Task 3 - Assessing Personality Flashcards
Personality traits
Differences among individuals in a typical tendency to behave, think, or feel in some conceptually related ways, across a variety of relevant situations and across some fairly long period of time
Structured personality inventories
Individuals given predetermined set of options for responding to items of test
Negative keying/reverse coding
Many items suggest opposite of trait in question
- > greater disagreement: higher scores on opposite trait
- > reason: some people respond in direction of greater disagreement
- > usually 50/50 with positive keying
Strategies of Personality Inventory Construction
- Empirical strategy
- factor-analytic strategy
- rational strategy
Empirical strategy
Writing down large number of items describing variety of actions, thoughts, and feelings and items asking for ratings on characteristics
- > items selected on basis of observed evidence of relations of items with other information believed to be related to characteristic
e. g. GPA for achievement
Factor-analytic strategy
Starts with large and diverse pool of items
-> items are grouped, each group measuring a different trait
Rational Strategy
Items written specifically for purpose of traits being measured
- > you produce items that you rationally deem to be related to a trait
- > show best validity and reliability
Big Five inventory
Short measure of Big Five (OCEAN)
- contains 44 items
- high levels of internal-consistency reliability and content validity
NEO-PI-R
Developed to measure 5 major dimensions of personality
- 240 items grouped into 30 scales
- measures narrower traits than Big Five
- good levels of reliability and validity
- most widely used in psychological research
Self-serving bias
Putting yourself in a good light (or bad light) on purpose in assessment
Observer bias
Bias in observer report trying to make the subject appear in certain way
Projective Tests
Tests with unstructured responses
- allow individuals to respond in own fashion
- e.g. Rohrschach test, Thematic association test
- > validity often questioned
Factor analysis
Categorizing variables into groups according to correlations between them
- factors are separate and independent from each other
- factor loadings: between -1 and 1
Lexical approach
Full list of personality-descriptive adjectives in a language is considered to administer a complete list of relevant personality traits
Extraversion
includes: talkativeness, liveliness, outgoingness vs shyness, quietness, and passivity
Agreeableness
includes: seeking harmonious relationships and interactions, willingness to compromise etc.
Conscientiousness
includes: orgnaization, discipline, thoroughness, sloppiness, laziness, unreliability
Emotional Stability (v Neuroticism)
includes: relaxedness vs moodiness, anxiety, touchiness
Openness to Experience
Intellect/Imagination
includes: philosophicalness, complexity, creativity vs shallowness and conventionality
Big Five
Openness to Experience Conscientiousness Extraversion Agreeableness Neuroticism
HEXACO personality factors
Big Five + Honesty-Humility
Emotionality for Neuroticism
-> based on lexical study (languages)
Common Personality Types
- resilient
- internalizing
- externalizing
Problem with categorizing into personality types
Combinations not commong, but the categories are based on combinations
-behavior prediction less accurate than when just Big Five used
Resilient Type
Well-adjusted
low levels of neuroticism (high emotional stability)
High levels on other 4 Big Five factors
Internalizing Type
Anxious and timid person
low levels of extraversion, high levels of neuroticism
Externalizing Type
Agressive and impulsive person
low levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness
“externalize emotions”
Rohrschach test
Projective test
- inkblots are shown to participant who then tells what he/she sees and based on that personality characteristics are inferred
- > provides suggestive shapes and perceptual hooks: more unique imagery
- Elements:
1. visual attributions to stimuli
2. verbal and nonverbal communication about them
3. interactive behaviors with the examiner
Rohrschach criticism
lacks standardized procedures and set of roles
-no evidence for validity to predict violence, impulsiveness or criminal behavior
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Asks participants to formulate story based on ambiguous scenes in drawings on cards
- > inconsistent scores from one picture to another
- > validity questioned
Drawing pictures test
Projective test asking people to draw pictures which are then interpreted
Projective tests criticism
only useful in limited circumstances,
rarely add information that could be obtained elsewhere
-not supported by statistics
-take up more effort and resources,
-> provide unique insights: actual behavior is analyzed not just post-hoc
