Personality Assessment Quiz

Objective Methods of Personality Assessment

• Objective methods of personality assessment typically use short-answer items with a scale (e.g., agree/disagree) and may be complemented with acquaintance-report.
• Type-based approaches sort people into categories based on similarities in personality characteristics, while trait-based approaches examine individual characteristics and differences between people.
• The Myers-Briggs Type Inventory (MBTI) is a type-based approach that lacks predictive validity in relation to workplace performance and has serious concerns about its psychometric soundness.
• Trait-based approaches categorize thousands of personality traits into a smaller number of groups using data reduction methods like factor analysis or cluster analysis.
• The Big Five is a trait-based approach based on a five-dimension model of personality, which includes openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
• The NEO PI-R is the most dominant model of personality based on the Big Five, with 5 traits x 6 facets x 8 items = 240 items total.
• The Big Five personality factors have a lot of validity for predicting job performance across a range of occupations, with high inter-rater reliabilities and consensual validity.
• According to Ashton and Lee (2012), lexical studies got it wrong when they chose five factors, as they found six factors known as HEXACO, which includes the "H" factor for honesty-humility.
• Self-report questionnaires for personality assessment have caveats such as social desirability bias, faking, and careless responding.
• Performance tests of personality have a long history, but research has largely failed to find much validity for first-generation tests based on handwriting speed, drawing speed, and speed of writing backward to measure personality traits.
• Second-generation objective personality tests emerged in the 1990s and offer some promise to measuring personality, such as the Grief Play Scale that measures behaviors during online multiple player games and correlates positively with self-reported psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism.
• A limitation of performance tests of personality is that they measure behavior in one place and time, making it difficult to measure typical behavior with one test administered on one day.