Personality Assessment

Personality is tested or measured in many situations. Industry and the military

services, for example, often select persons on the basis of personality test results.
Someone who seeks psychotherapy may be given personality tests to identify his
problems. Personality assessment techniques are also used in mental hospitals and clinics
to aid in diagnosis and to measure improvement after treatment.

As you read the text, try to answer the following questions.

• What is a personality inventory?

• Are there objective ways to measure personality?

Just as there are many definitions of personality, there are also many different ways
of assessing or measuring personality. The assessment procedure used depends upon the
purpose of the assessment.

A general division exists between objective and subjective assessment. An

assessment procedure is objective if it produces results that fall into well-defined
categories or score values. Little or no interpretation is required when an objective
procedure is used. A subjective procedure requires the assessor to make a judgment. The
assessment procedures we shall discuss are interviews, rating scales, inventories,
projective techniques, and situational or behavioral methods.

THE INTERVIEW

An interviewer must be both objective and skilled

The most commonly used method of personality assessment is the interview. If

we want to know something about someone, we ask him. Interviews are subjective
assessments but their degree of subjectivity can vary a great deal. In a standardized
situation the interviewer asks questions that are prepared in advance. This is less
subjective than a "non-directive" interview in which the subject says what he pleases and
the interviewer comments on what the subject says. But even in two standardized
situations with identical questions a subject may give different replies to two
interviewers. He may regard one as friendly because of his tone of voice and the other as
hostile because of the way he looks. Therefore, personality assessments based on
interviews are not very reliable.

Interviews can sometimes obtain reliable data of a statistical nature. Interviews

may also be used to probe the deepest areas of an individual's personality, but in this case
the training, skill, and sophistication of the interviewer must be of the highest order. Even
then, problems of reliability may arise.
RATING SCALES

Rating scales are particularly sensitive to a reviewer's overall impression

A rating scale is a quantitative technique for making a judgment about some

aspect of personality. For example, a nursery-school teacher may be asked to check along
the following line to rate each child for cooperativeness.

|_______________|_________________|__________________|_________________|

Very Uncooperative Usually Uncooperative Sometimes Cooperative Usually Cooperative

Very Cooperative

In spite of their simplicity, there are a number of disadvantages to such scales.

Most people have a tendency to rate a person consistently high because of a favorable
general impression or consistently low because of a poor one. This "halo effect" is
difficult to avoid. But, since they are easy to use and provide rough data readily, rating
scales continue to play an important part in personality assessment.

PERSONALITY INVENTORIES

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), the most widely used
of all personality inventories, was developed by S. R. Hathaway and J. C. McKinley. It
was devised to provide scores on a large number of aspects of personality both within and
beyond the normal range. The MMPI consists of 556 statements to which a subject
responds true if the statement applies to him and false if it does not. The test can reveal
disturbances in such areas as hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, paranoia, and
schizophrenia. In addition, there is a scale that indicates the carefulness with which the
subject took the test. Another scale indicates whether the subject attempted to distort the
result by answering falsely.

Some examples of items on the MMPI are ``It is safer to trust nobody"; "I wish I
were not bothered by thoughts about sex"; "I do not always tell the truth"; and "I am not
afraid of mice." Figure 1 shows additional typical items from this test. The answer in
parentheses would support the diagnosis given above each item.

Hypochondriasis Hs
I am bothered by acid stomach several times a week. (True)
Depression (D) scale
I am easily awakened by noise. true)
Hysteria (Hy) scale
I like to read newspaper articles on crime. (False)
Psychopathic deviate (Pd) scale
I am neither gaining nor losing weight. (False)
Masculinity-feminity (Mfl scale
When I take a new job, I like to be tipped off on who should be gotten next to.
 (False)
Paranoia (Pa) scale
I have never been in trouble with the law. (False)
Psychasthenia (Pt) scale
I am inclined to take things hard. (True)
Schizophrenia (Sc) scale
I get all the sympathy I should. (False)
Hypomania (Ma) scale
I never worry about my looks. (True)
Social introversion (Si) scale
People generally demand more respect for their own rights than they are willing to
allow for others. (True)
(From Dahlstrom and Welsh, 1960)
Figure 1. Typical items from the MMPI with scales indicated

Personality inventories provide comparative data

The principal difference between a rating scale and a personality inventory is in

the scoring. The scoring of the rating scale is based on the personal opinion of the rater.
The scoring of the MMPI depends on extensive empirical research. If a teacher rates one
child as very cooperative and another as uncooperative, her meaning is clear. But one
cannot judge the meaning of a positive response to an item in an inventory until one
determines what class of individuals respond positively to that item. A diagnosis is based
on many items, and on patterns of responses, not on just one item.

PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

Projective techniques were developed to delve deeply into a subject's personality.

In a projective test the subject is presented with an ambiguous stimulus. He is asked to
tell what he sees in the stimulus, and he "projects" his personality info his answers. The
psychologist then makes a subjective appraisal of the subject's responses. To an item in
an inventory a subject may respond only yes, no, or cannot say the ways of responding to
a projective item are virtually unlimited.

The Rorschach test, named after the Swiss psychiatrist who designed it, is
probably the best known of the projective techniques. It consists of a series of 10 cards,
each of which contains an inkblot. Some are in black and white; others are in color. The
instructions to the subject are brief. He is given a card and asked to report what he sees.
Figure 2 shows an example of the type of figure used.

Blots similar to this one are shown to a subject with the instruction to indicate
what he sees in them. After all the subject's responses are recorded, the examiner asks
questions about them in an attempt to discover what it was about each card that
determined the responses.
 Projective tests elicit responses that have been found typical of certain
personalities

Scoring of projective tests is based on norms. A subject's response to a card as a

"bat" will be interpreted differently depending on whether that response is made most
often by hospitalized schizophrenics or whether it is a typical response for college
students.

Another widely used projective technique is the Thematic Apperception Test

(TAT) developed by Morgan and Murray (1935). This test consists of a series of pictures.
The subject is asked to make up a story about each one. The test is based on the
assumption that the themes of a subject's stories reflect his own needs, fantasies, and
aspirations. A sample drawing is shown in Figure 3.

SITUATIONAL METHODS

The most direct way to predict an individual's behavior in a natural situation is to

place him in a test situation that closely resembles a natural one. The investigator then
observes his behavior and assumes he will behave similarly in the natural situation. Stress
interviews are examples of this technique. The interviewer deliberately tries to induce
anxiety in the subject to determine how he behaves under stress.

Situational methods place the subject in a "model” of the real life situation

The United States Office of Strategic Services in World War II (1943) used a
situational technique to assess candidates. The stress interview is an example of their
technique. Each candidate was given the following instructions.

The examination you are to undergo is designed to test your resourcefulness,

agility of mind, and ability to think quickly, effectively, and convincingly. This is an
important test and it is important that you do well. In twelve (12) minutes report to the
basement room at the foot of the stairs.

The test will measure your ability to establish and maintain a cover story for the
situation outlined below. Your cover story must be told convincingly, intelligently, and
clearly. The examiners will try to trip you up on your story, to lead you into
inconsistencies, and in general to confuse you. Several students in the past have failed in
this test because they forgot or did not understand the directions and requirements We
are listing below the important "rules” of this examination. If you do not remember these
rules, you will fail

1. Your cover story must give a plausible and innocent reason for your actions.

2. You must answer every question asked. Answers like, "I don't remember," "I don't
know," "I am not permitted to disclose that information,” etc., are not permissible and
will count against you in the final rating.
3. You must avoid breaking either personal or organizational security in your answers.
None of your replies should disclose your former occupation, place of residence, etc.

Here is the situation for which you are to construct a cover story:

A night watchman at 9:00 P.M. found you going through some papers in a file marked
"SECRET" in a government of office in Washington. You are NOT an employee of the
agency occupying the building in which this office is located. You had no identification
papers whatsoever with you. The night watchman has brought you here for questioning.

In developing your cover story you may assume that you are clothed in any manner you
wish

After reading the instructions the candidate was taken to a room where he was
seated facing a spotlight. Staff members then began his interrogation. The candidate was
grilled in a gruff, aggressive manner by some staff members, while others asked
questions in a quiet, conciliatory way. After 10 minutes the candidate was told he had
failed the test, and his reaction to this was noted carefully. After he left the room the staff
members rated him for emotional stability and security, which were judged by his degree
of poise and control. Then the candidate was further tested in a post-stress interview. He
walked into another room where another staff member did everything possible to make
him feel comfortable and relaxed. This staff member then asked, "Well, how have things
been going?" About half the candidates broke their cover during the post-stress interview,
since they thought it was not part of the test. How they behaved when they were told that
the interview also was part of the procedure contributed more information about their
personality. Subjects apparently behave differently when they know the situation is
contrived

What can be said about the validity of these procedures? They certainly seem to
be valid. That is, it looks like these tests measure what they are supposed to measure. The
Office of Strategic Services could not validate its methods during wartime. Attempts by
many others to validate such techniques have shown that people act differently in the real
situations than in the test situations. In general, it seems that situational methods, despite
their attractiveness, do not contribute as much to personality assessment as originally
hoped.
 MODULE 2
PROGRESS CHECK 1

Now test yourself without looking back.

