What is Personality?

Personality encompasses a person’s relative state, feelings, thoughts and behaviour patterns; meaning a uniqueness that differentiates us from other people. A sum total of individual characteristics and ways of behaving which in their organization or patterning describes an individual’s unique adjustment to his/her environment.

Personality is the characteristic patterns of behaviour and modes of thinking that determine a person's adjustment to the environment. Personality is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character. It encompasses the enduring traits and characteristics that relates to a person’s emotions, motivations, interpersonal interactions and attitudes.

What is Personality Assessment?

Psychological assessment is a process that involves the integration of information from multiple sources, such as tests of normal and abnormal personality, tests of ability or intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes, as well as information from personal interviews. Collateral information is also collected about personal, occupational, or medical history, such as from records or from interviews with parents, spouses, teachers, or previous therapists or physicians.

A psychological test is one of the sources of data used within the process of assessment; usually more than one test is used. Many psychologists do some level of assessment when providing services to clients or patients, and may use for example, simple checklists to assess some traits or symptoms, but psychological assessment is a more complex, detailed, in-depth process. Typical types of focus for psychological assessment are to provide a diagnosis for treatment settings; to assess a particular area of functioning or disability often for school settings; to help select type of treatment or to assess treatment outcomes; to help courts decide issues such as child custody or competency to stand trial; or to help assess job applicants or employees and provide career development counselling or training.

Psychometric Properties of Personality Assessment:

Psychometric properties deal with the scientific measurement of individual differences (personality and intelligence). It attempts to measure the psychological qualities of individuals and use that knowledge to make predictions about behaviour. It assesses a person’s ability or personality in a measured and structured way. It involves two major research tasks, namely:

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(i) The construction of instruments and procedures for measurement; and(ii) The development and refinement of theoretical approaches to

measurement.

Five Personality Assessment Techniques: Rorschach Inkblot Test. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). Myers Briggs Type Indication (MBTI ®). Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) / Pictorial Test. Five Factor Model (FFM).

1. Rorschach Inkblot Test

Author/Year or Design: The originator of this test is the Swiss Psychiatrist by the name of Hermann Rorschach in the year 1921. (He was credited as the originator of inkblot technique because he found an original and important use for inkblot, especially in identifying psychological disorder and he was the first to apply inkblot to the diagnostic investigation of the personality as a whole).

What it Measures: Rorschach inkblot test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblot are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both.

Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It also detects underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctantly to describe their thinking processes openly.

Description of the Test/Test Items: The Rorschach inkblot test consists of a series of 10 cards, each displaying a rather complex or ambiguous inkblot. Rorschach developed each stimulus card by dropping ink onto a piece of paper and folding it. The outcome was a unique, bilaterally symmetrical form on a white background.

Five were black and gray, two contained black, gray and red, and three contained poster colours of various shades.

Each card of Rorschach is administered twice; the first is the free association phase while the second is the inquiry phase. During the free association phase, the cards are presented by the examiner; one at a time and the subject is then asked something like "What might this be?”

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No restriction is placed on responses, or is only a particular type of response allowed, and no clues are given on what is expected. The examiner records every word and every sound made by the subject taking the test verbatim. In addition, the examiner records how long it takes a subject to respond to each card (reaction time) and the position of the card when the response is made (upside down, sideways or right side up). Sounds made by the subject may be recorded too.

The purpose of the inquiry phase is to allow the examiner to score the subject's responses. Responses are scored according to at least five dimensions, including:

1. Location - whether the response involves the entire inkblots or some part.2. Determinants - what determined the response, whether the subject responds to the shape of the blot, colour, or difference in texture and shading.3. Form quality - the extent to which the responses matched the stimulus properties of the inkblots.4. Content - what the perception represents.5. Frequency of occurrence - the extent to which the response was popular or original; popular responses occur once in every three protocols on the average. The technique can test if the subjects possess abstract ideas or concrete realities, inner thoughts, creative originality or a high or low sense of consciousness.

From the subject's scores on the questions asked, the tester draws some conclusions. For instance, seeing the blot as wholes indicates a preference for abstract ideas, while reacting to their parts shows a preference for concrete realities.

