E-411 PRMA

Lecture 16 Personality Assessments

What is personality?

Personality is ...

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

So ... what is a trait?

Personality trait

Any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another
Tend to be stable
Traits are relative
A characteristic of someone

Personality types

A type is a similar pattern of traits to a pre-exisiting suite of personalities
These are descriptions of someone
Test consist of subtests that will results in a profile (personality profile)

Type A vs. Type B personality: Which one are you?

[click the above]

Personality state

Refers to a short-term, ephemeral trait

How do you feel during a test? At the doctor's?

How can we use personality assessments?

Who is reporting

Self-reporting

Often the person supplies information about their personality (self-reporting)

May be from diaries or an 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?

Another person

May want/need a spouse, parent, teacher, boss, friend,or trained observer as the informant
Informant may know the subject being studied very well, perhaps better than themself
Lots of measurement issues though!!!

Biased leading to be too generous or severe
May want to rate person as "normal", i.e. in the middle
Something may overshadow (the halo effect)
Context important
Other problems?

What is being measured

Assessments and response styles

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 on a test - validity scale

Where is it being measured

How is it being measured

How factors: focus and the framework

Does it have a narrow or wide focus

Does it measure just one aspect or many aspects of personality

Theoretical or atheoretical

Is it based on a theoretical framework of personality
For example, psychoanalysis
Most popular instrument, MMPI, is atheoretical

How factors: assessment and item format

Myriad of formats used: traditional test, interviews, performance tasks, etc

They may be structured or unstructured

Most important is a clear definition of the construct of interest!

How factors: frame of reference

Now, in the past, in the future

How I see myself, how others see me, etc

Q-sort technique, ranking of variables based on some instruction

"Most how I feel about this course" to "Least how I feel about this course"

Based on Q-factor analysis

Adjective checklist and sentence completion

How factors: scoring

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?