Text 2.

Personality Assessment
PRE-READING TASK:

How can we assess personality? Four major kinds of personality tests have been developed:

1. self-report questionnaire

2. ratings

3. objective tests

4. projective tests

Explain in your own words what each of these refers to. Think of possible advantages/disadvantages of
each type.

In order to be useful, there are several criteria that personality tests need to fulfill. The most important
are reliability and validity. Reliability means that the test produces consistent results. A test’s reliability
can be assessed by giving it on two occasions to the same individuals. Validity means that the test must
measure what it is supposed to be measuring.

Questionnaires

In questionnaires, you have to decide whether various statements about your thoughts, feelings and
behavior are true. Here are some sample items: “Do you tend to be moody?”; “Do you have many
friends?”; “Do you like to be involved in numerous social activities?”, etc.

The questionnaire-based approach is the most popular way of assessing personality. One of its
advantages is that it is easy to use. Another advantage is that we probably know more about ourselves
than other people do.

The most obvious problem with questionnaires is that individuals may fake their responses. This usually
takes the form of social desirability bias. This is the tendency to respond to questionnaire items in the
socially desirable (but inaccurate) way. This bias is especially likely to be present in personnel
selection. No one applying for a sales job is likely to respond true to ‘I don’t much like talking to
strangers’. Or, a candidate trying to join the police force is unlikely to admit that they have undesirable
acquaintances.

How can we deal with social desirability bias? The most common method is to use a Lie scale consisting
of items where the socially desirable answer is unlikely to be the honest answer (e.g. “Do you ever
gossip?”; “Do you always keep your promises?”). If someone answers most of the questions on the Lie
scale in a socially desirable way, it is assumed they are faking their responses.

In spite of this bias, most well-known personality questionnaires possess high reliability and low to
moderate validity.
Ratings

Ratings involve observers providing information about other people’s behavior. There are various ways
this can be done. For example, raters can simply be given a personality questionnaire and asked to
complete it as they think a friend of theirs would have done. Or they can be given a list of different kinds
of behavior (e.g., “initiates conversation”), rating others on those aspects of behavior.

Ratings have some advantages over self-report questionnaires. For example, social desirability bias
doesn’t apply to observers ratings. However, the rating approach poses problems of its own. First, the
items of behavior to be rated may be interpreted differently by different raters. For example, a very
sociable rater and an unsociable rater may have very different ideas about what the item “behaves in a
friendly way towards others” means. Secondly, most raters have observed other people in only some of
the situations in everyday life. Someone who appears distant and reserved at work may be very relaxed
and friendly outside the work environment.

In spite of their limitations, ratings typically possess high reliability. They are usually combined with
self-report questionnaires to ensure higher validity: rating data (participants are rated by people who
know them well) are correlated with self-report data (participants’ scores on personality questionnaires).

Objective Tests

Objective tests involve measuring behavior under laboratory conditions, with the participants not
knowing what the experimenter is looking for. For example, asking people to blow up a balloon until it
bursts is a measure of timidity, and observing to what extent people sway when standing is a measure
of anxiety.

Objective tests appear to be free from the problems like choosing socially desirable responses in a
personality questionnaire. However, it is often difficult to know what an objective test is actually
measuring, and the results can be influenced by very minor changes in procedure. Most objective tests
have low reliability and validity, and so are of limited value.

Projective Tests

Projective tests involve participants being given an unstructured task to perform (e.g., devising a story
to fit a picture; describing what can be seen in an inkblot). The idea is that people, when confronted with
ambiguous stimuli and unstructured tasks will reveal their innermost selves. This method is favored in
psychodynamic approach (based on Freud’s ideas), and is used mainly for clinical purposes.

One of the best-known projective tests is the Rorschach Inkblot Test. The standard form of this test
involves presenting participants with 10 inkblots. The participants then suggest what each inkblot might
represent, or what it reminds them of.

Projective tests are generally low in both reliability and validity. There are two main reasons for this.
First, because the task is unstructured, the participants’ responses are determined more by their current
moods and concerns, than by their personality traits. Second, the interpretation of responses is very
subjective, depending on the expertise of the person carrying out the interpretation. Non-expert
interpretation reduces the validity of the tests, and the subjectivity reduces their reliability.
Reading Comprehension Tasks:

Task 1. Match the words and phrases with their definitions.

ACQUAINTANCE AMBIGUOUS ASSESS BIAS CONCERN DEVISE FAKE INITIATE

PERSONNEL TIMIDITY

1. Inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair
2. Having more than one possible meaning or interpretation
3. Shyness, fearfulness
4. People employed in an organization
5. Pretend to feel or have
6. Start, begin
7. A person who we know slightly, not a close friend
8. A matter of interest or importance to someone
7. Evaluate or estimate
8. Plan or invent

Task 2. Write your own definitions of the following concepts.

SOCIAL DESIRABILITY BIAS

VALIDITY

RELIABILITY

Task 3. List the advantages and disadvantages of different personality assessment methods.