psychological assessment 2

• McClelland: The most adequate conceptualization of a person’s behavior in all its detail. It also possesses our behavior
• Menninger: The individual as a whole, including his physical attributes like height, weight, love, hates, blood pressure, reflexes, smiles, hopes, bowed legs, and enlarged tonsils. It encompasses everything that a person is and is trying to become
• Hall and Lindzey: Personality cannot be universally defined. It is defined by the empirical concepts within the theory of personality used by the observer
• Personality is defined as an individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits that is relatively stable over time
• Personality assessment involves the measurement and evaluation of various psychological traits, states, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humor, cognitive and behavior styles, and related individual characteristics
• Observation and interview are used in personality assessment
• Personality traits are real physical entities that are genuine mental structures in each personality according to Allport (1937)
• A trait is any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another according to Guilford (1959)
• Different personality types according to Hippocrates are Melancholic, Phlegmatic, Sanguine, and Choleric
• Holland's personality types include Artistic, Enterprising, Investigative, Social, Realistic, or Conventional, used in the Self-Directed Search test for vocational guidance
• Friedman & Rosenman identified Type A and Type B personality types
• Type A traits include competitiveness, haste, restlessness, impatience, feelings of being time pressured, and a strong need for achievement and dominance
• Type B traits include being mellow and laid-back, tendency to procrastinate, and a relaxed attitude
• People typically undergo personality assessment to learn about themselves, often requiring self-reporting where individuals provide information about themselves
• As a client, self-reporting can be provided if symptoms are observed
• Self-Concept Measure is an instrument designed to yield information relevant to how an individual sees him or herself regarding selected psychological variables
• Self-Concept Differentiation is the degree to which a person has different self-concepts in different roles
• Leniency Error is a rating mistake in which ratings are consistently overly positive
• Severity Error is a rating mistake in which ratings are consistently overly negative
• Generosity Error is a bias that leads to higher ratings
• Error of Central Tendency is a type of rater error that occurs when a manager or evaluator rates most employees as average or near the middle of the rating scale, regardless of their actual performance
• Impression Management: Attempt to manipulate others' impressions through selective exposure of information
• Social Desirable Response: Present oneself in a favorable light
• Acquiescence: Agree with whatever is presented
• Nonacquiescence: Disagree with whatever is presented
• Deviance: Make unusual or uncommon responses
• Extreme: Make extreme ratings on the scale
• Gambling/Cautiousness: Guess or not guess when in doubt
• Overly Positive: Claim extreme virtue through self-presentation in a superlative manner
• Scope of an evaluation may be very wide, seeking to take a general inventory of an individual's personality
• Locus of Control: Person's perception about the source of things that happen to him or her (external or internal)
• Procedures and item formats: Face to face, computer-administered, behavioral observation, paper-and-pencil, etc
• Frame of Reference: Defined as the aspects of the focus of exploration such as the time frame, as well as other contextual
• Objective Methods

  Usually administered by paper and pencil means or by computer.
• Objective Methods

  Characteristically contain short answer items for which the assessees’ task is to select one response from the two or more provided.
• Projective Hypothesis:

  • An individual supplies structure to unstructured stimuli in a manner consistent with their own unique pattern of conscious and unconscious needs, fears, desires, impulses, conflicts, and ways of perceiving and responding
• Projective Method:

  • Judgment of the assessee's personality is made based on their performance on a task that involves supplying structure to unstructured or incomplete stimuli
• TEMAS:

  • Designed for use with urban Hispanic children with drawings of sciences relevant to their experience
• Children's Apperception Test (CAT):

  • Designed for use with ages 3-10
  • Based on the idea that animals engaged in various activities are useful in stimulating projective storytelling by children
• Picture Story Test:

  • Designed to elicit adolescent-related themes such as coming home late and leaving home