Module 8: Personality Assessment

Question 1

What is personality?

Answer 1

Refers to individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. The study of personality focuses on two broad areas: one understanding individual differences in particular personality characteristics, such as social ability or irritability. The other is understanding how the various parts of a person come together as a whole. -APA

Question 2

Personality assessment

Answer 2

the measurement and evaluation of psychological traits, states, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humour, cognitive and behaviour styles, an/or related individual characteristics

Question 3

Personality type

Answer 3

Constellation of traits that is similar in pattern to one identified category of a personality within a taxonomy of personalities.

Question 4

Personality states

Answer 4

unlike traits that are relatively enduring, states are more transitory and will depend upon a person’s situation and/motives at a particular time.

Question 5

Personality types

Answer 5

Personality type: a constellation of traits similar in pattern to one identified category of personality within a taxonomy of personalities.

Holland codes categorise people as one of six personality types: artistic, enterprising, investigative, social, realistic or conventional

Developed the self-directed search test (SDS) a self-administered and self-scored to aid vocational assistance.

Question 6

Meyer Briggs Type Indicator

Answer 6

Broadly based on Jung’s theory:

16 types based on combinations of scales:

• Introversion – extraversion
• Sensing – intuition
• Thinking – feeling
• Judging – perceiving

Question 7

MMPI

Answer 7

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is frequently discussed in terms of the patterns of scores that emerge, referred to as a profile.

Question 8

Why assess personality?

Answer 8

Aspects of personality could be explored in:

• Identifying determinants of knowledge about health
• Categorising different types of commitment in intimate relationships
• Determinising peer reasons to a team’s weakest link
• The service of national defence to identify those prone to terrorism
• Tracking trait development over time
• Studying some uniquely human characteristic such as moral judgement

Question 9

Where are personality assessments conducted?

Answer 9

Traditional sites include schools, clinics. Hospitals, academic research, laboratories, employment counselling, vocational selection centres, and the offices of psychologists and counsellors.

Personality assessors can also be found observing behaviour and making assessments in natural settings.

Question 10

Who is being assessed and who is assessing?

Answer 10

Some methos of personality rely on self report.

Assess may respond to interview questions, answer questionaires in writing or on a computer.

Some forms of personality assessment rely on informants such as parents, teachers, or peers.

Personality may be assessed by many different methods, such as face-to-face interviews, computer-administered tests, behavioural observation, paper and pencil tests, evaluation of case history data, evaluation of portfolio data, and recording of physiological responses.
Measures of eprsonality vary in terms of their structure, with some measures being very structured and others being relatively unstructured.

Question 11

Self-concept

Answer 11

one’s attitudes, belifes, opinions, and related thoughts about oneself. Some self-concept measures are based on the notion that states and traits related to self-concept are to a large degree context-dependent.

Question 12

Response style

Answer 12

a tendency to respond to a resr or item or interview question in some characterisitic manner regardless of the content of the item or question.

Question 13

Impression management

Answer 13

the attempt to manipulate others’ impressions through ‘the selective exposure of some information… coupled with supress of other information’

Question 14

Response scales and validity

Answer 14

Response styles can affect the validity of the outcome and can be countered through the use of a validity scales.

Question 15

Validity scales

Answer 15

a subscales of a test is designed to assist in judgments regarding how honestly the testtakers responded and whether responses were products of response style, carelessness, deception, or misunderstanding.

Question 16

How are personality assessments structured and conducted?

Answer 16

• Nomothetic approach: characterized by efforts to learn how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people.
• Idiographic approach: characterised by efforts to learn about each individual’s unqiue constellation of personality traits.
• Normative approach: a testtaker’s responses and the presumed strength of a measured trait are interpeted relative to the strength og that trait in a sample of a larger population.
• Ipsative approach: a testtaker’s responses and presumed strength of measured traits are interpreted relative to the strength of measured traits for that same individual.

Question 17

Issues in personality test delopment and use

Answer 17

• Personality assessment that relies exclusively on self-report are vulnerable to false outcomes because there is no way of knowing with certainty the extent of the truth of the assess’s answers.
• Building validity scales into self-report tests provides some protection against false results.
• Assessors can also affirm the accuracy of self-reported information by consulting external sources such as peer raters.

Question 18

How are personality assessments structured and conducted?

Answer 18

• Instruments used in personality assessment vary in the extent to which they are based on a theory of personality.
• An example of a theory: based instrument is the Blacky Pictures Test. Other tests are atheoretical, such as the MMPI-2.

Question 19

Logic and reason may dictate what content is covered by the items on a personality test.

Answer 19

• The use of logic and reason in the development of test items is sometimes referred to as the content or content orientated approach to test development.
• A review of the literature on the aspect of personality that test items are designed to tap will frequently be very helpful to test developers.

Question 20

Data reduction methods are another class of widely used tool on contemporary test development.

Answer 20

• Such methods are used to aid in the identification of the minimum number of variables or factors that account for the intercorrelations in observed phenomena.

Question 21

Date reduction methods:

Answer 21

• A well known use of such methods was employed by Cattell in the 1940’s in which he reduced a list of more than 18,000 personality trait names (produced by Allport and Odbert in 1936) to only 16 ‘primary’ factors of personality.
• Whether the 16 PF measures 16 distinct factors is still debated, with some arguing that there are more than 16 factors while others claim there are fewer.
• The Big Five Inventory (NEO-PI-R, Costa and McCare, 1992) is a measure of the five major dimensions of personality and 30 facets that define each dimension (extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness).

