          
                                 
         Mary Ballard, Ph.D. 
         Member, Thesis Committee 
          
          
                                 
         Rose Mary Webb, Ph.D. 
         Interim Chairperson, Department of Psychology 
          
          
                                 
         Max C. Poole, Ph.D. 
         Dean, Cratis D. Williams School of Graduate Studies 
                       
          
                              
                                                   
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
          
                     Copyright by Nicholas Rhoades 2017 
                         All Rights Reserved 
                              
                              
          
                              
                                                   
          
                           Abstract 
                              
           INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN PERSONALITY PERCEPTION FROM TEXT 
                          MESSAGES 
                              
                         Nicholas Rhoades  
                   B.A., University of North Carolina Asheville 
                              
                     Chairperson:  Rose Mary Webb, PhD. 
                              
                              
            We live in an age of unprecedented instant communication. For example, people are 
         able to communicate with strangers via text messages, whether online or using their 
         smartphones. This begs the question, are people able to perceive the traits of others using 
         only these text messages? Interestingly, research has suggested that personality traits are in 
         fact detectable purely from the linguistic features of social media posts (Park et al., 2014) and  
         text messages (Hood, Silio, & Webb, 2015; Udry, Rhoades & Webb, 2016). However, there 
         may be individual differences in the ability to detect and utilize these linguistic cues. One 
         trait that has been associated with accurate personality perception in previous research is 
         intelligence (Christiansen, Wolcott-Burnam, Janovics, Burns, & Quirk, 2005; Lippa & Dietz, 
         2000; Murphy & Hall, 2009; Realo et al., 2003; Taft, 1955). The current study recruited 15 
         targets and 406 raters to investigate whether the relationship between rater intelligence and 
         accuracy would hold true within the context of personality perception from text messages. 
         Targets provided self-reported personality information and text messages, while raters were 
         asked to complete an other-reported personality measure based on the text message of a 
         particular target and an intelligence measure. Raters’ accuracy was assessed in terms of 
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