L7. personality measurement and assessment Flashcards
what is personality
personality is a person’s unique, constellation of psychological traits, values, interests, worldviews and cognitive styles which is relatively stable and enduring over time
what is personality assessment?
what are traits, types and states?
Personality Assessment = The measurement+ evaluation of psych traits, states, values, interests, worldview, cog style and related individual characteristics.
Personality/ P Traits =
- Distinguishable, relatively ENDURING way in which a person varies from another
- Relatively enduring = traits are relatively consistent across the lifespan but how manifested depends on the situation
- Context = important when applying trait terms to behaviours
Personality/ P Types
- A constellation/ collection of traits that is similar in pattern to one identified category of personality within a taxonomy of personalities
- Types are descriptions of people eg Type A and Type B P - Freidman and Rosenman
Personality /P States
- relatively temporary predisposition
- Measure to discover traits that are relatively transitory or situation-specific
- E.g. may be in an anxious state before an exam but does not mean you’re an anxious person
uses and value of personality assesment
- Basic research
- determine the number + nature of dimensions that make us unique
- Stability of P across time - Clinical / Counselling
- more applied e.g. vocational counselling / P disorders (many recognised in the DSM - Personnel management.
- recruitment + selection, placement - Threat assessment
- judgement of the dangerousness of a person
personality measurement methods
projective tests - what is a projective method? pros and cons & 3 types
Projective tests
- type of measurement approach to personality
- First P tests to be used + investigated but not most respected,
- Usually consist of ambiguous stimuli and a judgement made according to the person imposing some structure on the unstructured stimuli in a manner consistent with their underlying personality
- indirect method of assessment: NOT asked to disclose info about self
- comes from the belief that you cannot rely upon people’s conscious awareness of themselves to give an accurate description of their true nature
pros
o Ability to fake = minimalised
o conscious + unconscious material
cons
o Low face validity - a good thing as people can fake
o Proficiency in English lang - increases cross-culturally utility
3 types:
thematic apperception
Rorschach test
sentence projection
Projective Methods of personality assessment:
thematic apperception
word association
sentence completion
scoring
thematic apperception
- the client is shown an image and asked to depict a story, this implies your P
Word association
- assessor says words and the subject freely says whatever
Sentence completion
- test e.g. I like to… / someday I will… etc
- Sentence completion - tends to measure inhibition + resistance e.g. picano et al 2002
scoring
- Detailed protocols have been developed for –> scoring due to criticism
- Good inter-rate reliability - two raters with essentially give you the same score, not a lot of room for interpretation
- Internal consistency reliability be shown to be okay for some dimensions
- Predictive validity evidence is modest
Projective method of personality assessment
Rorschach Inkblot test (1921)
contents, stages, scoring, pros and cons.
rel and val
- Hermann Rorschach 1921 - developed what called a form interpretation test / the rorschach test
- 10 bilaterally symmetrical inkblots on white card
- 5 = 5 achromatic
- 2 black , white and red
- 3 multicoloured
- free associations ae then scored according to guidelines
- 3 stages:
Stage 1 - what is it?
- Card presented and numbered from 1-10, “what is this?” - record response / the test-takers verbatim, nonverbal gestures, first response time + position of card
Stage 2 - what makes it what it is?
- Examiner re-administer + inquiry, attempt to determine what features play a role in the formulation of test takers percept
- Examiner asks q like “what makes it look what…?” - clarify what was seen
Stage 3 - deepen understanding
- ‘testing the limits’, ask specific questions + to elaborate on aspects of the inkbot
- “what does this look like?” - specific response on a specific element, goal to get more info about P functioning
Inkblot Scoring - 5 dimensions
1. Location
- part of the inkblot used to form the percept
2. Determinants
- qualities of the inkblot (form colour movement) important to a test takers percept (human movement = creative imagination and colour responses associated with = emotional reactivity)
3. Content
- content category (human, animal, anatomical figure)
4. Popularity
- frequency of response to part of an inkblot
5. Form
- how well percept matches the corresponding part of the inkblot, associated with reality testing eg psychotic patients receive low scores here
6. whole responses
- the number of percepts that use the whole inkblot (requires conceptual thought processing
Rorschach Reliability
- low/difficult ICR
- HIGH Test -retest observed = high ( 8 weeks later)
- HIGH Inter-rater R = .80
Rorschach Validity
- poor predictive validity
- correlations with self-report P questionnaires = very low, question of if the Rorschach trying to measure conventional personality
- Criterion group V studies would be useful e.g. compare responses from clinically depressed and non-depressed individuals
Criticism of Rorschach
* Sensitive to rater’s beliefs
* Suffer from lack of objectivity in scoring
* Absence of adequate norms
* Relations between response and P is as ambiguous as the inkblots themselves -
* Considered controversial - still used in clinical and forensic settings
* Many contemporary publications advocating its use
* Responses are used by courts
* The rate of scientific progress in clinical psych has evidently been a crawl
objective personality methods - what are they?
