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What is “personality”?
An individual’s unique collection of psychological states and traits
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Personality Type
- Personality category/classification
- Representative of your collection of psychological states and traits
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Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Seeks to identify differences in the way people take information in and make decisions
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Self-Directed Search Test
- Used exclusively in vocational guidance
- Self-administered, scored, interpreted
- Problems with overlapping/isolation
- Need to use more than one source
- Proposes six personality types:
- Artistic
- Enterprising
- Investigative
- Social
- Realistic
- Conventional
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Jenkins Activity Survey
- Assesses two personality types:
- Type A
- Quick to anger, hyper meticulous
- Type B
- Laid back, less competitive and anger
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
- 6th grade reading level/not for small children 14+
- No time limit/60-90 mins to accomplish
- Yields a personality “profile”
- 566 True/False items (550 with 16 repeated)
- 10 clinical scales
- Each one of those scales represents a collection of items that are trying to measure the same psychological characteristic
- Item endorsement index
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Lie scale
Group of items that assesses when the assessee is lying; especially when assessee fails to identify anything negative about him/herself, aka fake good or bad
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Frequency scale
- Items that a non-psychopathic person would not endorse
- If assessee endorses the items, something may be wrong with them or they may be faking bad
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) K (“correction”) scale
- Identifies faking good/endorsing only positive items that cast him/her in a positive way
- Defensiveness
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) “Cannot say” scale
- The number of times that individual endorsed cannot say options or skipped them all together for a reason
- Defensiveness
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) MMPI-A (1992)
Attempt to change language and content and make it more applicable to adolescents
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Traits
- Any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another
- Expected way that a person is going to behave or think like but that does not mean that they cannot change due to environmental influences
- ex. Optimism
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States
- More temporary
- ex. Happiness
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State-Trait Anxiety Inventory
- measure for distinguishing between traits and states
- Respond to a series of short statements with respect to 4 evaluation criteria:
- How do you feel right now?
- How strongly do you feel that way?
- How do you generally feel?
- How often do you feel that way?
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Self-referred
- Respondent seeks to assess her/his “self-concept” via a self-concept measure
- Exercise of self-exploration
- Usually involves some form of “self-report” method
- Beck Self-Concept Test (Adults)
- Tennessee Self-Concept Scales and Piers Harris Self-Concept Scale (Kids)
- “Self-Concept differentiation” (The area of role identity/conflict)
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Another as referent
- 3rd party refers the individual for assessment and may serve as the “respondent”
- ex. A dementia person may not be able to respond to the questions; so the respondent may answer those for him/her
- Personality Inventory for Children (PIC/PIC-2) (Children as the referees)
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Potential influences on the rating process
- Rating error
- Rating context
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Rating error
Leniency, severity, central tendency, halo/horns
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Rating context
the circumstances surrounding the rating process (any and everything connected to the rating context)
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What is assessed when a personality assessment is conducted?
- Primary content
- Response style
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Primary content
The principal focus of the personality measures are tools used to gain insight into a wide array of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with all aspects of the human experience
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Response style
- The manner in which a test taker responds to test items regardless of their content
- It speaks to an identifiable respondent / the respondent is responding in the same way to all of the items regardless of the content
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Acquiescence
agreeing with everything (regardless of the content)
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Extreme
- a dichotomous response style (only endorsing the extreme ends of the continuum)
- Never/always
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Gambling/Cautiousness
it’s an either or style were there will be some kind of expected response to the respondent
guessing/skip it
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Deviance
- the respondents is endorsing only those atypical responses / such as those that will pertain to the MMPI like frequency
- trying to fake the responds
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Socially desirable
- social presentation
- to present yourself in a favorable way
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Overly positive
- you are truly convinced of your own greatness
- not revealing any negative qualities
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Nonacquiescence
- the essence that it does not apply to the respondent
- disagreeing with everything regardless of the content
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Impression management
- is all about consciously or unconsciously presenting or withholding information
- usually present one self in a favorable way
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Where are personality test conducted?
- Traditional settings (Ex. private practice, hospitals)
- Contemporary settings (Ex. naturalistic, schools, prison
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How are personality assessment structured and conducted?
- Scope
- Theory
- Procedures
- Item format
- Frame of reference
- Scoring & interpretation
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Scope
- how broad or narrow of the sampling we are attempting to use
- Ex. MMPI is abroad
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Theory
a particular assessment may be associated with a theory
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Procedures
- how is this thing administered
- what are the protocols of the assessment strategies
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Item format
can differ because of frame of reference
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Frame of reference
- the respondent can be asked in the present, future, and past tense
- you may be asked to change your perspective
- can be a time reference
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Scoring & interpretation
Nomothetic vs. Idiographic
The idea that there are a number of characteristic that applies to everyone (several flavors)
vs.
proposes that we are unique entities to ourselves when it come to personality (as unique to us as our finger prints)
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How does culture fit into personality assessment?
