Personality trait
Refers to differences among individuals in a typical tendency to behave, think, or feel in some conceptually related ways, across a variety of relevant situations + across some fairly long period of time.
Structured personality inventories
Are questionnaires that are used for obtaining self- and observer reports of personality
–> “structured” as the individuals being measured are given predetermined options for responding to various items
ex.: answering on yes/no-basis, 1-5 scale etc
Good reliability
Occurs when the average response of items is a good indicator of the element that is coming to those items
Good content validity
Occurs when the items describe a wide array in interests, all of which are related to the element being measured
Unstructured personality inventories/ Projective tests
Are questionnaires that allow individuals to respond in his/her unique way
- has incremental validity
- contrast to structure personality inventories
Projection
Is a defense mechanism by which individuals attribute their personality traits to others
–> concept that originated with Freud
Projective techniques
Involve presenting respondents with an ambiguous stimulus and asking them to disambiguate the stimulus
ex.: Rorschach inkblot
Projective hypothesis
States that respondents project aspects of their personality in the process of disambiguating unstructured test stimuli
Rorschach inkblot test (Projective test)
Contains a series of 10 inkblot patterns that an individual has to describe + interpret
–> designed to look like one thing in one part + something contradictory in another part
Exner Comprehensive System
(ECS)
Refers to a set of instructions that establishes detailed rules for
- Delivering the inkblot exam
- Interpreting the responses
–> provides norms
Measure conventionality
Refers to the
a) fitness
- adequacy of the object identified, considering its contours + location
b) frequency
- how often the particular object was named spontaneously
Criticism on ECS ?
1. Low reliability
2. Validity
- it is poorly equipped to identify most psychiatric conditions
3. Excessive false positives
- often characterizes normal people as having emotional problems
Thematic apperception test (TAT)
(Projective test)
Is a method that asks respondent to formulate a story based on ambiguous scenes in drawings on 31 cards
What is the purpose of the thematic apperception test (TAT)?
It is supposed to elicit information about a persons view of others, their attitudes towards the self + expectations about relationships
Criticism on Thematic apperception test (TAT)?
1. Low test-retest reliability
- there is no standardized administration of this test
2. Over-diagnosis
- lacks an effective scoring system
What are the 3 basic strategies/approaches to developing personality inventories ?
- Empirical strategy
- Factor-analytic strategy
- Rational strategy
Empirical strategy
Involves writing down a large number of items that describe a wide variety if actions, thought + feelings on various characteristics
Factor analytic strategy
Involves sorting correlated items together into the same category, while putting uncorrelated items into different ones
- each group of correlated items measures different traits
- can only be used when you already have the items
Rational strategy
Involves writing down items specifically for the purpose of assessing each trait to be measured
- conducted rationally in the sense that one tries to produce item that would rationally be considered relevant for the trait
–> HIGHEST VALIDITY IN RELIABILITY
When are the 3 different strategies to developing inventories used ?
What is the goal of research then ?
Rational
- when generating items for a given scale + guiding the selection of items for final scale
Factor analysis
- when making sure that items intended to measure directs traits really belong to those different factors
Empirical approach
- for empirical data, such as correlations with observer ratings on a trait
Lexical hypothesis
States that people will want to talk about personality traits that they view as having important consequences in their lives
–> the’ll therefore invent some words to describe people who have high/low levels of these important traits
Lexical approach (Strategy)
Using an already existing list of personality-descriptive adjectives that can be found in dictionaries of any language
Big five inventory (BFI)
Refers to a short measure of personality descriptive adjectives
- Extraversion
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Emotional stability
- Openness to experience
NEO-PI-R (Inventory)
Is a personality inventory that examines a person’s Big Five personality traits
- longer + revised
- Includes Neuroticism instead of emotional stability
=> Lexical approach
