Week 5 - Personality Assessment Flashcards
Describe self-report inventories
Asks people to respond to a series of questions about themselves
Describe the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- Self-report inventory tool, widely used for clinical assessment
- Comprises of 567 items; Duration spans over 1-2 hours
- Dozens of personality factors
Describe the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- Measures Jungian types
- Commonly used in business
- Components:
1. E/I - Getting energy: Extraversion or Introversion
2. S/N - Perceiving information: Sensing or Intuitive
3. T/F - Making decisions: Thinking/Feeling
4. J/P - Orienting to the external world: Judging or Perceiving
Describe the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
- Assessed extraversion and neuroticism
- 48 items -> later reduced to 24 items
Ten-Item Personality Trait (TIPI)
- 10 items for the 5 traits in The Big Five
- Short and easy to implement
How does personality assessment apply in the real world?
- Industrial/Organizational Psychology
- Organizational behaviour; Focused on understanding, explaining and improving attitudes of individuals in organizations
What does poor organizational behaviours lead to?
- Poor employee satisfaction
- Greater attrition of employees
- Low morale and motivation
*Literature evidence: American employees would rather have a better boss than a pay raise (Kiisel, 2012)
Why is predicting behaviours important to managers?
- Employees have the ability to influence their coworkers
- Managers can anticipate what employees may do in situations
- May provide an index of “fit” in organization
What are the uses of personality assessment in organizations?
- Conflict resolution and team building
- Hiring decisions
- Person-Job fit
What is meant by Person-Job fit?
- Refers to when the job’s characteristics align with employees’ personalities, motivations and abilities
- Lack of fit -> increase in burnout and physical symptoms
- Good fit -> higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment and better performance
What are the 5 desirable traits for a good person-job fit, based on The Big Five?
- Openness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Neuroticism
How is Openness desirable for person-job fit?
- Willingness to embrace new ideas and new situations
- Can adjust better to organizational change
- Linked to higher creativity and adaptability
How is Conscientiousness desirable for person-job fit?
- Follows through and gets things done
- Strongest predictor of job performance
- Too much can be a bad thing
How is Extraversion desirable for person-job fit?
- Sociable, gets along with others
- Linked to higher performance in sales and management
- Related to social interactions and persuasion
How is Agreeableness desirable for person-job fit?
- Being a nice person in general
- Effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness
How is Neuroticism desirable for person-job fit?
- Emotional stability relates to stress coping
- Also strong predictor of job performance
Describe the Whole Trait Theory
- Personality is multifaceted
- We have a distribution of personality states, which can be explained by social and cognitive factors
- Personality states depend on context and environment
- Standard personality assessment the “average” of our behaviour
Explain the Within and Across Context framework
- Expands on the Whole Trait Theory
- Attempts to capture situational factors that predict personality
- Measures situational context during personality measurement
Explain the ADEPT-15
- Workplace scale which expands on The Big Five
- Proprietary scale developed for consulting firms
What are the strengths of self-report inventories?
- Standardized and use established personality traits
- Predict behaviour and employee fit (to some extent)
What are the limitations of self-report inventories?
- Participants may “fake” responses to look better (or worse); Social desirability
- High number of items may lead to loss of interest
- Self-judgement is not always accurate
- No personality test, by itself, is likely to provide a definitive description of any given individual
Describe projective tests
- Freudian defense mechanism
- Access unconscious by providing ambiguous stimulus
- Participants “project” personalities as they describe the object
Projective Tests: Explain the Rorschach Inkblot Test
- View series of inkblots and describe what you see
- Manual used for scoring participant responses
Projective Tests: Explain the Thematic Apperception Test
- Create a story about a highly evocative, ambiguous scene
- Through this, the person is thought to project their own motives, conflicts and other personality characteristics into the story they make
What are the strengths of projective tests?
- Provides qualitative information about individual’s personality
- Information can facilitate therapy
What are the limitations of projective tests?
- Scoring is highly subjective
- Fails to produce consistent results
- Poor at predicting future behaviour
Explain the Barnum Effect
When someone believes a personality description specifically applies to them, even though the description actually applies to a large group of people
- ex. horoscopes
Explain the problem of faking in self-report assessments
- Faking: Test takers intentionally give misleading information on self-report inventories
- Fake good -> Presenting themselves as better than they really are
- Fake bad -> Presenting themselves as worse than they really are
- Test makers build safeguards into tests to reduce faking
How to prevent faking?
- Use forced-choice response options
- Ask for written elaboration
- Include warnings that fakers can be caught
- Correct the test for social desirability
- Use behavioural personality tests
Explain the problem with carelessness and sabotage in self-report assessments
- Carelessness -> Participants can get bored with long tests and select responses randomly
*Some tests include “attention check” items
*There are statistical tests to examine effortful responding - Test takers sometimes report incorrect information to sabotage a research project)
- Can be reduced through instruction explanation, surveillance and stressing the importance of the test
Explain the problem with social desirability in self-report assessments
- Social desirability: The extent to which people present themselves favorably
- Problematic for embarrassing or illegal behaviours (ex. alcohol/substance use, sexual activity)
- Leads to inaccurate reflection of the individual’s personality
What are the things to keep in mind when designing assessments?
- Keep it simple
(ex. use simple language) - Avoid double-barrelled items
(e.g. asking participants for one response to two different Qs) - Use neutral or unbiased language
(e.g. do not use offensive language; capitalize Black and White to identify racial groups) - Minimize the use of negative wording
(e.g. the use of words tha tindicate the opposite of what was asked; “How much do you not like working?” -> “How much do you dislike working?”) - Avoid repetitive responses. Add in reverse-coded items as well.
- Use rating scales consistently
- Use of Likert scales; Keep it between 4 and 7 points, and use anchor points to indicate the rating scale
- Minimize item and survey length
