Effects of escalated exposure to information on accuracy of personality judgment

•Greater exposure to information leads to greater accuracy in initial personality judgments.•Some information is more useful in generating accurate personality judgments.•Utility of information varies depending upon type of accuracy.•Introduction of less useful information does not diminish the impact of more useful information. In an investigation of the effects of increasing exposure to information on accuracy of personality trait judgments, judges rated a single target on three successive occasions, each of which involved the introduction of a novel piece of personal information. Varying the order in which types of information were presented allowed us to jointly examine the effects of information quality and quantity on accuracy in personality judgment. We found that (a) in general, more information led to higher accuracy, (b) some types of information led to greater gains in distinctive or normative accuracy, and (c) introduction of lower quality information did not negatively affect accuracy.