Personality Assessment Lecture Notes (PDF)

PERSONALITY PSYU/X2234 Lecture 11: Personality assessment & theory A/Prof Simon Boag email: [email protected] 1 Readings (suggested) Boag, S (2019). Personality assessment. [pdf on iLearn] McAdams, DP, & & Pals, JL (2006). A new big five. American Psych...

PERSONALITY PSYU/X2234 Lecture 11: Personality assessment & theory A/Prof Simon Boag email: [email protected] 1 Readings (suggested) Boag, S (2019). Personality assessment. [pdf on iLearn] McAdams, DP, & & Pals, JL (2006). A new big five. American Psychologist, 61, 204-217 2 Outline 1. Introduction Basics of personality assessment: reliability & validity Theory & assessment 2. McAdams’s personality triad Self-report inventories, performance- based, interviews 3. Further issues in personality assessment 3 1. Introduction Why assess personality? Organisational Ψ: eg. personnel selection Forensic Ψ: eg. perpetrator characteristics Clinical Ψ: eg. DSM 5 & personality disorders How do we best assess personality? 4 Personality assessment Basics: Reliability & validity A good personality assessment tool is both reliable & valid Not always easy to determine Many tests available DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 5 Reliability: consistency Internal consistency: consistency among different components of the test (eg. test items) Inter-rater reliability: consistency in information found by different test users eg. similar outcomes across different scorers Test-retest reliability: consistency over testing occasions 6 Validity Construct validity Does a test assess what it intends to assess? (Borsboom et al., 2004) eg. a test of ‘self-esteem’ should not be assessing ‘arrogance’ or ‘narcissism’ Convergent/divergent/discriminant validity Predictive validity 7 The significance of theory When assessing X it helps to have some idea of what X is What is ‘personality’? Some 400+ constructs Differing approaches (eg. humanistic, psychodynamic, trait) Best assessment determined by one’s understanding of personality 8 2. McAdams’s personality triad McAdams (1996, 2001, 2013): Personality structure/hierarchy 1) Dispositional traits 2) Characteristic adaptations 3) Narrative identity as ‘life story’ 9 Personality triad (i) Traits: stable dimensions of personality Five-Factor Model: OCEAN Limit of trait psychology: “Psychology of the stranger” (McAdams) (ii) Characteristic adaptations eg. Personal goals, motives, values, beliefs, coping styles & defences (iii) Identity as life story Self: Idiographic & humanistic 10 (i) Self-report inventories Traits typically assessed via self- report personality inventories Personality dimensions Quantification & measurement Allows easily assessing scale reliability & aspects of validity International Personality Item Pool (https://ipip.ori.org/) lists some 400+ constructs & free-to-use scales for assessing various personality 11 Self-report inventories Closed ended questions (typically) A number of response alternatives are provided for the respondent to choose from eg. True/False; SD-D-N-A-SA Advantages: easier to score; makes comparison b/w Ss easier 12 Response formats Yes/No Do you prefer reading books to meeting people? Are your feelings easily hurt? Likert scales I am the life of the party 13 Personality inventories: advantages & disadvantages Limits of behavioural observation Self-report allows gathering large amounts of information fairly easily Not without problems: Biases eg. social desirability, acquiescence Faking good & faking bad Memory errors & limits of insight (eg kids) Coaching & test cheating 14 ‘Forced choice’ formats Choosing between multiple stimuli May limit social desirability (Hicks, 2008) May limit acquiescence (eg. rating other’s performance) Forced-Choice example: Choose which alternative in the following pair is most like you (mark a OR b): 15 (ii) Performance-based assessment Indirect personality assessment Involves inference & interpretation Not reliant on insight & self- reflection Linked to assessing unconscious processes eg. dream analysis; ‘Royal road to the unconscious’ (Freud, 1900) DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 16 Performance-based assessment Projective tests Rorschach inkblot test (Rorschach, 1921) Thematic Apperception Test (Murray, 1938) Inferences made from content of responses Some evidence of predictive/discriminant validity 17 Projective tests Advantage: relatively difficult to cheat Disadvantages: General problems of reliability & validity eg. poor inter-rater reliability However: standardised scoring & interpretation (eg. Exner, 1986) has improved reliability, but... Time consuming & difficult to score DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY 18 (iii) Interviews ‘Humanistic’ approach; idiographic Qualitative research Interviews & Open ended questions Respondents formulate their own answers Unstructured (‘free-form’) Structured (specified topics) Semi-structured (specified topics but flexibility; eg. interviewer can ask follow-up questions for clarification: ‘when you say X, what do you mean?’) 19 McAdams’s Life Story interview (Section A: 30 minutes) [sections A-G] High point? Low point? Turning point? Positive childhood memory? Negative childhood memory? Vivid adult memory? Wisdom event? Religious or spiritual experience? 20 Interviews Advantages: Multiple sources of information eg. non-verbal signs Voice, facial expressions etc Possible to explore personality in- depth Flexibility Qualitative information Interviewer & interviewee can both readily ask for clarification 21 Interviews Disadvantages: Interviewer effect eg. the interviewer’s body language, age, sex, etc. may all elicit different responses & thus compromise reliability (ie. different responses to different interviewers) Qualitative analysis: Time consuming & potential for subjective bias/interpretation 22 3. Future directions for personality assessment Personality X Situation assessment Examining variability/stability of personality Experience sampling methods Mixed-methods assessment Collecting both quantitative & qualitative data Big Data assessment Analysing enormous data sets (eg. Facebook, health records, etc.) 23 Further issues in personality assessment Cross-cultural research & personality assessment Internet, globalisation & cultural diversity Cultural bias? (eg. Western values & individualism; Markus, 2004) We always need to question the cultural appropriateness of our measures 24 Questions? 25