Question 22

Criterion groups

Answer 22

• Criterion: a standard on which a judgement or decision can be made
• Criterion group: a reference group of testtakers who share specific characteristics and whose responses to test items serve as a standard accoring to which items will be included or discarded from final version of the scales.
  o Empirical ceriterion keying: the process of using criterion groups to develop test items.

Question 23

Development of a tests by means of empirical criterion keying involves the following:

Answer 23

• Criterion of a large prelimiary pool of test items from which the final form of the test will be selected.
• Administration of ther prelimiary pool to at least two groups of people: (1) a criterion group of people know to possess the measured trait; and (2) a random sample
• Conduct an item analysis to select items indicative of a membership in the criterion group.
• Obtain data on test performance from a standardization sample of testtakers who are representative of the population from which future testtakers will come.

Question 24

Developing Instruments to Assess Personality

Answer 24

The MMPI has three scales built in to the measurement to combat the problems inherent in self-report methods: the L scales (the lie scales), the F scales (the Frequency scales), and the K (correction scale).

• The L scales will call into question the examinee’s honesty
• The F scale contains items that are infrequently endorsed by nonpsychiatric populations and do not fall into any known patter of deviance, which can help determine how serious an examinee takes the test as well as identify malingering.
• The K score is associated with defenisveness and social desirability.

The MMPI has a fourth scales, the Cannot say scales (denoted with ?), which functions as a frequency count of the number of items to which the examinee responded cannot say or failed to mark any response.
- The validity of an answer sheet with a cannot say count of 30 or higher is called into question.

Harris-Lingoes subscales are groupings of item into subscales (with labels such as Brooding) that were designed for internal consistency.
Following publication it was found that the MMPI could not be scored into neat diagnostic categories, and instead Hathaway and McKinley (1943) suggested a configural interpretation od scores, i.e., interpretation based on a pattern or profile.

Paul Meehl (1951) proposed a 2 point code derived from the numbers of clinical scales on which the testtaker achieved the highest scores.

Welsh score were another popular approach to scoring and interpretation.

Question 25

The MMPI-2

Answer 25

The MMPI-2 os, in general, quite similar to tis predecessor, though some important differences exist.

• The MMPI-2 was normed on a more representative standardisation sample.
• Some content was rewritten to correct grammatical errors and make the language more contemporary and less discriminatory.
• Items were added that addressed topics such as drug abuse, suicidality, marital adjustment, attitides towards work, and Type A behaviour patterns.
• Three additional validity scales were added: Back-Page Infrequency (FB), True Response Inconsistency (TRIN), and Variable Response Inconsistency (VRIN).

Question 26

MMPI-2 RF

Answer 26

• Overlapping items: per pair the clinical scales, there was an average of more than six overlapping items in the MMPI-2.
• A persuasive factor (referred to as anxiety, despair, malaise, and maladjustment) that was common to most forms of psychpoathology but unique to none.

One goal of restructuring the MMPI-2 into the MMPI-2 RF was to make the clinical scales more distinctive and meaningful.

Question 27

MMPI-A

Answer 27

The MMPI-A was developed in response to skepticism about the applicability of the MMPI to adolescents.

• It contains 16 basic scares, including 10 clinical scales and six validity scales.
• It also contains six supplementary scales (dealing with areas such as drug use and immaturity), 15 content scales (such as scales addressing conduct problems), 28 Harris-Lingoes scales, and three scales labeled Social Introversion.

Question 28

Objective versus projective methods

Answer 28

Objective methods of personality assessment: typically administered by paper and pencil or computer and contain short-answer items for which the assess’s task is to select one response from those provided.

The term ‘objective’ in relation to personality measures must be considered cautiously.

• Personality tests rarely contain one correct answer
• Consider as well on its reliance on self-report measures

Projective hypothesis: the idea that an individual supplies structure to an unstructured stimuli in a manner consistent with the individual’s own unique pattern of conscious and unconscious needs, fears, despires, impulses, conflicts, and ways of percieving and responding.
Projective techniques are indirect methods of personality assessment.

Question 29

Inkblots as projective stimuli

Answer 29

Rorschach inkblots- there is debate about precisely how to classify Rorschach inkblots.
- Consists of 10 bilaterally symmetrical inkblots on separate cards, half of which are schromatic.
- Inkblot cards are initially presented in order from 1 to 10 and asked to interpret the inkblot with a great deal of freedom.
After the etire set of inkblots has been administered, an inquiry is conducted and the assessor attempts to determine what features of the inkblot played a role in the formulating testtakers percept.

A third component, testing the limits, may also be included to enable the examiner to restructure the situation by asking specific questions concerning personality functioning, as well as clarifying any misunderstanding or anxiety.

Question 30

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Answer 30

Christiana Morgan and Henry Murrary

• 30 picture cards contain a variety of scenes that present the testtaker with ‘certain classical human situations’
• The administering clinician selects the cards that are believed to elicit responses pertinent to testing.
• Introduced as a test of imagination
• Assess’s task is to tell what has led up to the scene in the picture, what is happening now, and what the outcome will be.
• They are also asked to describe what the people in the picture are thinking and feeling.
• Examiners often will change the administration of the test using more or less than suggested in the manual.
• Information used to derived conclusion about the client (1) the stories as they are told; (2) the clinician’s notes about the way the client responded; (3) clinician’s notes about extra test behaviour and verbalizations.
• Analysis of the story content requires special training.