Culture can have a strong influence on personality states and traits
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Acculturation
The process by which an individual’s personality is shaped by her/his culture
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Culturally sensitive psychological assessment
- we cannot assume that one size fits all
- Assessment that is responsive to cultural issues
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General classification of personality assessment methods: Objective
- Typically multiple-choice format
- little or no room for discretionary scoring
- There is no room for the assessor to use his/her judgement
- Selected response
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General classification of personality assessment methods: Projective
- Assessee asked to provide structure for an unstructured stimulus
- May be differentially scored (score people diff from one to another)
- Room for discretionary scoring
- Inter-rater reliability issues
- Potential bias
- Constructed response
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Projective hypothesis
- The structure an assessee provides to an unstructured stimulus is indicative of her/his personality characteristics
- Assessee is asked to comment on something else besides themselves
- Asked to see what they see in a vague picture and see what they say
- Considered even more indirect than objective techniques
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Rorschach
- First distinguished for papers on the interpretation of art
- Ink blood test
- Because we have so many systems there are a variarity of interpretations/evaluations
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Rorschach Initial administration
Showing the card
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Rorschach Inquiry phase
- Assessee is shown the cards again and the assessors assesses whether the interpretations are repeated
- The assessor asks the assessee what made it look like that
- Are there any new novel perceptions?
- It could denote defensiveness
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Rorschach Criterion phase (testing the limits)
- Used when the assessee is having difficulty with coming up with an interpretation
- You have to be in a formal operational stage
- Asks them to comment on a specific part of the shape/helps them narrow their focus
- Might be a reflection of assessors’ bias
- Facilitate projection process
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Rorschach scoring categories
- Location
- On what part of the image are they basing their interpretation?
- Determinants
- Qualities of the image that contributed to the ind interpretation
- Content
- Can we categorize these responses?
- Is every image being interpreted having an anatomical category?
- Look for patterns
- Popularity
- Frequency
- How often does this response occur in the population
- Form
- Most controversial
- An assessment to the degree to which the ind interpretation of that image or parts of that image coenside with its actual configuration
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Thematic Apperception Test (“TAT”)
- Comment on a vague scene in regards to 3 elements:
- What led up to this scene?
- What is happening now?
- What will happen?
The assessee is believed to identify with the protagonist and as such project onto that protagonist elements his own personality/life
Has blank cards
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Thematic Apperception Test (“TAT”) scoring
- Need
- Intra-indv factors
- Arising from needs that you have
- Press
- Extra-personal factors
- Outside of the person/environmental
- Thema
- Interaction between need and press
- How your needs interact with the environment and play out
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Hand Test
- Assessee is shown a series of cards that depic hands in diff positions
- Has blank cards
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Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study
- Depics a character who is frustrated
- Assessee is asked to provide a response
- It assesses 2 general categories of responses:
- Aggression
- Reaction
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Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study Aggression
- Intro-cunitive
- The aggression is being directed towards himself
- Extra-punitive
- Aggression being directed outwards
- Inpunitive response
- Non-aggression being expressed
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Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study reaction
- Obstacle dominance
- The central focus of the indv’s response is on that frustrating barrier
- Ego defense
- The central focus of the indv’s response is on protecting the ego of the frustrated person
- Need persistence
- Focuses on solving the frustrating problem
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Word Association Test
- 60 words
- Some neutral, some emotion evoking
- 3 parts:
- -The words are presented and the assessee is asked to come up w a word that comes to his mind first
- -The process is repeated, and the assessors is looking for changes and elapsed time from the first time.
- -Inquiry phase (what were you thinking? why did you say this?)
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Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank
- Respondents usually put negative responses
- Participant bias
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Draw a Person (DAP)
- Draw a person without any guidelines or restrictions
- Useful for children, cognitively challenged, language barriers
- The structure the assessee imposes on the figure is believed to be revealing of her personality
- It is assumed that the drawing is of the assessee her self
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Draw a Person (DAP) Evaluation criteria
how realistic is it?
- is the figure clothed?
- -Not clothed might indicate a lack of control
- does the figure have hands?
- -No hands might indicated helplessness/abuse
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House-Tree-Person (HTP)
- Asks to draw a house, tree, and person in the same scene
- Might be prone to measurement error
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House-Tree-Person (HTP) Evaluation criteria
- Does the house have windows or doors?
- -Might be feeling trapped
What is the size of the tree in relation of the person?
Is the figure in the scene interacting with the house and tree?
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Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD)
Draw a family interacting
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Some criticisms of projective techniques Assumptions: Stimuli
- The more vague or ambiguous the stimulus, the more projection will occur
- Has not been conclusively demonstrated
- The closer the stimulus is to the person, the more projection will occur
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Some criticisms of projective techniques Assumptions: Responses
- Every response is meaningful or revealing/ related to assessee need
- Not conclusively demonstrated
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Some criticisms of projective techniques Assumptions: Assessee
The assessee does not know what she is revealing about her self
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Some criticisms of projective techniques Assumptions: the unconsious
There are critics who argue the existence of the unconscious mind or that these test tap into something that does not exists
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Some criticisms of projective techniques Situational variables
- Environment
- Response style
- Experimenter effects
- -The assessor may do some projection while evaluating the data
- Test construction/administration
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Some criticisms of projective techniques Psychometric
Due to being projective tests, it has the appearance of being less psychometrically sound because we can't apply the same evaluation criteria/questions about it than non-projective tests
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Behavioral assessment
Analysis of “behavioral samples”
- Antecedent
- Behavior
- Consequence
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Behavioral assessment methods
- Self reports
- Observation
- Situational performance
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Observation Obtrusive/Overt
- Assessee may think she is being observed
- May cause Hawthorn effect
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Observation Unobtrusive/Covert
- Assessee does not know she is being watched
- Unethical/illegal due to privacy
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Situational performance
Role-playing exercises
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