Self and idetnity

B)
If I would have to confine myself to ONLY one of the methods I would say the observations of family and close friends because they would be the ones who would see you act in different contexts, be able to see what you say about yourself(if you do at all) v.s what you do, or what you opinions and beliefs are as opposed to what you are doing about those values when presented in certain contexts, there is the weakness that such perceptions would be biased by their particular tastes and judgements, in addition they aren't going to have all the information in order to create an 100% accurate picture of either cause but it is more credible then a self report which suffers from a confirmation bias of a single individual rather then several which can be helpful as their impressions of the subject are a highlight of their personality and having several perspectives on them would be difficult to process rather then a single report but there are more variables to be observed in different contexts, which really tests the consistency of their character, or possibly how they deal with cognitive dissonance.


A) in terms of reliability and validity...well that's a tricky question, as I don't think we can say any one of them would be any more valid then the next in terms of an objective scientific unit of measurement. Human beings are a little unpredictable like that
but lets run down the list anyway...

Self-Reports...have you ever lied? I call bull if you say "never", we have a perception of ourselves that we like to keep, so we all have skeletons in the closet that we are not willingy to talk about or disclose but never the less reveal things about us or for a more innocent interpretation our memories aren't always the most reliable so how can we be reliable? which if we can question parts of the self, can we give a valid statement about ourselves? Objectively anyway?

Friends and Family... out of the three I think this would be roughly the most valid but not necessarily the most reliable by itself, Now I say the most valid because we dont have only one set of data in terms of the impressions we have on the subject, but multiple subjects that have had multiple encounters which if they notice a pattern to their behavior and that is consistent, then we have arrived at personality island! At least a major part of it, because we see their behavior within the context they are theoretically most comfortable with, thus the most routine of behaviors can be seen and most likely a peek into their inner world has these people would most likely have engaged the subject in a conversation reveling parts of their most inner thoughts. HOWEVER I doubt we will get the exact same repeatable answers from these people if they were asked multiple times as there could be events that come up which would change their perception of them thus we would be lead to belive a particular trait that is show cased in a recent event is the rule rather then the exception. This can exist either way but, asking multiple times, by who and when in of itself creates diffrent biases...if you were asked as a reference as a job, you would highlight details relevant to that job and hide what may harm them, in these kinds of tests we would have to be VERY careful.

outside observer... Not exactly sure how I feel about this, is it reliable? Well we could control the environment and control the variables, so yeah, if personality is constant(which that is a debate to itself) then it is reliable! But how valid is it? I really don't know if it is at all, I mean IT SOUNDS good in theory but, a single outside observer? we had issues with a self report because of an individual biases, subjective notions of what is demanded of them, memory, etc...but some of those apply to the observer too, we have some data in regards to them, even if we don't have any reports or any contact between the two, the moment they meet, assumptions and context have been created, are the pair members of the opposite sex and one of them is very attractive? Well we might have a problem there, cause we want to be desirable to attractive people thus we may change our answers slightly, or change behavior, what about 1st impressions, what they are wearing, does that effect assessment? How would we do so? What personal quirks might we have that get in the way of seeing someone objectively? Hell a nice watch could distract important science! In which the observer could be left with "subject has a good taste in watches", or associative memories could be distracting "my friend had a watch like that".

I think I have made my point, plenty of things can get in the way, so have multiple pieces of data to sort through, rather then a single encounter, a single set of perceptions, have multiple ones, hell we know we can never have something completely objective but at least we can have multiple ones, to try to create the painting of human emotion and ultimately weave together the story of the essence of someone's soul