The document discusses three primary methods for assessing personality: observations, interviews, and personality tests, each serving different purposes such as personnel selection and psychological diagnosis. It emphasizes the significance of objective tests like the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) for diagnosing psychological disorders, detailing its various scales, and also mentions projective tests which explore unconscious aspects of personality. The advantages and disadvantages of both objective and projective tests are compared, highlighting issues of reliability and validity.

1. Assessing Personality
NASAR SHAH
SLP

2. Assessing Personality
• There are three basic methods of assessing and
describing personality: observations, interviews, and
personality tests.
• The data gathered through these methods are used not
only in personnel selection but also in the diagnosis of
psychological disorders, in making predictions about a
convict’s or mental patients’ dangerousness, and in other
risky decision situations

3. • Observational methods allow direct assessment of
many aspects of behavior, including how often, how
effectively, and how consistently various actions occur.
• Interviews provide a way to gather information about
personality from the person’s own point of view.
• They can be open-ended and tailored to the intellectual
level, emotional state, and special needs of the person
being assessed.

4. • Interviews can be structured, that is, aimed at gathering
information about specific topics without spending much
time on other issues.
• Structured interviews are routinely used in personality
research because they elicit the same information from
each person.

5. • Personality tests offer a way of gathering information
that is more standardized and economical than either
observations or interviews.
• To be useful, however, a personality test must be reliable
and valid.
• Reliability refers to how stable or consistent the results of
a test are.
• Validity reflects the degree to which a test measures what
it is intended to measure.

6. Objective tests
• Objective tests ask direct, unambiguous questions about
a person’s thoughts, feelings, or behavior; the answers
are used to draw inferences about the individual’s
personality.
• However, the most common kind of objective personality
test is the self-report test, which is usually similar in
format to the multiple-choice examinations used in many
classrooms.

7. • Like multiple-choice exams, self-report personality tests
can be administered to many people at the same time;
they can also be machine-scored.
• Self-report include questions concerning the
characteristics of the respondent.
• E.g. “Are you nervous when you first meet people?”

8. • Some self-report tests focus on one personality trait, such
as optimism, whereas others measure a set of related
traits, such as empathy and social responsibility.
• Still others measure the strength of a wider variety of
traits to reveal general psychological functioning or signs
of psychological disorders.

9. • The most commonly used objective test for diagnosing
psychological disorders is the Minnesota Multiphasic
Personality Inventory (MMPI).
• This is 566-item true-false test was originally developed
during the 1930s at the University of Minnesota by Starke
Hathaway and J.C. McKinley.
• It has subsequently revised and updated in the MMPI-2.
(1992)

11. • The MMPI is organized into ten clinical scales.
• These are groups of items that, in earlier research, had
elicited a characteristic pattern of responses only from
people who displayed particular psychological disorders
or personality characteristics.
• The MMPI and MMPI-2 also contain four validity scales,
which are item groups designed to detect whether
respondents distorted their answers, misunderstood the
items, or were uncooperative.

12. The 10 scales are:
• Hypochondriasis (Hs) – The Hypochondriasis scale
tapes a wide variety of vague and nonspecific complaints
about bodily functioning. These complaints tend to focus
on the abdomen and back, and they persist in the face of
negative medical tests. There are two primary factors that
this subscale measures — poor physical health and
gastrointestinal difficulties. The scale contains 32 items.

13. • Depression (D) – The Depression scale measures
clinical depression, which is characterized by poor
morale, lack of hope in the future, and a general
dissatisfaction with one’s life. The scale contains 57
items.
• Hysteria (Hy) – The Hysteria scale primarily measures
five components — poor physical health, shyness,
cynicism, headaches and neuroticism. The subscale
contains 60 items.

14. • Psychopathic Deviate (Pd) – The Psychopathic Deviate
scale measures general social maladjustment and the
absence of strongly pleasant experiences. The items on
this scale tap into complaints about family and authority
figures in general, self alienation, social alienation and
boredom. The scale contains 50 items.

15. • Masculinity/Femininity (Mf) – The Masculinity/Femininity
scale measures interests in vocations and hobbies,
aesthetic preferences, activity-passivity and personal
sensitivity. It measures in a general sense how rigidly a
person conforms to very stereotypical masculine or
feminine roles. The scale contains 56 items.

16. • Paranoia (Pa) – The Paranoia scale primarily measures
interpersonal sensitivity, moral self-righteousness and
suspiciousness. Some of the items used to score this
scale are clearly psychotic in that they acknowledge the
existence of paranoid and delusional thoughts. This scale
has 40 items.

17. • Psychasthenia (Pt) -The Psychasthenia scale is
intended to measure a person’s inability to resist specific
actions or thoughts, regardless of their maladaptive
nature. “Psychasthenia” is an old term used to describe
what we now call obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),
or having obsessive-compulsive thoughts and behaviors.
This scale also taps into abnormal fears, self-criticisms,
difficulties in concentration and guilt feelings. This scale
contains 48 items.

18. • Schizophrenia (Sc) – The Schizophrenia scale measures
bizarre thoughts, peculiar perceptions, social alienation,
poor familial relationships, difficulties in concentration and
impulse control, lack of deep interests, disturbing question
of self-worth and self-identity, and sexual difficulties. This
scale has 78 items, more than any other scale on the test.

19. • Hypomania (Ma) – The Hypomania scale is intended to
measure milder degrees of excitement, characterized by
an elated but unstable mood, psychomotor excitement
(e.g., shaky hands) and flight of ideas (e.g., an
unstoppable string of ideas). The scale taps into
overactivity — both behaviorally and cognitively —
grandiosity, irritability and egocentricity. This scale
contains 46 items.

20. • Hypomania (Ma) – The Hypomania scale is intended to
measure milder degrees of excitement, characterized by
an elated but unstable mood, psychomotor excitement
(e.g., shaky hands) and flight of ideas (e.g., an
unstoppable string of ideas). The scale taps into
overactivity — both behaviorally and cognitively —
grandiosity, irritability and egocentricity. This scale
contains 46 items.

21. • There are a number of self-report tests designed to
measure personality variables in normal populations,
especially the “big-five” personality traits.
• The Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire
• Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
• Revised NEO Personality Inventory

22. Projective Tests
• Unlike objective tests, projective tests contain relatively
unstructured stimuli, such as inkblots, which can be
perceived in many ways.
• Proponents of projective tests tend to take a
psychodynamic approach to personality.

23. • They believe that people’s responses to the tests’
ambiguous stimuli are guided by unconscious needs,
motives, fantasies, conflicts, thoughts, and other hidden
aspects of personality.
• Some projective tests(also known as projective
techniques) ask people to draw items such as a house, a
person, or a tree, to fill in the missing parts of incomplete
pictures or sentences, or to say what they associate with
a particular word.

24. Thematic Apperception Test
• Developed by Henry Murray and Christina Morgan.
• Used to assess needs, anxieties, conflicts, defense
mechanism and personality traits.
• Consists of 30 cards.

25. Rorschach Inkblot Test
• Developed by Swiss Psychologist Hermann Rorschach in
1960.
• It consists of 10 cards.
• First 7 cards are black and red coloured.
• The last 3 are colourful cards.

26. Type of test Characteristics Advantages Disadvantages
Objective Asks direct
questions about a
person,
quantitatively
scored.
Efficiency,
standardization,
Administered in
group setting
Subject to
deliberate
distortion
Projective Unstructured
stimuli create
“correct” answers
not obvious;
designed to tap
unconscious
impulses; flexible
use, difficult to
administer in
group setting
Reliability and
validity lower
than those of
objective tests