Psychological Assessment
Personality
Source: Cohen & Swerdlik (2018), Kaplan & Saccuzzo (2018)
Personality and Personality Assessment
o McClelland: Personality is the most adequate
conceptualization of a person’s behavior in all
its detail
o Menninger: Personality as 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
o Personality – individual’s unique constellation
of psychological traits that is relatively stable
over time
o 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
o Personality Traits – real physical entities that
are bona fide mental structures in each
personality (Allport, 1937)
▪ Trait is a generalized and focalized
neuropsychic system with the capacity to
render many stimuli functionally equivalent,
and to initiate and guide consistent forms of
adaptive and expressive behavior
▪ Any distinguishable, relatively enduring way
in which one individual varies from another
(Guilford, 1959)
o Personality Type – constellation of traits that is
similar in pattern to one identified category of
personality within a taxonomy of personalities
▪ Hippocrates: Melancholic, Phlegmatic,
Sanguine, and Choleric
▪ Jung: basis for MBTI
▪ Holland: Artistic, Enterprising, Investigative,
Social, Realistic, or Conventional (Self-
Directed Search Test for vocational
guidance)
▪ Friedman & Rosenman: Type A and Type B
▪ Type A – competitiveness, haste,
restlessness, impatience, feelings of being
time pressured, and strong need for
achievement and dominance
▪ Type B – mellow and laid-back
▪ Profile – narrative description, graph, table,
or other representation of the extent to
which a person has demonstrated certain
targeted characteristics as a result of the
administration or application of tools of
assessment
▪ Personality Profile – the targeted
characteristics are typically traits, states, or
types
o Personality State – inferred psychodynamic
disposition designed to convey the dynamic
quality of id, ego, and superego in perceptual
conflict
▪ Indicative of relatively temporary
predisposition
o Woodworth Personal Data Sheet – first
personality inventory every developed during
WWI
Developing Instruments to Assess Personality
Personality Assessment: Basic Questions
o Who is being Assessed, and who is doing the
assessment?
▪ Self-Report – process wherein information
about the assessment is supplied by the
examinee himself
▪ Commonly used to explore an assessee’s
self-concept (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 – the degree to
which a person has different self-concepts
in different roles
▪ People who are highly differentiated are
likely to perceive themselves quite
differently in various roles
▪ Low levels of self-concept differentiation
tend to be healthier psychologically
▪ Unfortunately, some clients tend to paint
distorted pictures of themselves
intentionally or unintentionally in self-report
measures
▪ Faking good or Faking Bad
▪ Some testtakers may be impaired with
regard to their ability to respond accurately
to self-report questions
▪ In some situations, the best available
method for the assessment of personality
involves reporting by a third party
▪ Leniency Error, Severity Error, Error of
Central Tendency, and Halo Effect

Source: Cohen & Swerdlik (2018), Kaplan & Saccuzzo (2018)
o What is assessed when a personality
assessment is conducted?
▪ Personality measures are tools used to gain
insight into array of thoughts, feelings, and
behaviors
o Response Style – tendency to respond to a test
item or interview question in some
characteristic manner regardless of the
content of the item or the question
▪ Impression Management – used to describe
the attempt to manipulate others’
impressions through the selective exposure
of some information
▪ Social Desirable Response – present
oneself in favorable light
▪ Acquiescence – agree with whatever is
presented
▪ Nonacquiescence – disagree with whatever
is presented
▪ Deviance – make unusual or uncommon
response
▪ Extreme – make extreme ratings on the
scale
▪ Gambling/Cautiousness – guess or not
guess when in doubt
▪ Overly Positive – claim extreme virtue
through self-presentation in a superlative
manner
▪ Response style can affect the validity of the
outcome
o How are personality assessments structured
and conducted?
▪ Scope of an evaluation may be very wide,
seeking to take a kind of general inventory
of individual’s personality
▪ Locus of Control – person’s perception
about the source of things that happen to
him or her (external or internal)
▪ Face-to-face, computer-administered,
behavioral observation, paper-and-pencil,
etc.
