Chapter 5:

Personality Assessment I: Personality

Testing and its Consequences
The Personality Puzzle
Sixth Edition
by David C. Funder

Slides created by
Tera D. Letzring
Idaho State University
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 Objectives
• Discuss the nature of personality assessment
• Discuss whether personality tests provide S or
B data
• Discuss projective and objective tests
• Discuss the methods of objective test
construction
• Discuss the purposes and potential problems
of personality testing
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 The Nature of
Personality Assessment
• More than just measuring traits
• Personality definition
– Also measure motives, intentions, goals,
strategies, and how people perceive and construct
the world

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 The Nature of
Personality Assessment
• Not restricted to psychologists
– How did you decide whom to have as a
roommate?
– How did you decide which free-time activities to
do?
– More important than those made by psychologists

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 The Nature of
Personality Assessment
• Most important to know: degree to which the
judgment or test is right or wrong
– Professional judgments or tests: validity
– Amateur judgments: accuracy
• Two basic criteria
– Agreement
– Prediction

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 Personality Tests
• Used by psychologists, corporations, and the
military
• Omnibus inventories vs. one trait measures
• Most tests provide S data.
• Some tests provide B data.
– Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI)
– Implicit Association Test (IAT)
– Intelligence
– Also known as performance-based instruments

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 IAT
Me Others

Them

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 IAT
Shy Not shy

Inhibited

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 IAT
Me Others
or or
Shy Not shy

Candid

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 IAT
Me Others
or or
Not shy Shy

Outgoing

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 IAT
• Theory: People who implicitly, or
nonconsciously, know they have a certain trait
will respond faster when the trait is paired
with “me.”

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 Personality Tests: Projective Tests
• Definition
• Answers are thought to reveal inner
psychological states, motivations, needs,
feelings, experiences, or thought processes
• B data
• Rorschach Test, Draw-A-Person test, Thematic
Apperception Test (TAT)
• Used by clinical psychologists
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 Personality Tests: Projective Tests
• Disadvantages
– Validity evidence is scarce.
– Expensive and time-consuming
– A psychologist cannot be sure about what they
mean.
– Other less expensive tests work as well or better.

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 Personality Tests: Projective Tests
• Advantages
– Good for breaking the ice
– Some skilled clinicians may be able to use them to
get information not captured in other types of
tests.

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 Personality Tests: Evaluating the
Rorschach and the TAT
• Some evidence of validity
• Rorschach
– Exner’s Comprehensive System or Klopfer’s system
– Valid for predicting certain outcomes
– Used by 82% of clinical psychologists
– Little evidence of incremental validity
• TAT
– Highly reliable scoring for new form

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 Personality Tests: Evaluating the
Rorschach and the TAT
• People score differently on projective and
objective measures.
• Projective and objective measures predict
different outcomes.

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 Personality Tests: Objective Tests
• Definition
• Validity and the subjectivity of test items
– Items are still not absolutely objective.
• Why so many items?
– The principle of aggregation
– Spearman-Brown formula

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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Rational
• Definition
• Based on a theory or sometimes less
systematic
• Provides S data

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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Rational
• Four conditions for validity
– Items mean the same thing to the test taker
and creator.
– Capability for accurate self-assessment
– Willingness to make an accurate and
undistorted report
– Items must be valid indicators of the
construct.
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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Factor Analytic
• Definition
• Steps for using this method
– Generate a long list of objective items.
– Administer these items to a large number of
people.
– Analyze with a factor analysis.
– Consider what the items that group together have
in common and name the factor.

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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Factor Analytic
What do these items have in common?

1. In most ways my life is close to my ideal.

2. The conditions of my life are excellent.
3. I am satisfied with my life.
4. So far I have gotten the important things I
want in my life.
5. If I could live my life over, I would change
almost nothing.
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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Factor Analytic
• Limitations
– The quality of information from the factor analysis
is limited by the quality of items.
– Difficulty and subjectivity of deciding how items are
conceptually related
– Factors don’t always make sense.
• Uses
– Reduce list of traits to an essential few
– Refine personality tests
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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Empirical
• Definition
• Steps for using this method
– Gather lots of items.
– Administer items to people already divided into
groups.
– Compare the answers of the different groups.
– Cross-validation
• Not based on theory; ignores item content

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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Empirical
– Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI)
– Strong Vocational Interest Blank (SVIB)

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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction: Empirical
• Implications of ignoring item content/low face
validity
– Items can seem contrary or absurd.
– Responses are difficult to fake.
– Tests are only as good as the criteria by which they
are developed and/or cross-validated.
– Can cause problems with public relations or the
law
• Content validity
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 Methods of Objective Test
Construction
• A combination of methods
– Generate items with rational method, analyze
responses with factor analysis, correlate factors
with independent criteria
– Jackson’s Personality Research Form (PRF)

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 Purposes of Personality Testing
• It’s important to know how the test will be
used.
• Learning about people (researchers)
• Helping people (schools, career counselors,
clinicians)
• Assessment for selection or retention
(employers, Central Intelligence Agency)

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 Purposes of Personality Testing:
Potential Problems
• Interest tests
– Fields may not evolve.
– Increases difficulty of women and minorities
joining nontraditional fields
• Integrity tests: different for honest vs.
dishonest people

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 Purposes of Personality Testing:
Potential Problems
• Personality tests
– Tests are unfair mechanisms for controlling
people.
– Traits do not matter until and unless they are
tested and are social constructions.
– Being described by a set of scores is undignified
and humiliating.

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 Purposes of Personality Testing:
Responses to Potential Problems
• Criticisms are overstated.
• Traits are not invented or constructed.
• It is naïve to view personality testing for hiring
purposes as undignified or unethical.
– A good way to assess whether a person will be a
successful employee

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 Think About Personality Testing
• Would you prefer that a decision about
whether you should be hired for a job be
based on a personality test score or the
employer’s subjective judgment of you?
Why?
• What are some unethical uses of personality
testing?

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 Clicker Question #1
Personality tests are used
a)only for research purposes.
b)only in clinical settings.
c)only rarely.
d)frequently and by researchers, clinicians, and
corporations.

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 Clicker Question #2
If a person is asked to respond to a picture that
could be described in many different ways, then
a)S data are being collected.
b)a projective test is being used.
c)the respondents are likely to be aware of what
they are revealing about themselves.
d)the test is probably being given by a research
psychologist.

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 Clicker Question #3
If what is being measured can be determined by
looking at the content of the questions, then
a)the test is a projective test.
b)the rational method of test construction has
been used.
c)factor analysis cannot be used to group items
together.
d)the items that will be used for the test are the
ones on which people from different groups
responded to in different ways. 36
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