Finals Psych Assessment

• Personality according to McClelland: "the most adequate conceptualization of a person’s behavior in all its detail"
• Personality according to Menninger: "the individual as a whole, his height and weight and love and hates and blood pressure and reflexes; his smiles and hopes and bowed legs and enlarged tonsils. It means all that anyone is and that he is trying to become"
• Personality according to Hall and Lindzey: "It is our conviction that no substantive definition of personality can be applied with any generality" and "Personality is defined by the particular empirical concepts which are a part of the theory of personality employed by the observer"
• Personality: an individual’s unique constellation of psychological traits that is relatively stable over time
• Personality Assessment: the measurement and evaluation of psychological traits, states, values, interests, attitudes, worldview, acculturation, sense of humor, cognitive and behavioral styles, and/or related individual characteristics
• Personality Traits (Guilford, 1959): Any distinguishable, relatively enduring way in which one individual varies from another
• Personality Types:

  • Hippocrates' types: Melancholic (depressed), Phlegmatic (calm, apathy), Sanguine (happy, optimistic), Choleric (hot-tempered)
  • Jung's basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
  • Holland's six personality types: Artistic, Enterprising, Investigative, Social, Realistic, or Conventional
• Friedman & Rosenman: Type A personality characterized by competitiveness, haste, restlessness, impatience, feelings of being time-pressured, and strong needs for achievement and dominance

  • Type B personality has traits opposite to Type A: mellow or laid-back
• Personality Assessment: Some Basic Questions:

  • Who is being assessed, and who is doing the assessing?
  • Self-report: information about assessees is supplied by the assessees themselves
  • Self-concept: defined as one’s attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and related thoughts about oneself
  • Self-concept measure: an instrument designed to yield information relevant to how an individual sees him- or herself with regard to selected psychological variables
  • Self-concept differentiation: refers to the degree to which a person has different self-concepts in different roles
• • Another person as the referent: in some situations, assessment involves reporting by a third party such as a parent, teacher, peer, supervisor, spouse, or trained observer
• What is assessed when a personality assessment is conducted?

  • Primary content area sampled: tools used to gain insight into thoughts, feelings, and behaviors associated with all aspects of the human experience
  • Response style: tendency to respond to a test item or interview question in some characteristic manner regardless of the content of the item or questions
• Where are personality assessments conducted?

  • Traditional sites: schools, clinics, hospitals, academic research laboratories, employment counseling and vocational selection centers, and the offices of psychologists and counselors
• • Frame of reference: aspects of the focus of exploration such as the time frame (past, present, or future) and other contextual issues involving people, places, and events
  • Scoring and Interpretation: nomothetic approach (efforts to learn how a limited number of personality traits can be applied to all people) vs. idiographic approach (efforts to learn about each individual’s unique constellation of personality traits).
• How are personality assessments structured and conducted?

  • Scope and Theory: the scope of an evaluation may be very wide, seeking to take a general inventory of an individual’s personality
  • Locus of control: Internal locus (person sees themselves as largely responsible) vs. External locus (people attribute what happens to external factors)
  • Procedures and item formats: face-to-face interviews, computer-administered tests, behavioral observation, paper-and-pencil tests
• • Objective Method: contain short-answer items, scoring done according to set procedures involving little judgment, may include multiple-choice, true-false, or matching format
  • Projective Method: technique of personality assessment where judgment is made based on performance on a task involving supplying structure to unstructured stimuli
• Inkblots as Projective Stimuli:

  • The Rorschach test: consists of 10 inkblots, scored based on location, determinants, content, popularity, and form
  • Free association: first administration of the cards
  • Inquiry: second administration of the cards to determine what features of the inkblot played a role in formulating the test-taker’s percept
  • The Holtzman: an alternative to Rorschach, contains 45 cards scored on 22 dimensions including location, determinant, content, anxiety, and hostility
• Thematic Apperception Test:

  • Originally designed to elicit fantasy material from patients in psychoanalysis
  • Consists of 31 cards, one of which is blank
  • 30 picture cards, all black-and-white, present the test-taker with "certain classical human situations"
  • Administered to 5 years old and up
• Tell Me A Story (TEMAS):

  • Designed for use with urban Hispanic children
  • Administered to 5 to 18 years old
• Children's Apperception Test (CAT):

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

  • For use with adolescents
  • Pictures designed to elicit adolescent-related themes such as coming home late and leaving home
• Michigan Picture Test:

  • For ages 8 to 14
  • Contains pictures designed to elicit various themes ranging from conflict with authority to feelings of personal inadequacy
• Make a Picture Story Method:

  • For ages 6 and up
  • Respondents construct their own pictures from cutout materials included in the test kit and then tell a story
• Word Association Test (60 Items):

  • A semistructured, individually administered, projective technique of personality assessment
  • Assessee responds verbally or in writing with the first word that comes to mind upon exposure to the stimulus word
• Kent-Rosanoff Free Association Test:

  • One of the earliest attempts to develop a standardized test using words as projective stimuli
  • Consisted of 100 stimulus words believed to be neutral with respect to emotional impact
• Sentence Completion Test:

  • Task where the assessee is asked to finish an incomplete sentence or phrase
  • A semistructured projective technique of personality assessment
• Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank:

  • Developed for use with populations from grade 9 through adulthood
  • Test takers respond to 40 incomplete sentence items expressing their "real feelings" in a span of 20 minutes
• Sack's Sentence Completion Test:

  • A 60 item test administered by group or individual for 15 to 20 minutes to ages 12 years old and up
• Draw A Person Test (DAP):

  • Examinee is given a pencil and blank paper and told to draw a person
  • Administered to 4 years old and up
• House-Tree-Person test (HTP):

  • Test taker draws a picture of a house, a tree, and a person
  • Administered to 3 years old and up
• NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R):

  • Widely used in clinical and research about personality assessment
  • A 240 items test with 30 elements defining each of the 5 domains: neuroticism, extroversion, and openness
• MMPI 3 (2020):

  • Clinical setting test with 566 true-or-false items
  • Administered to 18 years old to 80 years old with a maximum time limit of 2 hours
• California Psychological Inventory (CPI) 3rd ed.:

  • Clinical and counseling setting test with 434 true-or-false items
  • Administered to 13 years old and up
• Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey:

  • Reduces personality to 10 dimensions, each measured by 30 different items
  • Administered to 16 years old and above
• Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF):

  • Developed by Raymond Cattell
  • Administered to 16 years old and above with 185 items for 35 to 50 minutes
• General Self-efficacy Scale (GSE):

  • Developed to measure an individual's belief in their ability to organize resources and manage situations
  • Consists of 10 items and takes 4 minutes to complete
• Ego Resiliency Scaled Revised:

  • Developed by Block and Kremen in 1996
  • Consists of 14 items rated on a 4-point Likert scale to rate statements
• Dispositional Resilience Scale (DRS):

  • Developed to measure "hardiness," defined as the ability to view stressful situations as meaningful, changeable, and challenging
• Hope Scale:

  • Measures goal-driven energy and the capacity to construct systems to meet goals
  • Consists of 12 items rated on an 8-point Likert scale
• Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R):

  • Self-report measure of dispositional optimism
  • Consists of 10 items assessing individual differences in generalized optimism versus pessimism
• Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS):

  • Five-item scale for the overall assessment of life satisfaction as a cognitive-judgmental process