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Assessing Personality

Assessing Personality. Personality Testing. Psychological Testing. Psychological tests assess a person ’ s abilities, aptitudes, interests or personality based on a systematically obtained sample of behavior. 2 Basic Goals

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Assessing Personality

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  1. Assessing Personality Personality Testing

  2. Psychological Testing Psychological tests assess a person’s abilities, aptitudes, interests or personality based on a systematically obtained sample of behavior. 2 Basic Goals • Accurately & consistently reflect a person’s characteristics on some dimension. • Predicts a person’s future psychological functioning or behavior.

  3. Assessing personality • Aspects of personality can be assessed by: • Observational methods • Interviews • Personality tests. • Personality tests are more standardized and economical than either observations or interviews. • A test must be reliable and valid.

  4. Personality Assessment Projective Techniques • Interpretation of an ambiguous to trigger projection of one’s inner thoughts and feelings • Used to determine unconscious motives, conflicts, and psychological defenses & traits

  5. Rorschach Inkblot Test • Presentation and interpretation of a series of black and white and colored inkblots • Developed in 1921. • Personality test that seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of 10 inkblots • Numerous scoring systems exist

  6. Thematic Apperception Test • Series of pictures depicting ambiguous scenes • Subject is asked to create a story about the scene • Answers are scored based on themes, motives, and anxieties of main character

  7. Drawbacks to Projective Tests • Examiner or test situation may influence individual’s response • Scoring is highly subjective • Tests fail to produce consistent results (reliability problem) • Tests are poor predictors of future behavior (validity problem)

  8. personality inventories Assessing Personality

  9. Personality Inventories • Questionnaires on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors • Used to assess selected personality traits • Often true-false, agree-disagree, etc. types of questions • Person’s responses to standardized questions are compared to established norms.

  10. Validity • The extent to which a test measures or predicts what it is suppose to test • Personality inventories offer greater validity than do projective tests (e.g. Rorschach; used by proponents of the humanistic perspective).

  11. Reliability • The extent to which a test yields consistent results, regardless of who gives the test or when or where it is given • Personality inventories are more reliable than projective tests.

  12. Testing for Traits:Objective Tests

  13. Assessing personality-Objective Tests • The typical objective test is a paper-and-pencil form containing clear, specific questions, statements, or concepts to which a person is asked to give yes-no, true-false, or multiple-choice answers. • Scores can be compared mathematically. • Advantages: Unlike projective tests, which rely on interpretation, objective tests can be easily scored, very cheap, and can be quickly administered

  14. Assessing personality-Objective Tests • The Neuroticism Extraversion Openness Personality Inventory, Revised (NEO-PI-R) is given to measure personality variables in normal populations.

  15. MMPI • Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) • Originally designed to assess abnormal behavior • Most clinically-used personality test • 500 total questions

  16. MMPI Scoring Profile

  17. MMPI-2 • Revised and updated version of the MMPI • Assesses test takers on 10 clinical scales and 15 content scales • Sometimes the MMPI-2 is not used as it was intended.

  18. Other Self-Report Inventories • California Personality Inventory (CPI) – assesses personality characteristics in normal populations. • Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16 PF) – Cattell’s test that creates a personality profile on 16 trait dimensions.

  19. Personality tests and careers How can these aid in employee selection?

  20. Personality Tests and Employee Selection • Personality tests do seem to be useful in screening prospective employees; • However, the tests can lead to incorrect predictions. • Some employees believe that utilizing personality tests in the selection process is a violation of their privacy.

  21. Strengths of Self-Reports • Standardized—each person receives same instructions and responds to the same questions • Use of established norms: results are compared to previously established norms and are not subjectively evaluated • Greater reliability and validity than projective tests.

  22. Weaknesses of Self-Reports • Evidence that people can “fake” responses to look better (or worse) • Some people are prone to responding in a set way, whether the item accurately reflects them or not. • Tests contain hundreds of items and become tedious • People may not be good judges of their own behavior

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