Week 7: Testing personality Flashcards
Personality assessment
The process of evaluating individual differences among people by using tests, interviews, observation and physiological recordings
What are the purposes of personality assessment?
- pure explanation or prediction of behaviour
- aiding diagnosis and treatment in mental health settings
- assisting decisions on community placement
- psychotherapy and treatment plan evaluation
- personnel selection
- predicting task/job performance
Psychoanalytic testing
Seeks underlying personality structure with projective techniques
Behaviourist testing
Seeks person/situation interaction with checklists and situational assessment
List some unscientific personality tests
- Galen’s bodily fluids
- Sheldon’s somatotypes
- Freud: oral, anal, phallic
- palmistry
- graphology
- numerology
What are three types of self report test?
- direct subjective
- structured clinical interview
- indirect/projective
What are some examples of self report personality assessment?
- empirical normed scales e.g. MMPI
- factorial scales EPI/16PF
What information can be collected from a clinical interview?
- info about the individual and their relationships
- antecedents triggers
- problem behaviours isolated and therapy goals selected
Examples of neuropsychological personality tests
- EEG
- x rays
- MRI
- galvanic skin response, heart rate
Describe behavioural assessment
Involves sampling what a person does in a given situation
List all of the self report projective techniques
- association
- construction
- thematic apperception test
- expression
- completion
Inkblot techniques
- person draws on their unconscious to give ambiguous stimuli meaning
References to moving animals
Indicate impulsiveness
References to blot’s blackness
indicate depression
Thematic apperception test
32 cards displaying pictures of ambiguous situations of which respondents construct a story about
Impression tests
- draw a person
- draw a house
- draw a tree
- interpret the sketches by relating specific signs, such as features of the body to facets of personality or disorders
Completion
Finish this sentence
Self-report item response formats
- true/false
- two choice
- semantic differential
- forced choice
- adjective checklist
MMPI
- 543 questions about the individual
- personality profile about current functioning and ways of responding
- screening device for maladjustment
- doesn’t matter how items are answered, as long as they can be grouped
List the MMPI clinical scales
- hypochondriasis
- depression
- hysteria
- psychopathic deviate
- masculinity-femininity
- paranoia
- schizophrenia
- hypomania
- social introversion
- psychasthenia
- psychopathic deviant
Other self report inventories
- millón clinical multiaxial inventory
- california psychological inventory
- cattell’s 16PF
- NEO-PI-R
- Eysencks personality assessment
Millon clinical multiaxial inventory
- self report for psychiatric populations
- personality disorders
- 175 items
- good reliability and validity
California psychological inventory
- self report ages 12-70
- focuses on behaviour, feelings and attitudes
- employed in vocational guidance, personnel selection etc
- 462 true/false items
- good reliability, but limited validity studies
16PF groups 16 factors into 5 themes
- extraversion
- anxiety
- will
- independence
- self control
