Psychological Tests

• 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: "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: a constellation of traits that is similar in pattern to one identified category of personality within a taxonomy of personalities
• Personality Types by Hippocrates:

  • Melancholic: depressed
  • Phlegmatic: calm, apathy
  • Sanguine: happy, optimistic
  • Choleric: hot-tempered
• Personality Types by Jung: basis for the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
• Personality Types by Holland: categorized as Artistic, Enterprising, Investigative, Social, Realistic, or Conventional
• Personality Types by 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: 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
• Personality Assessment Methods:

  • Objective Method: contain short-answer items, scoring done according to set procedures involving little judgment
  • Projective Method: judgment of the assessee’s personality is made based on performance on a task that involves supplying structure to unstructured stimuli
• Inkblots as Projective Stimuli:

  • The Rorschach: consists of 10 bilaterally symmetrical inkblots, scored based on location, determinants, content, popularity, and form
• Pictures as Projective Stimuli:

  • Thematic Apperception Test: contains 31 cards with scenes designed to present the testtaker with certain classical human situations
  • Tell Me A Story (TEMAS): designed for use with urban Hispanic children
  • Children’s Apperception Test (CAT): designed for use with ages 3 to 10 based on animals engaged in various activities
  • Word Association Test: involves the presentation of a list of stimulus words, to each of which an assessee responds verbally or in writing
• Sentence Completion Test:

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

  • Developed for use with populations from grade 9 through adulthood
• Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank:

  • Developed for use with populations from grade 9 through adulthood
  • Available in three levels: high school (grades 9 through 12), college (grades 13 through 16), and adult
  • Testtakers respond to 40 incomplete sentence items expressing their "real feelings" in 20 minutes
• Sack’s Sentence Completion Test:

  • 60 item test administered to ages 12 years old and up
  • Administered by group or individual in 15 to 20 minutes
• Figure Drawing as Projective Technique:

  • Figure-drawing tests are a projective method of personality assessment
  • Assessee produces a drawing analyzed based on content and related variables
• Draw A Person Test (DAP):

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

  • Testtaker draws a picture of a house, a tree, and a person
  • Administered to 3 years old and up
• Kinetic Family Drawing:

  • No image limit
• NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R):

  • Widely used in clinical and research for personality assessment
  • Administered to 17 years old and above
  • Consists of 240 items with 30 elements defining 5 domains
• MMPI 3 (2020):

  • Clinical setting, dichotomous, 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, administered to 13 years old and up
  • Consists of 434 true-or-false items with a time limit of 45 to 60 minutes
• Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey:

  • Reduces personality to 10 dimensions, each measured by 30 different items
  • Administered to 16 years old and above for 30 to 60 minutes
• Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF):

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

  • Measures 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 answered using a 4-point Likert scale
• Dispositional Resilience Scale (DRS):

  • Developed by Bartone, Wright, Ingraham, and Ursano (1989) to measure "hardiness"
  • Measures the ability to view stressful situations as meaningful, changeable, and challenging
• Hope Scale:

  • Developed by Snyder et al. (1991) to measure goal-driven energy and capacity to construct systems to meet goals
  • Consists of 12 items rated on an 8-point Likert scale
• Life Orientation Test - Revised (LOT-R):

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

  • Consists of 5 items for the overall assessment of life satisfaction
  • Adapted for use with children
• Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS):

  • Measures two orthogonal dimensions of affect: positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA)
  • Consists of 10 adjectives for each scale
• Coping Intervention for Stressful Situation (CISS):

  • Created by Endler and Parker (1990) to measure coping styles
  • Assesses individuals based on task-oriented coping, emotion-oriented coping, and avoidance-oriented coping
• Core Self-Evaluations:

  • Composed of four specific traits: self-esteem, generalized self-efficacy, neuroticism, and locus of control
• Interview:

  • Key tool of biopsychosocial assessment
• Therapeutic contract:

  • Agreement between client and therapist setting goals, expectations, and mutual obligations for therapy
• Types of Interview:

  • Stress interview
  • Hypnotic interview
  • Cognitive interview
  • Collaborative interview