Psychometric Properties: It is exceptionally difficult to evaluate the Rorschach test using classical psychometric properties. The lack of standardization in administering and scoring the test has been a primary criticism and a source of difficulty for researchers who are trying to compare results from different studies.

The reliability of this test depend substantially on details of testing procedure, such as where the tester and subject are seated, any introductory words, verbal and non verbal responses to subjects' questions of comments, and how responses are recorded.

Attempts have been made to improve the psychometric properties of the Rorschach test through the use of the Exner Scoring System which standardize the scoring and interpretive system which has made the test a little bit more valid and reliable.

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Strength:

1. It provides helpful information for identifying individuals who has been abused before, forecasting criminal nature and predicting the onset causes.

2. Useful to clinical psychologist in evaluating patients. Information obtained from a personal interview and questionnaires could reveal interesting parts of a person psyche.

3. Useful in exploratory techniques in some form of insight oriented psychotherapy.

4. It is used regularly in research on dependency level of a patient.5. It could be used by other psychologist for analytical purposes.

Weaknesses:

1. The scoring failure to provide an objective system, free of arbitrary conventions and showing high inter-scorer agreement.

2. Lack of satisfactory internal consistency or test re-tests reliability.3. Failure to provide cogent evidence for clinical validity.4. Failure to possess an individual Rorschach scoring category relating to

diagnosis.5. Lack of prognostic or predictive validity with respect to the outcome of

treatment or later behaviour.6. Failure to distinguish between Rorschach as a projective technique in the

hands of a skilled psychologist with a much lower psychometric rating for assessing personality.

2. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Author/Year of Design: The original authors of the MMPI were Starke R. Hathaway, PhD, and J.C. McKinley, MD. The MMPI is copyrighted by the University of Minnesota. It was originally developed in 1939. The first major revision of the MMPI was the MMPI-2, which was standardized on a new national sample of adults (between 18 years and over) in the United States and released in 1989.

What it Measures: MMPI is one of the most frequently used personality test in mental health. The test is used by trained professional to assist in indentifying personality structure and psychopathology. It was originally designed to identify people with serious personality disorder but it has presently been widely used in studying normal population. It is therefore used in determining the appropriate psychiatric label for people exhibiting behavioural disorders. The test is often used to assess personality characteristics of people whose behaviour are not

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perfectly ordered. It is interpreted by looking at the total configuration of the profile, not just the separate scale.

Description of the Test/Test Item: The original MMPI was made up or 566 statements about attitudes, emotional reactions, physical and psychological symptoms, and past experiences. The subjects tested are expected to answer "True", or "False", or "Cannot say". Some of the items are:

(1) My Mother often made me obey, even when I thought it was unreasonable.(2) I have never done anything dangerous for the thrill of it.(3) At times my thoughts have raced ahead faster than I could speak them.

The responses are scored according to their correspondence to answers given by people with different kinds of psychological problems which the instrument is designed to measure. The ten kinds of psychological problems measured, using the MMPI, were grouped as 10 basic "clinical scales" with some items for each subscale. The list of scales measured includes:

Hs: Hypochondriasis - Emphasis on physical complaints.D: Depression -Unhappy, depressed.Hy: Hysteria -Reaction to stress by denying problems.Pd: Psychopathic deviancy-lack of social conformity, often in trouble with the law.Mf: Masculinity -Feminity-feminine orientation by males, masculine orientation by females.Pt: Psychostheria -worried, anxious.Pa: Paranoid -suspicious.Sc: Schizophrenia -withdrawn, bizarre thinking.Ma: Mania -impulsive, excitable.Si: Social Introversion -introverted, shy.

The MMPI-2 consists of 567 affirmative statement to which the subject responds with "True" or "False" alternative. The inventory provides scores on 10 basic "clinical scales" which are identical with those in the Original MMPI. There are however supplementary scales and subscales that make up the complete inventory. The items cover such areas as general health, affective etc, and motor symptoms; sexual, political and social attitudes; educational, occupational, family and marital question; and many well known neurotic or psychotic behaviour manifestation such as obsessive and compulsive state.

