ancient origins of personality testing
Temperament is directly influenced by our bodily fluids. When these fluids/humours are balanced, they produce perfect health but when unbalanced, they produce disease and disability.
Sanguine
Charismatic, stimulation-seeking, people-oriented, infectiously optimistic, disorganized, frivolous, impulsive
- body= blood
- element= air
- complexion= red-cheeked, full-bodied
Choleric
‘Leader temperament’, confident, overbearing, passionate, energetic, ambitious, strong-willed, dominant, quickly angered
Body = yellow bile Element = fire Complexion = red-haired, thin
melancholic
Introspective, reserved, quiet, idealistic, craves time alone, serious, intense, moody, sensitive, perfectionistic, careful in decision-making
Body = black bile Element = earth Complexion = sallow, thin
phlegmatic
Quiet, relaxed, stable, consistent, loyal, prone to passive-aggression, prone to laziness, meek, submissive
Body = phlegm Element = water Complexion = corpulent
Personality theory today: 3 levels
- Stable characteristics (personality traits, basic behavioral/emotional tendencies)
- Personal projection and concerns (what the person is doing and wants to achieve)
- Life story/ narrative (construction of an integrated identity)
Traits
- Basic tendencies/predispositions to act in a certain way
- Consistencies in behaviour
- Influence behaviour across a variety of situations
The Big 5
- Neuroticism (anxiety, depression, self-consciousness, vulnerability)
- Extraversion (warmth, positive emotions, activity)
- Openness to experience (feelings, ideas, values, creativity)
- Agreeableness (trust, compliance, modesty)
- Conscientiousness (order, duty, competence, self-discipline)
Each of the factors is supposed to be related to psychological well-being
As well as adjustment in adolescence
Also provides a framework for understanding personality disorder
The big 5 across cultures
5 factors measured using NEO-PI
5-factor structure replicated in 26 different cultures
But with varying degrees of fidelity
E.g., some cultures might encourage modesty but discourage trust; or promote openness to ideas but inhibit openness to feelings
E.g., Chinese lower on Extraversion than US/Western World
E.g., Zimbabweans lower on Neuroticism than US/Western World
The 16PF (Cattel)
Measures 16 primary factors
And 5 second-order factors
Different from the common ‘big 5’
Provides clinicians with a normal-range measurement of anxiety, adjustment, emotional stability, and behavioural problems
16PF- useful for
- measures normal personality
- can be useful to diagnose psychiatric disorders
- can help with prognosis and therapy planning
The myers-briggs type indicator (MBTI)
-Based on Jung’s theory of psychological type
-4 bi-polar scales
Bi-polar meaning you can fall on a continuum between the one end of the scale and the other
Scales: Extroversion-Introversion Thinking-Feeling Sensing-Intuition Judgement-Perception
4 poles of the scales combined to form 16 personality types on a grid
E.g., ENTP or ISFJ
People assigned the same type said to share certain characteristics
Different types are supposed to function better in different environments
The Minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (MMPI)
Developed using a criterion-keying approach
Involves collecting data from 2 groups – one is the normal group, the other the criterion group
The criterion group is defined has having a specific condition
MMPI: What is measured?
- Hypochondirasis- concern with bodily symptoms
- depression
- hysteria- awareness of problems and vulnerabilities
- psychopathic deviate- conflict, anger, struggle
- masculinity/femininity- stereotypical male/female behaviours
- paranoia- level of trust
- psychasthenia- worry, anxiety
- schizophrenia- odd thinking and social alienation
- hypomania- level of excitability
- social introversion- people orientation
MMPI uses
Help develop treatment plans Help with diagnosis Help answer legal questions Screen job candidates Part of therapeutic assessment
Standardized test of adult personality and psychopathology
Unstructured personality tests
- Unstructured tests are supposed to measure motives that underlie behaviour
- Cannot be measure in the same way as traits
- They are supposed to involve wishes, desires, and goals
- They are unconscious and implicit
Thematic apperception test (TAT)
- Person must make up stories about vague or ambiguous pictures
- Stories must be as dramatic as possible
- Describe the thoughts and feelings of the characters
- Individual supposedly projects their wishes/desires, needs, conflicts, etc., into the story
- Focus in interpretation is on the motives, trends, feeling of the hero in the story
TAT is also known as the picture completion personality test.
TAT measures 3 major motives
- Achievement motive (need to do better, individuals tend to be interested in business and entrepreneurship)
- power motive (need to make an impact on people)
- intimacy motive (the need to feel close to people, People high in this motive spend more time thinking about relationships and making warm contact with other people)
Other projective/unstructured personality tests
- Rorschach - inkblot
- draw a person
- sentence completion-Person supposedly projects aspects of their personality onto responses
Cross-cultural use of personality tests
Constructs must have the same meaning across cultures
Bias analysis must be done
Solutions to biased tests:
Caution in interpretation
Cross-cultural adaptation of test
