Personality Testing

Assessing Personality

Psychological tests assess a person’s abilities, aptitudes, interests or personality based on a systematically obtained sample of behavior.

2 Basic Goals1.Accurately & consistently reflect a person’s characteristics on some dimension.2.Predicts a person’s future psychological functioning or behavior.

Psychological Testing

Aspects of personality can be assessed by:Observational methods InterviewsPersonality tests.

Personality tests are more standardized and economical than either observations or interviews.

A test must be reliable and valid.

Assessing personality

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

Personality Assessment

Presentation and interpretation of a series of black and white and colored inkblotsDeveloped in 1921.

Personality test that seeks to identify people’s inner feelings by analyzing their interpretations of 10 inkblots

Numerous scoring systems exist

Rorschach Inkblot 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

Thematic Apperception Test

Examiner or test situation may influence individual’s response

Scoring is highly subjectiveTests fail to produce consistent results

(reliability problem)Tests are poor predictors of future behavior

(validity problem)

Drawbacks to Projective Tests

Assessing Personalitypersonality inventories

Questionnaires on which people respond to items designed to gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviorsUsed to assess selected personality traitsOften true-false, agree-disagree, etc. types of questions

Person’s responses to standardized questions are compared to established norms.

Personality Inventories

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).

Validity

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.

Reliability

Testing for Traits: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.

Assessing personality-Objective Tests

Advantages: Unlike projective tests, which rely on interpretation, objective tests can be easily scored, very cheap, and can be quickly

administered

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

Assessing personality-Objective Tests

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Originally designed to assess abnormal behavior

Most clinically-used personality test500 total questions

MMPI

MMPI Scoring Profile

Revised and updated version of the MMPIAssesses test takers on 10 clinical scales and 15 content scales

Sometimes the MMPI-2 is not used as it was intended.

MMPI-2

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.

Other Self-Report Inventories

How can these aid in employee selection?

Personality tests and careers

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.

Personality Tests and Employee Selection

Standardized—each person receives same instructions and responds to the same questionsUse of established norms: results are compared to previously established norms and are not subjectively evaluated

Greater reliability and validity than projective tests.

Strengths 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

Weaknesses of Self-Reports