1. The MMPI is a(n):

a. projective technique.
b. subjective personality test.
c. interview technique.
d. personality inventory.

2. A type of personality test that tries to measure is a(n) a person's reactions in

circumstances resembling real life_____________________________

3. A personality test in which the subject is given a relatively ambiguous stimulus and is
asked to describe it would be:
a. a personality inventory.
b. . a projective test.
c. an interview.
d. a situational test.

4. People often give others consistently high or low ratings when using rating scales. This
consistency is called the
____________________________________________________.

5. A psychologist talks with someone in order to understand his personality. This form of
assessment is a(n):
a. rating scale.
b. interview.
c. projective technique.
d. situational method.

MODULE 2
EXERCISES

The interview method of personality assessment requires the assessor to interpret the
subject's responses to understand his personal ity. The interview, then, is
a(n)____________________________ (subjective/objective) method.

____________________________________________8

The rating scale is used in personality assessment to give values to amounts of a

characteristic or trait in an individual's personality. The rating scale is a(n)
(subjective/objective) method._____________________________________5
Match.

1 ) Objective_______

2) Subjective__________

a. The assessor does not have to interpret the results.

b. The assessor interprets the results. An interview

c. An interview

d. A rating scale

____________________________ 4

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is an inventory assessment technique

that has been empirically validated. The administrator of an MMPI:

a. interviews the subject to get an impression of his personality.

b. scores the test according to scales supplied with the test.

c. has the subject make up stories about the ambiguous pictures.

d. instructs the subject to participate in a situation resembling a stressful event in real life.

____________________________________ 6

Projective personality tests are those in which the subject receives an ambiguous stimulus
and responds in some characteristic way. The subject projects his personality into the
response. Which of the following is an example of a projective test?

a. The subject is shown a picture in the Thematic Apperception Test. He is asked to make
up a story about it.

b. The subject is shown an inkblot in the Rorschach test. He tells what he sees.

c. The subject marks, like, dislike, or cannot say on an MMPI.

d. The subject is placed in a highly structured "real-life" situation and is observed.

_______________________________________3
A disadvantage in the use of rating scales for personality assessment is called the "halo"
effect. Raters tend to rate an individual consistently high or low. Which of the following
illustrates the halo effect?

a. A professor gives each student a pass or fail rating in Introductory Psychology. The
data show that students using individualized instructional materials pass more I
frequently.

b. A nursery-school teacher rates each child's reading readiness on a scale from 1 (not
ready) to 5 (already reading). The data show that the children fall below national norms.

c. An elementary-school teacher rates each sixth grader on intelligence, responsibility,

initiative and cooperation. The data show that these qualities tend to cluster in the same
individuals.

__________________________________7

In a stress technique, the subject is placed in a simulated real-life environment and his
behavior is observed. This is a(n):
a. situational method.
b. projective method.
c. interview method.

NOW TAKE PROGRESS CHECK 2

1 ratio
2a
3 a, b
4 1) a, d
2) b,c

5 objective
6b
7c
8 subjective
 MODULE 2
PROGRESS CHECK 2

1. Match.

1 ) Objective_______
2) Subjective_______ a. MMPI
b. Interview
c. Rating scale

2. The Rorschach inkblot test is a(n):

a. projective technique.
b. interview technique.
c. situational test.
d. personality inventory.

3. The tendency to rate people consistently high or low on several rating scales is called
the________________________

4. The personality test in which the subject is scored on his answers to a large number of
specific questions is a(n)
a. projective technique.
b. subjective personality test.
c. interview technique.
d. personality inventory.

5. A subject is placed in a simulated real-life setting and observed. This evaluation

method is called _____________________________________
 PROGRESS CHECK ANSWER KEYS

MODULE 2
Progress Check 1
1. d
2. situational test
3. b
4. halo effect
5. b

Progress Check 2
1. 1) a, c
2) b

2. a
3. halo effect
4. d
5. a situational (or behavioral) test

Date Access: Nov. 12, 2005

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