Ch.8 : Origins of personality testing

Question 1

Two fundamental features of personality

Answer 1

1. Each person is consistent to some extent

2. Each person is distinctive to some extent

Question 2

Freud’s three structures of the mind

Answer 2

Id: entirely unconscious, pleasure principle
Ego: Conscious self, reality principle
Superego: ethical component

Question 3

Psychotic defense mechanisms

Answer 3

Distort reality

Question 4

Acting out defense mechanisms

Answer 4

Passive aggressive, impulsive, complaining but rejecting help

Question 5

Borderline defense mechanisms

Answer 5

Others are all good/all bad, projection

Question 6

Neurotic defense mechanisms

Answer 6

Repression, displacement

Question 7

Obsessive defense mechanisms

Answer 7

Isolation of affect, intellectualization

Question 8

Mature defense mechanisms

Answer 8

Humour, anticipation, sublimation, suppression, altruism

Question 9

Meta-analysis on Type A personality and coronary heart disease?

Answer 9

Not an independent risk factor

• Effect sizes were about 0
• Regardless of interviews or questionnaires

Question 10

Q technique

Answer 10

Carl Rogers’ procedure for studying changes in self-concept
- Rank ‘personality’ cards in 9 piles, with a fix number for each (forces normal distribution), from very like them to not at all like them

Question 11

Q technique self-sort vs ideal sort

Answer 11

Discrepancy between the two is an index of adjustment (correlates the two: successful therapy increases correlation)

Question 12

Internal-External Scale

Answer 12

Locus of control (reinforcement contingent on their behavior or on the outside world)

Question 13

Cattell & traits

Answer 13

Factor analysis identified 16-20 bipolar traits (source traits)

Question 14

Eysenck & traits

Answer 14

12s of traits into two overriding dimension

Question 15

Goldberg & traits

Answer 15

Big 5

Question 16

Problem with traits

Answer 16

• Traits cause or describe behavior?

- Low predictive validity (Mischel)?

Question 17

Projective tests

Answer 17

Examinee encounters vague stimuli and responds with their own constructions
- very psychoanalytic

Question 18

5 categories of projective tests

Answer 18

• Association to inkblots or words (Rorschach)
• Telling stories
• Completing sentences/stories
• Arranging or selecting pictures or verbal choices
• Drawing/play

Question 19

Rorschach administration

Answer 19

• Projective test
• Sit to the side, ask for 2-3 responses (response optimization for better fit with norms)
• Scored on location (part of blot/white space), content (human, explosion, synthesis, vague, pair), form quality (ordinary, unusual, popular, minus - distorted, unrealistic), thought processes (morbid, deviant), determinants (movement, color, form, texture)-
• Good interrater reliability

Question 20

Rorschach Prognostic Rating Scale

Answer 20

• Validation: being able to recover (human dancing: high score; human sleeping: 0; explosion: negative score)
• Meta-analysis: 78% success therapy for high scores; but only 22% for low scores

Question 21

Thought Disorder Index

Answer 21

• Useful scoring system for Rorschach
• Assesses formal thought disorder
• Good split half r (.80) and interrater (.90)

Question 22

Experiment to see if Rorschach can spot fakers

Answer 22

Sample: Paranoid SZ patients; Paranoid fakers but uninformed; Paranoid fakers but informed; control
Results: Informed fakers (72%) more diagnosed than actual SZ (48%); uninformed fakers (46%); controls (24%)
- Missed actual SZ
- Found control SZ

Question 23

Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank

Answer 23

40 sentence stems written at 1st person

• Rated on adjustment (0: good; 6: poor) - conflict response (4-6), positive response (0-2), neutral responses (none)
• high reliability
• high validity: delinquent youths (good sensitivity and specificity), drug users
• today’s students score differently then they did before

Question 24

Thematic Apperception Test

Answer 24

• Pictures for adult males/females, boys/girls
• examinee makes up story
• initially made for need/motive assessment
• psychometric analyses are hard to conduct - but very low test-retest (.28)

Question 25

Picture projective test

Answer 25

Critique Thematic Apperception Test for being too ‘dark’ - so mostly melancholic stories

• they use set where half are showing + affect, active poses, etc.
• generate much more positive stories and interpersonal (rather than intrapersonal)
• diagnostic value: can equally discriminate normal from depressed, but PPT is superior to differentiate psychotics from normal and depressed

Question 26

Draw-a person test

Answer 26

• Draw a person, then draw person of opposite sex
• Make up a story about this person
• Acceptable impulses projected to same-sex figures; unacceptable to other sex figures
• Relative size of male/female reveals cues about sexual identification (e.g. man with large eyes + lashes = homosexual man)
• No validation

Question 27

House-Three-Person Test

Answer 27

• On a different page each
• Then question on opinion of drawing (worth it?)
• originally conceived as measure of intelligence
• House = home/family
• Tree = environment
• Person = interpersonal
• No validation