▪ Structured or Unstructured
▪ Frame of Reference – defined as the aspects
of the focus of exploration such as the time
frame, as well as other contextual issues
o Nomothetic Approach – characterized by
efforts to learn how a limited number of
personality traits can be applied to all people
Psychological Assessment
Personality
o Idiographic Approach – characterized by efforts
to learn about each individual’s unique
constellation of personality traits
o Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R)
is widely used in both clinical and research
about personality assessment
▪ Measure five dimensions of personality and
a total of 30 elements or facets that define
each domain
▪ Neuroticism – taps the aspects of
adjustment and emotional stability
▪ Extraversion – taps aspects of sociability
▪ Openness – openness to experience, active
imagination, aesthetic sensitivity,
attentiveness to inner feelings, preference
for variety, intellectual curiosity,
independence of judgment
▪ Agreeableness – altruism, sympathy,
friendliness, and the belief that others are
similarly inclined
▪ Conscientiousness – active process of
planning, organizing and following through
▪ Designed for use with persons 17 yrs of age
and older, self-administered
o Criterion – standard on which a judgment or
decision can be made
o Criterion Group – reference group of testtakers
who share specific characteristics and whose
responses to test items serve as a standard
according to which items will be included in or
discarded from the final version of a scale
o Empirical Criterion Keying – process of using
criterion groups to develop test items
o Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI) – collaboration of Starke R. Hathaway
and John Charnley McKinley
▪ Contains 566 true-false items and was
designed to aid to psychiatric diagnosis with
adolescents and adults
▪ Scales: Hypochondriasis, Depression,
Hysteria, Psychopathic Deviate, Masculinity-
Femininity, Paranoia, Psychasthenia,
Schizophrenia, Hypomania, Social
Introversion
▪ MMPI-3 – latest version (2020)
o California Psychological Inventory (CPI), 3rd
Edition – attempts to evaluate personality in
normally adjusted individuals and thus finds
more use in counseling settings

Source: Cohen & Swerdlik (2018), Kaplan & Saccuzzo (2018)
▪ Commonly used in research settings to
examine everything from typologies of
sexual offenders
▪ Can be used in normal subjects
o Factor Analysis – statistical procedure for
reducing the redundancy in a set of
intercorrelated scores
o Guilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey –
reduces personality to 10 dimensions, each of
which is measured by 30 different items
o Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire
(16PF) – developed by Raymond Cattell
Frequently Used Measures of Positive Personality
Traits
o Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale – measures
global feelings of self-worth using 10 simple
and straightforward statements that
examinees rate on a 4-point likert scale
o General Self-Efficacy Scale (GSE) – measure
an individual’s belief in his or her ability to
organize resources and manage situations, to
persist in the face of barriers, and to recover
from setbacks
o Ego Resiliency Scale Revised – developed by
Block and Kremen (1996), consists of 14 items
and using4-point likert scale, rate statement
such as “I am regarded as a very energetic
persion,” “I get over my anger at someone
reasonably quick,”
o Dispositional Resiliency Scale (DRS) –
developed by Bartone et. Al., (1989) to measure
“hardiness” – the ability to view stressful
situations as meaningful, changeable
o Hope Scale – characterize hope as a goal
driven energy (agency) in combination with the
capacity to construct systems to meet goals
(pathways)
▪ Also know as Dispositional Hope Scale
(Synder et al., 1991)
o Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) – most
widely used self-report measure of
dispositional optimism, which is defined as an
individual’s tendency to view the world and the
future in positive ways
o Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) – developed
as a multi-item scale for the overall
assessment of life satisfaction as a cognitive-
judgmental process, rather than for the
measurement of specific satisfaction domains
Psychological Assessment
Personality
o Positive and Negative Affect Schedules
