Psychology II

ASSIGNMENT 1

THE BIG FIVE PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT TEST

 Concept Of Personality, Theories And Assessment Tools

Personality is an individual’s characteristic set of behaviour, cognition, and emotional pattern that evolve
from biological and environmental factors. Most of the theories focus on motivation and psychological
interactions with one's environment.

Personality Type speak of the psychological classification of various kind of individuals. Personality types
are distinguished from personality traits, which come in different degrees.

Theories of Personality : There are many types of theories regarding personality, but each theory
contains several and sometimes many sub theories.
A) Psychoanalytical Theories- (1) Sigmund Freud (School Of Thought/ id,ego and superego), (2)
Heinz Kout (Narcissism), (3) Karen Horney (Real Self/ Ideal Self)
B) Behaviourist Theory- (1) B.F.Skinner (Operant Conditioning), (2) Evan Pavlov (Classical
Conditioning)
C) Social Cognitive Theories- (1) Albert Bandura (BoBo Doll Experiment), (2) George Kelly
(Personal Construct Psychology)
D) Humanistic Theories ( Maslow And Roger /Free Will)
E) Biopsychological Theories (Cattell and Eysenck)
F) Evolutionary Theories (Charles Darwin’s Natural Selection Theory)
G) Drive Theories

Assessment Tools: There are mainly 2 types of assessment tools for Personality- Projective and
Objective - Projective tests undertake personality as mainly unconscious and assess an individual by how
he/she responds to an unprecedented stimulus, for example- Rorschach Inkblot Test and the Thematic
Apperception Test, whereas Objective tests undertake personality as conscious and measured by
self-report questionnaires and are said to be independent of rater bias example Some of the more widely
used personality self-report measures are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Neo Pi-R, MMPI/MMPI-2, 16
PF, and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire.
Personality Assessment is an aptitude in professional psychology that includes the scoring, interpretation
and administration of experimentally supported measures of personality traits and styles in order to:

● Refine clinical diagnoses;

● Structure and inform psychological interventions; and
● Increase the accuracy of behavioral prediction in a variety of contexts and settings (e.g., clinical,
forensic, organizational, educational).

In our Project Report we have used the Big five Personality Test also known as Five Factor Model(
FMM) which is an Objective test assessment tool. The five factors are Openness to experience,
Conscientiousness(careful or vigilant), Extraversion(outgoing, social), Agreeableness(kind,
sympathetic, warm), and Neuroticism(moody, anxious, frustrated).
We took the survey from 15 people belonging to different professions. These interviewee’s were however
professionals from the corporate sector. The age of all these subjects varied from 23 to 49. We asked the
participants to fill in the forms by themselves. Wherever it was necessary, or the subjects had doubt, we
explained to them what the question meant. An adequate amount of time was given to them in order to get
the most honest and genuine responses.
The test consisted of 50 questions and all of the people filling those forms were asked to rate themselves
on a five-point scale where 1 meant strongly disagree to 5, which meant strongly agree. We gave them
almost 10 minutes to fill in those forms. After collecting this data we plotted all the five personality traits
on a line plots. This plot helped us analyze data in a simpler way enabling us to reach our conclusions.

Findings and Analysis

From our data, we can clearly see the range in which the scores fall for the Big Five personality test.
Starting from Extraversion, we see that the mean is 3.27 which is more than the mean of the sample
population of 10000 people. I.e. 3.05. A major reason for this is since the people that we conducted this
test on, were management professionals who have to deal with a lot of people and so they tend to be
extroverted and will have traits like being energetic and talkative. These people are comfortable around
people and have their way of handling social situations. They have better leadership qualities than the
average person and work atmosphere demands increased levels of extroversion. But like in all groups
there are exceptions in this data set also, we can find people who are introverts but score high in their
agreeableness and conscientiousness scores which makes them a good team player and apt for a
managerial job.

Moving on to Agreeableness, we see that the mean for our sample was 3.6, which is high but is still lower
than the overall mean of 3.84. A possible explanation for this is that when it comes to managers, they do
have to be cooperative and supportive in their nature towards their juniors, however, that comes with
being competitive and challenging people along with being argumentative. These professionals have the
ability to influence and manipulate the clients and subordinates to work in accordance with their line of
thinking and thus need not always be warm or friendly.

As for conscientiousness, we expect it to be high in the case of managers as they hold important positions
in companies and you expect them to be well-organized in their way. Our results show the same. We have
a sample mean of 3.9 which is considerably high and also quite greater than 3.38, the overall mean when
tested on a larger population. High conscientiousness inculcates traits like being organized and
thoroughness in people and show self-discipline and dutifulness, things we generally expect managers to
have. The exceptions in this data set are the people who take shortcuts to achieve their goals and are
disorganized in dealing with life.

Moving on to Neuroticism which is also called emotional stability. It tells about how well one handles an
emotional situation. Being at such a high position, one expects the managers to be emotionally stable and
handle these situations well and thus score less on neuroticism. Our data shows the same. We get a sample
mean of 2.28 which is considerably low and lower than an overall average of 2.98. Lower scores show
higher stability resulting calm and composed personality that a manager must have.
Lastly, openness to experience. Our data shows that the managers score lower than the average, as they
have a score of 3.57 considerably lower than the average of 4.05. A possible reason for this is that
managers seek to gain fulfillment through persistence and are characterized as pragmatic and data-driven.

Learnings and the Significance of Personality at Work:

As we have already established, personality is one of the most important things that define a person. Our
traits, or natural reflexes are what define our character and determine how do we interact and behave with
one another. These traits play a major role in our personal as well as professional lives. When a person
spends about 9 hours with their colleagues every day at the office, it’s not really their qualifications that
define the kind of relationship he/she would have with them. It’s their personalities.

Personalities can also tell you what roles and responsibilities will better suit a person and which ones
won’t. People who are very short tempered, or get irritated or agitated easily are probably not ideal for a
job where they’ll have to take criticism and follow orders from others. On the other hand, a person who is
very emotional will not be ideal working as a medical surgeon. In today’s world, the need for corporate
managers is being steadily replaced by a need for socially-conscious leaders. These people have a correct
balance of emotional and logical quotient required to excel. They can be shrewd and smart enough to get
their work done by their subordinates and at the same time, they are also empathetic towards and aware of
others’ problems. Having the right personality traits for your job is an integral part of your success at the
job. The correct personality traits of the employees and employers can help decrease conflicts and
increase collaboration leading them to excel at what they do.