Personality Assessment

1
Personality Assessment
2
Goals

• Understand the roles of personality assessment
• Understand the main ways of assessing personality
  that have been proposed/developed, with strengths
  and weaknesses
• Understand unique challenges to personality
  assessment
• Understand how to evaluate the quality of a
  personality assessment
• Insight into two or three of the most popular
  personality tests strengths/weaknesses

3
Role of Personality Assessment

• Where is personality assessment done?
• Discuss
• HR
• I/O Consultants
• Testing companies (e.g., PAR, Pearson)
• Clinical practice
• Dating

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Role of Personality Assessment

• Where is personality assessment done?
• Formal/Professional Venues
• Empirical Research
• Everyday life

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Types of Personality Assessment

• What types of personality assessment are you
  familiar with?
• If we wanted to know if one person is more
  extraverted than another, how could we find out?
• Discuss

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Types of Personality Assessment

• Clues to Personality (Kinds of data)
• Why clue?
• Each method has advantages disadvantages
• Self-report data
• Examples?
• Pros/cons?

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BFI
Neuroticism
Note Images borrowed from http//mgto.org/persona
lity-in-class-discussing-traits-through-examples/
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BFI
Trait Mean SD 68 range
Neuroticism 2.8 .8 2.0 - 3.6
Extraversion 3.5 .7 2.8 4.2
Openness 3.3 .7 2.6 4.0
Agreeableness 4.0 .6 3.4 4.6
Conscientiousness 3.7 .7 3.0 4.4
Neuroticism
Note Normative data are from 255 in Fall 2009, N
38
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Personality Research MethodsPersonality
Assessment - Methods

• 2. Informant data
• Examples
• Pros/cons

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(Nearly) First impression ratingsof row-mates

• Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confide
  nt). The tendency to experience unpleasant
  emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety,
  depression, and vulnerability. Neuroticism also
  refers to the degree of emotional liveliness.
• Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/res
  erved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency,
  assertiveness, sociability and the tendency to
  seek stimulation in the company of others, and
  talkativeness.
• Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. con
  sistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion,
  adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety
  of experience. Openness reflects the degree of
  intellectual curiosity, creativity and a
  preference for novelty and variety a person has.
  It is also described as the extent to which a
  person is imaginative or independent, and depicts
  a personal preference for a variety of activities
  over a strict routine.
• Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. analyti
  cal/detached). A tendency to be compassionate and 
  cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonisti
  c towards others. It is also a measure of one's
  trusting and helpful nature, and whether a person
  is generally well tempered or not.
• Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-g
  oing/careless). A tendency to be organized and
  dependable, show self-discipline, act dutifully,
  aim for achievement, and prefer planned rather
  than spontaneous behavior.

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Personality Research MethodsPersonality
Assessment - Methods

• 4. Life Outcomes
• Examples
• Pros/cons

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Personality Research MethodsPersonality
Assessment - Methods

• 3. Behavioral data
• Natural B data (eg, ESM, EAR, ARRB)
• Laboratory B data (in-lab obs, exp, pro, pro)
• Pros/cons

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Challenges to Personality Assessment

• What are some of the fundamental challenges that
  complicate personality assessment?
• Discuss
• Examples
• Social desirability
• Self-insight
• Hypothetical constructs
• No direct access to the qualities of the objects

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Personality AssessmentWhat is being measured?

• Many personality variables are theoretical
  constructs or latent variables
• Unseen characteristics that we assume exist
  somewhere inside the person.

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Personality Research MethodsPersonality
Assessment
Subjects Extraversion
Subjects Talkativeness
of friends in social network
Subjects self-report Score on BFI Extraversion
Scale
Friends rating of subjects Extraversion
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Personality AssessmentWhat is being measured?

• Many personality variables are theoretical
  constructs or latent variables
• Unseen characteristics that we assume exist
  somewhere inside the person.
• Is this unique to personality psych?
• Memory, attention, hunger
• Gravity

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Personality AssessmentDirect Access to qualities
of objects?

• Unique to personality?
• How to measure talkativeness?
• How to measure existence of a planet?
• How to measure length of a piece of lumber?

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Personality Assessment - Quality

• Quality of measurement
• How do we know if a personality assessment
  technique or tool is good?
• Two facets of measurement quality
• Reliability
• Construct Validity

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Personality Assessment - Quality

• Reliability
• Is the observed score a precise reflection of
  the true characteristic (whatever that
  characteristic might be)
• If we do the measurement over and over, do we get
  the same score each time? Do we consistently get
  the same score?
• 2 Kinds of reliability
• Test-retest reliability
• Internal Consistency reliability

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Personality Assessment - Quality

• Construct Validity
• What is the characteristics thats reflected by
  the test score?
• Does the test measure what its supposed to
  measure?
• E.g., if we have a questionnaire that supposedly
  measures depression does it really measure
  depression?
• Depression is the construct, is our test a
  valid measure of that construct?

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Personality Assessment - Quality

• Mikes Brief Neuroticism Questionnaire (MBNQ)
• Circle yes or no for each statement
• 1. I often get worried NO YES
• 2. I often hear strange voices NO YES
• 3. I have a fear of heights NO YES
• 4. I often get stressed out NO YES
• 5. I like animals NO YES
• 6. My favorite color is blue NO YES

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Personality Assessment - Quality

• How can we empirically evaluate a scales
  construct validity?
• Content validity
• Convergent validity
• Discriminant validity

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Personality Assessment

• Every time you hear about or go through a
  personality assessment, you should wonder about
  measurement
• How were the variables measured?
• Are there potential disadvantages to the
  measurement technique?
• Was the measure (eg, questionnaire) reliable and
  valid?

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Goals

• Understand the roles of personality assessment
• Understand the main ways of assessing personality
  that have been proposed/developed, with strengths
  and weaknesses
• Understand unique challenges to personality
  assessment
• Understand how to evaluate the quality of a
  personality assessment
• Insight into two or three of the most popular
  personality tests strengths/weaknesses

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Some well-known (if not particularly useful or
valid) personality assessment tools

• Rorshach
• MBTI Meyers Briggs Type Indicator (e.g., used
  by WFU career services)
• NEO-PI-R NEO- Personality Inventory
• HEXACO
• MMPI Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inv