Chapter 12: Personality Assessment: An Overview

Question 1

_____ defined personality as “the most adequate conceptualization of a person’s behavior in all its detail”.

Answer 1

McClelland

Question 2

_____ defined it as “the individual as a whole, his height and weight and love and hates and blood pressure and reflexes; his smiles and hopes and bowed legs and enlarged tonsils. It means all that anyone is and that he is trying to become”

Answer 2

Menninger

Question 3

_____ wrote: “It is our conviction that no substantive definition of personality can be applied with any generality” and “Personality is defined by the particular empirical concepts which are a part of the theory of personality employed by the observer”.

Answer 3

Hall and Lindzey

Question 4

_____ definition of personality as an individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits and states. Included in our definition, then, are variables on which individuals may differ, such as values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, personal identity, sense of humor, and cognitive and behavioral styles.

Answer 4

Cohen and Swerdlik

Question 5

_____ may be defined as the measurement and evaluation of psychological traits, states, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, personal identity, sense of humor, cognitive and behavioral styles, and/or related individual characteristics

Answer 5

Personality Assessment

Question 6

For _____, a trait is a “generalized and focalized neuropsychic system (peculiar to the individual) with the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide consistent (equivalent) forms of adaptive and expressive behavior”.

Answer 6

Allport

Question 7

_____ wrote that there “are real structures inside people that determine their behavior in lawful ways”, and he went on to conceptualize these structures as changes in brain chemistry that might occur as a result of learning: “Learning causes submicroscopic structural changes in the brain, probably in the organization of its biochemical substance”

Answer 7

Robert Holt

Question 8

_____ also conceptualized traits as mental structures, but for him structure did not necessarily imply actual physical status.

Answer 8

Raymond Cattell

Question 9

We view psychological traits as attributions made in an effort to identify threads of consistency in behavioral patterns. In this context, a definition of personality trait offered by _____ has great appeal: “Any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another”.

Answer 9

Guilford

Question 10

_____ argued that most people can be categorized as one of the following six personality types: Artistic, Enterprising, Investigative, Social, Realistic, or Conventional.

Answer 10

John Holland

Question 11

_____. They conceived of a Type A personality, characterized by competitiveness, haste, restlessness, impatience, feelings of being time-pressured, and strong needs for achievement and dominance. A Type B personality has the opposite of the Type A’s traits: mellow or laid-back.

Answer 11

Meyer Friedman and Ray Rosenman

Question 12

The personality typology that has attracted the most attention from researchers and practitioners alike is associated with scores on a test called the _____.

designed to help mental health professionals diagnose mental health disorders and conditions. It’s a self-reporting inventory that evaluates where you fall on 10 scales related to different mental health disorders.

The single most popular personality test in use today is atheoretical

Answer 12

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Question 13

On the _____ Test, for example, respondents are asked to compare themselves to other people on variables such as looks, knowledge, and the ability to tell jokes.

Answer 13

Beck Self-Concept

Question 14

The _____ and its revision, the _____-2 (pronounced “pick two”), are examples of a kind of standardized interview of a child’s parent. Although the child is the subject of the test, the respondent is the parent (usually the mother), guardian, or other adult qualified to respond with reference to the child’s characteristic behavior.

Answer 14

Personality Inventory for Children (PIC)

Question 15

_____ style refers to a tendency to respond to a test item or interview question in some characteristic manner regardless of the content of the item or question.

Answer 15

Response

Question 16

We may define a _____ as a subscale of a test designed to assist in judgments regarding how honestly the testtaker responded and whether observed responses were products of response style, carelessness, deliberate efforts to deceive, or unintentional misunderstanding

Answer 16

validity scale

Question 17

An example of a theory-based instrument is the _____ Test. This test consists of cartoonlike pictures of a dog named Blacky in various situations, and each image is designed to elicit fantasies associated with various psychoanalytic themes.

Answer 17

Blacky Pictures

Question 18

In the context of item format and assessment in general, _____ may be defined as aspects of the focus of exploration such as the time frame (the past, the present, or the future) as well as other contextual issues that involve people, places, and events.

Answer 18

frame of reference

Question 19

Originally developed by Stephenson, the _____ is an
assessment technique in which the task is to sort a group of statements, usually in perceived rank order ranging from most descriptive to least descriptive.

“a modified rank-ordering procedure in which stimuli are placed in an order that is significant from the standpoint of a person operating under specified conditions”

is used to investigate the perspectives of participants who represent different stances on an issue, by having participants rank and sort a series of statements.

Answer 19

Q-sort technique

Question 20

With the _____ checklist method, respondents simply check off on a list of adjectives those that apply to themselves (or to epople they are rating).

is a psychological assessment containing 300 adjectives used to identify common psychological traits. … with the goal to assess psychological traits of an individual.

Answer 20

adjective

Question 21

The _____ to assessment is characterized by efforts to learn how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people. A test such as the 16 PF, Fifth Edition, which seeks to measure testtakers on 16 personality factors (which is what “PF” stands for), is representative of the nomothetic orientation.

trying to make generalizations about the world and understand large-scale social patterns.

