M8 Personality Assessment Fundamentals Flashcards
Define the concept of personality
Personality is a construct that encompasses the idea of people and their unique characteristics of a person’s thoughts, feeling and actions, that are generally stable over time.
What is the difference between a personality state and trait.
Personality trait
o generally stable over time
o distinguishable way individuals vary from another
Personality state
o transitory exhibition of some trait
o relates more to situation or motive
o help to distinguish variation between people
Identify 6 uses or applications of personality testing
- identify determinants of health
- categorising different types of commitment in intimate relationships
- determining a team’s weakest link
- national defence - identify threats e.g. terrorism
- tracking traits over time
- studying human characteristic e.g. human moral judgement
What are the strengths of self-report
Self-report strengths
• The individual has unique insight into their own behaviour, self-awareness - they idea that they know themselves best
What are 2 weaknesses of self-report
Self-report weaknesses
• people may want to present a false definition of themselves, social desirability, honesty
• people may also be blindsided to certain personal characteristics
What are the strengths of informant-based personality assessment?
• a more objective viewpoint - that person may have good insight into the other person, see aspects that the person themselves is not aware of
What are the weaknesses of informant-based personality assessment?
Informant weaknesses
• family dynamics, relationship to the person being assessed, can influence the assessment which may be biased/different interpretation
What is being assessed when a personality test is being conducted?
Response style - eg central tendency
Impression Management - eg manipulating other’s impression through selection exposure or suppression of characteristics i.e. faking good or malingering
Validity Scales - subscales devised to counter reduced validity due to response style and impression management eg honesty, deception, laziness or misunderstanding
F scale (frequency ie identifies malingering and how serious the test is taking the test) L scale (lie) and K scale (social desirability)
What is a nomothetic approach to personality testing?
- i.e. trait theories and types eg Big 5
- effort to learn how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people
- compares individuals in terms of trait common to everyone eg extroversion/introversion
What is an idiographic approach to personality testing?
- i.e. Carl Rogers Q-sort –
- “I am” statement cards (possibly lack reliability and validity)
- efforts to learn about each individual’s unique constellation of personality traits
- more like an individual profile
What is an ipsative approach to personality testing?
- interpreting responses and trait strengths or weaknesses in relative way with the same individual
- eg MBTI - someone is high on extroversion and low on perceiving etc
What is a normative approach to personality testing?
• efforts to learn how test responses and trait strengths score relative to the strength of a trait in a population
What approach to testing looks at how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people?
nomothetic approach
What approach to testing takes efforts to learn about each individual’s unique constellation of personality traits?
idiograhic approach
What approach to testing interprets responses and trait strengths or weaknesses in a relative way with the same individual
ipsative approach