(PANAS) – developed by Watson, Clark and
Tellegen (1988) to measure two orthogonal
dimensions of affect
o Cognitive Intervention for Stressful Situations –
developed Endler and Parker (1990), measures
coping styles by asking subjects how they
would respond to variety of stressful situation
Personality Assessment and Culture
o Acculturation – ongoing process by which an
individual’s thoughts, behaviors, values,
worldview, and identity develop in relation to
general thinking, behavior, customs, and values
of a particular cultural group
o Values – which an individual prizes or the
ideals an individual believes in
o Instrumental Values – principles that help one
attain some objective
o Terminal Values – guiding principles and a
mode of behavior that is an endpoint objective
o Identity – set of cognitive and behavioral
characteristics by which individuals define
themselves as members of a particular group
o Identification – process by which an individual
assumes a pattern of behavior characteristic of
other people, and referred to it as one of the
central issues that ethnic minority groups must
deal with
o Worldview – unique way people interpret and
make sense of their perceptions as a
consequence of their learning experience,
cultural background, and related variables
Objective Methods
o Usually administered by paper-and-pencil
means or by computer
o Characteristically contain short-answer items
for which assessee’s task is to select one
response from the two or more provided
o Scoring is done according to set procedures
involving little, if any, judgment on the part of
the scorer
o Can usually scored quickly and reliably by
varied means
o Objective personality tests typically contain no
one correct answer, but the selection from
multiple choice items provides info relevant to
something about the testtaker
o Self-report, though, can be subjective
o Objective personality test are objective in a
sense that they employ short-answer format,

Source: Cohen & Swerdlik (2018), Kaplan & Saccuzzo (2018)
one that provides little, if any, room for
discretion in terms of scoring
Projective Methods
o Projective Hypothesis – an individual supplies
structure to unstructured stimuli in a manner
consistent with the individual’s own unique
pattern of conscious and unconscious needs,
fears, desires, impulses, conflicts, and ways of
perceiving and responding
o Projective Method – as a technique of
personality assessment in which some
judgment of the assessee’s personality is made
on the basis of performance on a task that
involves supplying some sort of structure to
unstructured or incomplete stimuli
o Indirect methods of personality assessment
o Born in the spirit of rebellion against normative
data and through attempts by personality
researchers to break down the study of
personality into the study of specific traits of
varying strengths
Rorschach Inkblot Projective Test
o Developed by Hermann Rorschach
o John Exner argued that inkblots are not
completely ambiguous, the task does not
necessarily force projection, and that it has
been mislabeled as projective test for far too
long
o Consists of 10 bilaterally symmetrical inkblots
printed on separate cards
o After the entire set of cards has been
administered once, a second administration
(Inquiry) is conducted, wherein the examiner
attempts to determine what features of the
inkblot played a role in the formulation of
percept (perception of an image)
o Testing the Limits – provide additional
information concerning personality functioning
o Rorschach protocols are scored according to
several categories, including location,
determinants, content, popularity, and form
o Location: part of the inkblot that was utilized in
forming the percept
o Determinants: qualities of the inkblot that
determine what the individual perceives
o Content: content category of the response
o Popularity: refers to the frequency with which a
certain response has been found to correspond
with a particular inkblot or section of an inkblot
Psychological Assessment
Personality
o Form: how accurately the individual’s
perception matches or fits the corresponding
part of the inkblot
o Holtzman Inkblot Test – was created to meet
these difficulties while maintaining the
advantages of inkblot methodology; alternative
for Rorschach
Thematic Apperception Test
o Published by Christiana D. Morgan and Henry A.
