In psychology, interpersonal accuracy (IPA) refers to an individual's ability to make correct inferences about others' internal states, traits, or other personal attributes.
IPA encompasses the accurate assessment of others' traits (e.g., personality, intelligence, or sexual orientation) and states (e.g., thoughts, emotions, or motivations) and accurate assessment of interpersonal relationships (e.g., level of intimacy between two people or hierarchical status among two or more people) as well as social group characteristics (e.g., religion, political orientation, or psychopathology).
[10][11] In the social perception field, IPA is mostly conceptualized as a skill as it increases during childhood and adolescence, continues to change across adulthood, and can be trained.
[18][19][20][21][22] The origins of IPA are not well understood, as little prospective research has been done and most evidence is correlational (i.e., based on cross-sectional data).
Research suggests that formative experiences[23] including family environment and attachment[24] could play a role.