Personality Testing

Personality Testing

1. Objective

   • Self-report questionaires
     • A method which involves asking a participant about their feelings, attitudes, beliefs etc
       • Weaknesses
         • Patients might also simpy be mistaken or misremember the material covered by the survey
         • Patients may exaggerate symptoms in order to make their situation seem worse, or they may under-report the severity or frequency of symptoms in order to minimise their problems
         • Social desirability bias
         • Subjective
           • Researchers bias
           • Answers open to interpretation
         • Misunderstanding of the question
       • Strengths
         • Participants can describe experiences in their own words (therefore more detailed and in-depth data)
         • Large quantities of data can be collected quickly and easily (from a large number of people as well)

2. Projective

   • TAT (Thematic Apperception Test)
     • Evaluate a person's patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capacity, and emotional responses to ambiguous test materials
       • In addition to assessing the content of the stories that the subject is telling, the examiner evaluates the subjects manner, vocal tone, posture, hesitations, and other signs of an emotional response
     • Ambiguous materials
       • a set of cards that portray human figures in a variety of settings and situations
     • The subject is asked to tell the examiner a story about each card that includes the following elements: the event shown in the picture; what has lead up to it; what the characters in the picture are feeling and thinking; and the outcome of the event
     • Very Subjective
   • Rorschach inkblot
     • Consists of a series of ten inkblots
       • Participants asked to describe what they see
     • Complex scoring systems are used to interpret the subjects' responses
       • Scores are based on various characteristics of responses, such as the originality of the response and the area of the blot described in the response
     • Provides information about the subjects' personality traits and the situational stresses the subject may be experiencing
     • Subjective - open for interpretation

3. Gordon Allport

   • He had lots of questions and trawled through dictionaries

4. Cattell

   • 16 factor personality test
     • His personality test consists of 164 statements about yourself, for each indicate how accurate it is on the scale of 1 (disagree) to 5 (agree)
   • Cattell found that variations in human personality could be best explained by a model that has 16 variables (personality traits), using a statistical procedure known as factor analysis
     • Warmth, Reasoning, Emotional Stability, Dominance, Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, Social Boldness, Sensitivity, Vigilance, Abstractedness, Privateness, Apprehension, Openness to Change, Self-Reliance, Perfectionism, Tension

5. McCrae & Costa

   • Big Five - OCEAN
     • Big Five personality traits are five broad domains or dimensions of personality that are used to describe human personality
       • Openness, conscienciousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism
       • Beneath each factor, a cluster of correlated specific traits are found (eg extraversion includes such related qualities as gregariousness, assertiveness, excitement seeking, warmth, positive emotion)
     • Comprehensive, empirical, data-driven research finding
   • Refined the 16 factors to 5