Murray
o Originally designed as an aid to eliciting fantasy
material from patients in psychoanalysis
o Consists of 31 cards, one of which is blank
o Should find the source of the examinee’s story
o Apperceive – to perceive in terms of past
perceptions
o The raw material used in deriving conclusions
about the individual examined with TAT are the
stories they were told by the examinee,
clinicians notes about the way or the examiner
in which the examinee responded to the cards,
and the clinician’s notes about extra-test
behavior and verbalizations
o The last two categories of raw data are sources
of clinical interpretations for almost any
individually administered test
o Many interpretive systems incorporate, or to
some degree based on, Needs (determinants of
behavior arising from within the individual) and
Thema (unit of interaction between needs and
press)
o The guiding principle in interpreting TAT stories
is that the testtaker is identifying with someone
in the story and that the needs, environmental
demands, and conflicts of the protagonist in the
story
o Implicit Motive – nonconscious influence on
behavior typically acquired on the basis of
experience
Others
o Hand Test – consists of 9 cards with pictures of
hand on them and tenth blank cards
▪ Responses are interpreted according to 24
categories such as affection, dependence,
and aggression
▪ Edwin Wagner
o Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study –
employs cartoons depicting frustrating
situations and the testtaker is asked to fill in the
response of the cartoon figure being frustrated

Source: Cohen & Swerdlik (2018), Kaplan & Saccuzzo (2018)
▪ Based on the assumption that the testtaker
will identify with the person being
frustrated
o Apperceptive Personality Test – represent an
attempt to address some long-standing
criticisms of the TAT as projective instrument
while introducing objectivity into the scoring
system
▪ Consists of 8 stimulus cards depicting
recognizable people in everyday settings
o Word Association Tests – verbalized the first
word that comes to mind; a Semistructured,
individually administered projective technique
of personality assessment that involves the
presentation of a list of stimulus words
▪ Kent-Rosanoff Free Association Test – one
of the earliest attempts to develop
standardized test using words as projective
stimuli
▪ Carl Jung developed the first WAT
o Sentence Completion Tests – semi-structured
projective technique of personality assessment
that involves presentation of a list of words that
begin with a sentence and the assessee’s task
is to respond by finishing each sentence
▪ Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank (Rotter
& Rafferty, 1950)
▪ Sack’s Sentence Completion Test (Sacks &
Levy, 1950)
o Figure Drawing Test – produces drawing that is
analyzed on the basis of its content and related
variables
▪ Draw-A-Person Test (Florence
Goodenough, 1926)
▪ House-Tree-Person Test (John Buck &
Emmanuel Hammer, 1958)
▪ Kinetic Family Drawing (Hulse, 1951, 1952)
Behavioral Assessment Methods
o Behavioral assessment – what a person does
in situation rather than on inferences about
what attributes he has more globally
o Timeline followback Methodology – designed
for use in the context of clinical interview for
the purpose of assessing alcohol abuse
o Behavioral Observation – watching the
activities of targeted clients or research
subjects
o Self-Monitoring – systematically observing and
recording aspects of one’s own behavior and/or
events related to that behavior
Psychological Assessment
Personality
o Analogue Study – research investigation in
which on or more variables are similar or
analogous to the real variable that the
investigator wishes to examine
o Analogue Behavioral Observation –
observation of a person or persons in an
environment designed to increase the chance
that the assessor can observe the targeted
behavior
o Situational Performance Measure – allows for
observation and evaluation of an individual
under a standard set of circumstances
o Leaderless Group Technique – several people
are organized into a group for the purpose of
carrying out a task an observer records
information related to individual group
member’s initiative, cooperation, leadership,
and related variables
o Role Play – acting an improvised part in a
simulated situation
o Biofeedback – class of psychophysiological
assessment technique designed to gauge,
display, and record a continuous monitoring of
selected biological processes
▪ Plethysmograph – records changes in the
volume of a part of the body arising from
variations in blood supply
▪ Penile Plethysmograph – designed to
measure changes in blood flow in penis
▪ Polygraph – lie detector
o Unobtrusive Measure – telling physical trace or
record without necessarily the presence of
respondents
o Contrast effect – rating is affected by the
previous or prior rating
o Composite Judgment – averaging multiple
judgments
end