types vs trait
- refers to self-report measures
- Type based- popular in commercial application
- Trait based - more popular in research
- Most COMMON - Contain short answer items, respond to items usually on a scale e.g. agree /disagree, Likert
- may be complemented with acquaintance report
TYPE based
- people sorted into categories based on a combination of personality characteristics
- more popular commercial settings
- Simple + attractive (everyone looks good)
- Con = poor predictors, questionable validity, unreliable (should not be used for recruitment purposes)
TRAIT Based -
- people differ based on stable attributes that are on a continuum very pop in research settings
- each individual characteristic is measured separately + more precisely where subtle differences matter eg disagree or strongly disagree
- Emphasis DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PEOPLE
- each person comprises a unique constellation of traits
- PRO = Comprehensive, valid descriptions (of the facets that define the dimensions) valid predictions, reliable (test-retest R)
- CON = complex, self report caveats
- 1000s of P descriptive adjectives in English dictionary, often too many to use + lot of overlap
- Hence a need to categorise these traits into smaller number of groups using factor analysis/ data reduction
cons of self report
- Soc Des responding, time consuming,
objective personality measurement methods
——> type based
Myer Briggs/ MBTI - 1943 / 1962
- the idea that people exhibit stable preferences in the way they take in info + make decisions
- Emphasis on similarities between people to categorise
- Very popular, about 2.5 mil take it per yr, used by 89 of Fortune 100 companies
- poor predictive validity
- poor test-retest reliability
objective personality measurement methods
——> trait based Big5/NEO-PI R
The Big Five = objective method/trait based
Openness to experience
- prefers variety, intellectual curiosity
- loading factors: fantasy, aesthetics, feelings & actions ideas values
Conscientiousness
- planners, organising, and following through
- loading factors: competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self discipline, deliberation
- high predictor of academic success
Extraversion
- assertive and proactive with seeking other people
- loading factors: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, positive emotions?
Agreeableness
- altruism, friendliness, sympathy towards others
- loading factors: trust, straightforward, altruism, compliance, modesty, tendermindedness
- good friends
Neuroticism
- emotional stability, coping in times of emotional turmoil
- loading factors: anxiety, hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, vulnerability
Measured by NEO - PI- R (Costa and McCrae 1992)
- 5 traits
- 6 factors
- 8 items on each factor
- 240 items total (very long)
- anchored from strongly disagree to strongly agree
- norms from 500 men and 500 women
Big 5 Validity - Job Performance
* Barrick and Mount 1991- examined predicting Job performance across a range of occupations (professional, police, managers, sales, skilled, semi-skilled)
* Openness = .04/ C = .22/ E = .13 / A = .07/ N= .08
* These are all pretty low, .22 is the biggest effect size, to calculate the percentage of variances .048 . 4.8%
* Even if added all these variances it is still less than 10, suggesting that job performance is 95% ish nothing to do with personality
* May depend on the job you’re applying for - research suggest this is true
Big 5 Validity - Academic Performances
* C and O at least above .10, but still very low
* Is NOT statistically significant, only O = SS as the 95% CI is positive but not for the other dimensions
* Not impressive
Big 5 Rater- Report: Reliability Validity
* multiple raters of same person tend to provide similar ratings
* Inter -rate R for Big 5 dimensions range .69 - .81 - this the consistency of scores across raters (rather than coefficient alpha being consistency across items)
* Consensual V = correlation between self-report ratings and rater- report) range from .46 - .62
objective personality measurement methods
——> trait-based HEXACO
6 Factor - HEXACO – trait based
- Ashton and Lee 2012
- lexical studies suggesting more than 5, proposed 6 factors
- ‘H’ = HONESTY- HUMILITY should be own factor
o Facets = sincerity, fairness, greed avoidance, modesty
o High = sincere and modest
o Low = deceitful and pretentious
o Predictive validity –> anti-social behaviour e.g. academic dishonest behaviour, likelihood to sexually harass women, delinquency and unethical decisions, dark triad personality (narcissism, Machiavellianism/ cunning, psychopathy) bully + aggressive, selfish behaviour in games of cooperation (closely related to Agreeableness dimension)
- Argued this already covered by other 5 dimensions
- Emotionality = neuroticism
- X = extraversion
