• Individual differences in emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal and motivational styles

Use of personality tests (PT):

  • Research

o determine the number/nature of dimensions that makes us unique o Stability of personality across time

  • Clinical/ counselling o Useful in therapy o Marital therapy o Vocational counselling
  • Personnel management

 

Recruitment and selection

o Placement

History of PT:

  • WW1: first organised assessment of personality o Tested recruits to see if they could cope with being in the military o Focus on one facet of personality, essentially measuring conformity

Projective tests:

  • Some of the first tests to be used and investigated
  • Projective tests usually consist of ambiguous stimuli
  • An individual’s response to the stimuli are recorded and analysed to assess their personality or psychopathology
  • The underlying theme of projective test is that you can’t rely upon people’s conscious awareness of themselves for the purpose of understanding their true nature (low face validity).
  • Rorschach projective test o Consists of 10 inkblots on white cards, tends to bilaterally symmetrical o Inkblots are used to incite the client to free-associate

o There are several scoring systems, Exner’s Comprehensive System is the most common

Rorschach test- reliability:

  • Very difficult to calculate internal consistency reliability
  • Test-retest reliability has been observed to be high
  • Inter-rater reliability is fairly high (.80+)

Projective tests (general) – reliability:

  • Accuracy of predictions of future behaviour based on Rorschach scores has been found to be low
  • Some of the research has tried to find correlations with self-report personality questionnaires o The correlations are very low o But is the Rorschach trying to measure conventional personality?
  • Criterion group validity studies would be especially useful o g. compare responses from clinically depressed and non-depressed individuals
  • Projective tests have been designed to measure unconscious thoughts/tendencies
  • It’s based on psychoanalytic theory

Psychoanalytic theory- sexual repression:

  • Some people block out sexual thoughts and feelings
  • They do so unconsciously for a variety of reasons o You can’t ask someone directly if they are sexually repressed and expect an accurate response
  • Perhaps inkblots?

Rorschach critique:

  • Rorschach norms are inadequate
  • May not work well across racial groups
  • Reliability is low or unknown for many scores
  • Number of responses influences scores
  • Poor factorial and predictive validity

Two main personality theories:

  • Trait theory- people differ on stable attributes o Characteristics lies on a continuum o Very popular in research settings
  • Type theory- people can be sorted into categories

From projective to self-report:

  • Self-report questionnaires are sometimes referred to as ‘objective personality tests’
  • This is only true in the context of a development away from projective tests, which were not considered objective
  • Trait theory measures are very typically self-report in nature

Trait theory- measures:

  • There are three popular models within trait theory:

o Big five o Five factor o Hexaco

  • Big five:
    • rpenness to experiences

Conscientiousness o Extraversion o Agreeableness o Neuroticism

  • Based on a factor analysis of adjectives in the dictionary
  • Five-factor:
    • Neuroticism o Extraversion o rpenness o Agreeableness o Conscientiousness
    • Based on a factor analysis of statements thought by Costa and McCrae to measure personality

NEO PI-R: Psychometrics- validity:

  • There is a lot of validity for the NEr PI-R scores
  • rverall, the validity coefficients tend to be rather low (.10 to .20)

Rater report:

  • Some argue that you can’t trust people to report their own personality honestly
  • Instead you should rely on people who know them well to rate that person’s personality

Rater report – reliability and validity:

  • Multiple raters of the same person tend to provide similar ratings for the same person
  • Inter-rater reliability for the five factor model dimensions- .69-.81.
  • Consensual validity: correlation between self-report ratings and rater report ratings- .46-.62.

Task based personality tests:

  • B. Cattell was one of the pioneers of using task-based tests to measure personality
  • Body-sway test:

o Subjects sway more when standing if regressed (gullible)

  • Not much validity evidence in favour of them
  • However almost all of the validity research is based on correlated the task-based scores with conventional self-report personality scores
  • Researchers don’t like it because it takes long to administer