- Key People:
- June Etta Downey
- Henry Murray
personality assessment
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What is personality in psychology?
In psychology, personality refers to the characteristic ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that distinguish one person from another. It encompasses moods, attitudes, and opinions, and is most evident in interactions with others.
Personality assessment seeks to define traits, measure them objectively, and relate them to socially significant aspects of behavior. These assessments provide measures of characteristics such as feelings, emotional states, motivations, and attitudes. A variety of approaches exist for evaluating personality, including interviews, rating scales, self-reports, personality inventories, and observations.
The five-factor model divides personality into five traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
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What does personality assessment mean?
Personality assessment measures personal characteristics to advance psychological theory and research and to increase the probability that wise decisions will be made in applied settings. It is based on the assumption that much of the observable variability in behaviour results from differences in the extent to which individuals possess particular underlying personal characteristics, or traits.
The scientific approach to personality measurement seeks to describe human characteristics in quantitative terms, which is especially useful in comparing groups of people as well as individuals. A variety of methods and techniques are used in personality assessment, including interviews, rating scales, self-reports, personality inventories, and behavioral observation.
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How do psychologists measure or assess personality?
Psychologists use diverse methods to measure and assess personality, including interviews, rating scales, self-reports, personality inventories, projective techniques, and behavioral observation.
- Interviews These can be research-focused or clinical, gathering information about work experiences, attitudes, and biographical data.
- Self-report inventories These employ questionnaires with true/false or multiple-choice questions.
- Behavioral assessments Objective observation of a subject’s behavior to identify behavioral problems.
- Projective techniques These use ambiguous stimuli, like inkblots or incomplete sentences, to reveal inner feelings and defense mechanisms.
The validity and reliability of these assessments are crucial for ensuring trustworthy and ethically sound evaluations.
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What are some common types of personality tests?
Personality tests assess characteristics like feelings, motivations, and interpersonal approaches. Diverse methods exist, including interviews, self-reports, and observations.
Common types of personality tests:
* Self-report inventories These are convenient and objectively scored, with true-false or multiple-choice questions. An example is the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), which uses scales to identify clinical groups like those with schizophrenia or depression.
* Projective tests These tests use ambiguous stimuli, like inkblots or pictures, to reveal personality aspects by projecting internal attitudes.
* Enneagram A system classifying personality types based on a nine-pointed figure, with each point representing a personality type and its motivations.4 Britannica SourcesCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles. -
Why do people take personality assessments?
People take personality assessments to define and measure personal characteristics or traits objectively and relate them to behavior. These tests quantify characteristics, which helps compare individuals or groups from different backgrounds.
Personality assessments are used for various reasons:
* In clinical settings, they aid in making diagnoses and planning treatments.
* They assist in employee selection.
* They are valuable in psychological research, such as examining test anxiety.These assessments provide insights into feelings, emotional states, motivations, and interpersonal approaches. While diverse methods exist, including interviews, self-reports, and observations, ethical considerations are paramount due to the probing nature of these assessments.
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What are some strengths and weaknesses of personality assessments?
Personality assessments involve various techniques to measure personal characteristics, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
Strengths:
* They provide quantitative data for comparing individuals and groups, which is useful in research and applied settings like employee selection.
* Self-report inventories are easy to administer, objectively scored, and convenient for screening large groups.
* They help in clinical settings for diagnosis, treatment planning, and assessing feelings, motivations, and attitudes.Weaknesses:
* Responses can be easily faked or manipulated, which affects validity.
* Some tests have limited predictive value in individual cases, leading to errors.
* Establishing validity is challenging due to the subjective judgment in selecting criteria.
* Self-reports may not always be accurate indicators of personality traits.1 Britannica SourceCreated from Britannica articles using AI. AI can make mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.
personality assessment, the measurement of personal characteristics. Assessment is an end result of gathering information intended to advance psychological theory and research and to increase the probability that wise decisions will be made in applied settings (e.g., in selecting the most promising people from a group of job applicants). The approach taken by the specialist in personality assessment is based on the assumption that much of the observable variability in behaviour from one person to another results from differences in the extent to which individuals possess particular underlying personal characteristics (traits). The assessment specialist seeks to define these traits, to measure them objectively, and to relate them to socially significant aspects of behaviour.
A distinctive feature of the scientific approach to personality measurement is the effort, wherever possible, to describe human characteristics in quantitative terms. How much of a trait manifests itself in an individual? How many traits are present? Quantitative personality measurement is especially useful in comparing groups of people as well as individuals. Do groups of people from different cultural and economic backgrounds differ when considered in the light of their particular personality attributes or traits? How large are the group differences?
Overt behaviour is a reflection of interactions among a wide range of underlying factors, including the bodily state of the individual and the effects of that person’s past personal experiences. Hence, a narrowly focused approach is inadequate to do justice to the complex human behaviour that occurs under the constantly changing set of challenges, pleasures, demands, and stresses of everyday life. The sophisticated measurement of human personality inescapably depends on the use of a variety of concepts to provide trait definitions and entails the application of various methods of observation and evaluation. Personality theorists and researchers seek to define and to understand the diversity of human traits, the many ways people have of thinking and perceiving and learning and emoting. Such nonmaterial human dimensions, types, and attributes are constructs—in this case, inferences drawn from observed behaviour. Widely studied personality constructs include anxiety, hostility, emotionality, motivation, and introversion-extroversion. Anxiety, for example, is a concept, or construct, inferred in people from what they say, their facial expressions, and their body movements.
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Personality is interactional in two senses. As indicated above, personal characteristics can be thought of as products of interactions among underlying psychological factors; for example, an individual may experience tension because he or she is both shy and desirous of social success. These products, in turn, interact with the types of situations people confront in their daily lives. A person who is anxious about being evaluated might show debilitated performance in evaluative situations (for example, taking tests), but function well in other situations in which an evaluative emphasis is not present. Personality makeup can be either an asset or a liability depending on the situation. For example, some people approach evaluative situations with fear and foreboding, while others seem to be motivated in a desirable direction by competitive pressures associated with performance.
Measuring constructs
Efforts to measure personality constructs stem from a variety of sources. Frequently they grow out of theories of personality; anxiety and repression (the forgetting of unpleasant experiences), for example, are among the central concepts of the theory of psychoanalysis. It is understandable that efforts would be made to quantify one’s degree of anxiety, for example, and to use the score thus obtained in the assessment of and in the prediction of future behaviour. Among the major issues in the study of personality measurement is the question of which of the many personality constructs that have been quantified are basic or fundamental and which can be expected to involve wasted effort in their measurement because they represent poorly defined combinations of more elemental constructs; which measurement techniques are most effective and convenient for the purpose of assessment; and whether it is better to interview people in measuring personality, or to ask them to say, for example, what an inkblot or a cloud in the sky reminds them of.
Efforts to measure any given personality construct can fail as a result of inadequacies in formulating or defining the trait to be measured and weaknesses in the assessment methods employed. An investigator might desire to specify quantitatively the degree to which individuals are submissive in social and competitive situations. His effectiveness will depend on the particular theory of submissiveness he brings to bear on the problem; on the actual procedures he selects or devises to measure submissiveness; and on the adequacy of the research he performs to demonstrate the usefulness of the measure. Each of these tasks must be considered carefully in evaluating efforts to measure personality attributes.
The methods used in personality description and measurement fall into several categories that differ with regard to the type of information gathered and the methods by which it is obtained. While all should rely on data that come from direct observations of human behaviour if they are to have at least the semblance of scientific value, all may vary with regard to underlying assumptions, validity, and reliability (consistency, in this case).
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