Answer 21

nomothetic approach

Question 22

By contrast, the _____ approach is characterized by efforts to learn about each individual’s unique constellation of personality traits, with no attempt to characterize each person according to
any particular set of traits.

research goals that focus on the individual rather than focusing on or generalizing individual results to the entire population

Answer 22

idiographic

Question 23

In the _____ approach, a testtaker’s responses, as well as the presumed strength of measured traits, are interpreted relative to the strength of measured traits for that same individual.

to measure or track the progress of the individual by comparing his or her performance, or scores, against his or her own previous performances or scores.

Answer 23

ipsative

Question 24

As previously noted, personality assessment that relies exclusively on _____ is a two-edged sword.

Respondents are in most instances presumed to know themselves better than anyone else does VS. no way of knowing with certainty which self-reported information is entirely true, partly true, not really true, or an outright lie.

Answer 24

self-report

Question 25

Let’s call this new test the _____. These items of the EATT are based on the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual criteria for a diagnosis of anorexia nervosa

Answer 25

“Evaluation of Anorexic Tendencies Test” (EATT)

Question 26

The Personal Data Sheet, later known as the _____, contained items designed to elicit self-report of fears, sleep disorders, and other problems deemed symptomatic of psychoneuroticism.

It measures one scale: emotional instability. 1930

Answer 26

Woodworth Psychoneurotic Inventory

Question 27

One theory-based test in current usage today is the _____, which is a measure of one’s interests and perceived abilities. Authored by John Holland and his associates, the test is based on Holland’s theory of vocational personality

the most widely used career interest inventory in the world,

Answer 27

Self-Directed Search (SDS)

Question 28

_____ methods include several types of statistical techniques collectively known as factor analysis or cluster analysis. One use of data reduction methods in the design of personality measures is to aid in the identification of the minimum number of variables or factors that account for the intercorrelations in observed phenomena.

reduce the number of data records by eliminating invalid data

Answer 28

Data reduction

Question 29

The process of using criterion groups to develop test items is referred to as _____ because the scoring or keying of items has been demonstrated empirically to differentiate among groups of testtakers.

method for developing personality inventories in which the items (presumed to measure one or more traits) are created and then administered to a criterion group of people known to possess a certain characteristic (e.g., antisocial behavior, significant anxiety, exaggerated concern about physical health)

Answer 29

empirical criterion keying

Question 30

The _____ was the product of a collaboration between psychologist Starke R. Hathaway and psychiatrist/neurologist John Charnley McKinley. It contained 566 true–false items and was designed as an aid to psychiatric diagnosis with adolescents and adults 14 years of age and older

help mental health professionals diagnose mental health disorders and conditions.

Answer 30

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

Question 31

The _____, also referred to as the standardization sample.

Answer 31

normal control group

Question 32

Another scale that bears on the validity of a test administration is the _____ scale, also referred to simply as the ? (question mark) scale

Answer 32

Cannot Say

Question 33

_____ scales is a catch-all phrase for the hundreds of different MMPI scales that have been developed since the test’s publication.

Answer 33

Supplementary

Question 34

One of them, the _____ subscales (often referred to simply as the Harris scales), are groupings of items into subscales (with labels such as Brooding and Social Alienation) that were designed to be more internally consistent than the umbrella scale from which the subscale was derived.

Answer 34

Harris-Lingoes

Question 35

_____ proposed a 2-point code derived from the numbers of the clinical scales on which the testtaker achieved the highest (most pathological) scores.

If a testtaker achieved the highest score on Scale 1 and the second-highest score on Scale 2, then that testtaker’s 2-point code type would be 12. The 2-point code type for a highest score on Scale 2 and a second-highest score on Scale 1 would be 21.

Answer 35

Paul Meehl

Question 36

Another popular approach to scoring and interpretation came in the form of _____ codes —referred to as such because they were created by Welsh, not because they were written in Welsh (although to the uninitiated, they may be equally incomprehensible).

Answer 36

Welsh

Question 37

The three original _____ scales of the MMPI are included in the MMPI-2, as are three additional _____ scales: Back-Page Infrequency (Fb), True Response Inconsistency (TRIN), and Variable Response Inconsistency (VRIN).

Answer 37

validity

Question 38

_____ focused on what he viewed as this common factor in psychopathology, which he termed demoralization.

Answer 38

Jerome Frank

Question 39

_____ is an ongoing process by which an individual’s thoughts, behaviors, values, worldview, and identity develop in relation to the general thinking, behavior, customs, and values of a particular cultural group.

the balance between changing attitudes and behaviors as a result of contact with a dominant group and retention of existing cultural values, beliefs, and traditions.

Answer 39

Acculturation

Question 40

_____ values are guiding principles to help one attain some objective. Honesty, imagination, ambition, and cheerfulness are examples of instrumental values.

Answer 40

Instrumental

Question 41

_____ values are guiding principles and a mode of behavior that is an endpoint objective. A
comfortable life, an exciting life, a sense of accomplishment, and self-respect are some examples of terminal values

Answer 41

Terminal