An individual's unique assemblage of psychological traits over time
Just like intelligence, there is no consensus
Personality is defined by the particular empiricial concepts which are a part of the theory of personality employed by the observer
Refers to a short-term, ephemeral trait
How do you feel during a test? At the doctor's?
Often the person supplies information about their personality (self-reporting)
From a diary or interview and can elicit very private information
Self-report measures self-concept (e.g. Beck Self-Concept Test)
What are some measurement issues with this?
Lots of measurement issues though!!!
May measure thoughts, feelings, behaviors
Can also measure response style (characteristic response pattern independent of the content)
Are they being honest?
Are they responding in a socially desirable way?
These are validity issues
Attempts to measure this within a test - validity scale
Cattell in the 1940's - 16 primary factors
Are these distinct?
The Big Five
Extraversion, Emotional Stability, Openness, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness
Recall, a criterion is a standard or benchmark used for decisions
A criterion group is a homogeneous, reference group that serves as the basis for deciding whether items should be included on a final version of an instrument
This process is known as empirical criterion keying
Let's measure extraversion
Range from simple summing of responses to complex algorithms requiring experts
Depends on test makers approach to personality
Is it a nomothetic vs. idiographic approach?
Is scoring normative or ipsative?
Many different scales and very long, see Table 12-3
Lots and lots of supplementary scales
Includes three validity scale
Needed a more representative sample
Rewrote and write lots of new items
Added items about drugs, suicde, marriage, work, Type A behaviors
Even more validity scales
MMPI-2-RF Need to added the demoralization factor
Need to reduce overlap in items on multiple scales (discriminant validity)
Also added higher-order scales (e.g. Internalizing dysfunction) (Table 12-4)
MMPI-A, adolescent version
A moving target!
One's culture shapes their world view and identity (acculturation)
As do ones values and identity
Presents unique and difficult situation for constructing tests
Items that can be scored "objectively"
Multiple-choice, true-false, matching
Number endorsed may represent strength of trait
Intricately tied to theoretical slant and reporter's honesty
Number endorsed may represent strength of trait
What might be some practical and psychometric benefits of this approach?
What did you see in that toast?
What, if anything, does it say about you?
We put our own meaning into toast consistent with our personality (projective hypothesis)
Projective methods - judgments and inferences about our personality based on how we view the toast
Any unstructured stimulus could be used (e.g. words, pictures, drawings)
Indirectly soliciting information from a responder
Word association - testtakers responds to a stimulus word with the first word that comes to mind
Response and time to response are noted
Sentence completion - testtaker completes a sentence or phrase
Early, though largely unused, attempts to elicit response to sound
Several figure drawing tests exists where testtakers are instructed to draw a picture
Various (unusual?) attributes of the picture are analyzed
Like the other methods, these are psychometric soundness questionable
analgoue study - investigate related variables to the variable of actual interest
How might we access fear of falling using an analogue study? And how can we be sure that this being effective?
examine how people perform under particular situations
What might be some situations we would want to investigate?