The MMPI-A is the new form of the MMPI developed specially for use with adolescents. It in-corporate most features of the MMPI and MMPI-2 but accommodates younger test-takers through the reduction of the length of the

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inventory to only 478 items. There is also the inclusion of new items and scales covering relevant areas such as school and family problems.

Psychometric Properties: Norming Groups - the criterion group was composed of about 400 patients at the university of Minnesota Hospital who had been diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. The Control group was comprised of about 700 individuals who were relatives or visitors of patients (excluding mental patients) at the hospital.

Reliability- though the co-efficient are not as solid as those for some of the major ability test, they are as high as those in comparable tests.

Median Split-half coefficients-0.70 while median test-retest coefficients-range from 0.50 to 0.90. There was no validity information in the MMPI manual.

Strength:

1. It is much easier for clients to answer quickly enough by giving answers that are favourable or unfavourable impressions with the MMPI.

2. MMPI / MMPI- 2 are the most frequently administered psychological test in assessing parents. For instance, during forensic evaluations, psychologists are often asked to provide expert opinions about the emotional health of the parent as well as assessing any possible developmental or adjustment problems related to the child.

3. The MMPI is often administered as part of a neuropsychological test battery to evaluate cognitive functioning.

Weaknesses:

1. It is a very time consuming test. While an average person can finish the test in 60 to 90 minutes, a person with lower reading comprehension ability can take up to 2 hours or more to complete the test.

2. MMPI are strictly licensed test that must be purchased, administered and interpreted by a suitable experienced clinical psychologist or psychiatrist, therefore, it is regarded as a complex diagnostic investigation for relatively infrequent use.

3. Myer Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI ®)

Author/Year of Design: The original developers of these personality inventories were Katharine Cook Briggs and her Daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers which was first published in 1962, although, it was first introduced by Carl Gustav Jung.

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What it Measures: The MBTI ® measures the followings;

It is designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions.

It is also used to understand and appreciate differences between people. Measures normal populations and emphasise the values of naturally

occurring difference.

Description of the Test/Test Item: The MBTI ® asked subjects to answer a series of forced choice questions where one choice identifies you as belonging to one of the four paired traits. The basic test takes about 20 minutes and at the end you are presented with a precise multi-dimensional summary of your personality. The MBTI ® test classifies people into types based on four bipolar dimensions.

Sensing / Intuition (S-N): This distinguishes a preference for gathering data directly through the sense as fact, details and precedents (sensing) versus indirectly as relationship, patterns and possibilities.

Extraversion / Introversion (E-I): This distinguishes a preference for focusing attention on and drawing energy from the outer world of people and things versus the inner world of ideas and impressions.

Thinking / Feeling (T-F): This distinguishes a preference for deciding via objective impersonal logic (thinking) versus subjective, person centred values (feelings).

Judging / Perceiving (J-P): This distinguishes an outward preference to having things planned and organized (judging) versus a flexible style based more on staying open to options than deciding (perceiving).

Psychometric Properties: An instrument is said to be valid when it measures what it has been designed to measure. Studies have found that the MBTI scores compare favourably to other assessments with respect to evidence of convergent validity, divergent validity, construct validity, internal validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability. However, this study also based its measurement of validity on Criterion-related validity.

One study reports that the MBTI ® dichotomies exhibit good split-half reliability; however, the dichotomy scores are distributed in a bell curve, and the overall type allocations are less reliable.

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Strength:

1. The MBTI ® theory regards all types as equal and seeks to better help people understand themselves and others better.

2. The MBTI ® helps identifies areas of strength and possible areas of weaknesses in a subject.

3. The MBTI ® helps match specific task assignments according to preferences.

4. The MBTI ® supplies a framework in which the team members can understand and better handle conflicts.

5. The MBTI ® helps individuals understand how different perspective and methods can lead to a useful and effective problem solving.

6. The MBTI ® teaches team members to value and work with the strength of others.

Weaknesses:

1. It is not designed as a clinical inventory.2. It only describes a problem solving process and also how individuals differ

in their approach to different events and situations.3. It does not identify specific techniques of attending individual differences.4. The statistical validity and reliability is low.

4. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

Author/Year of Design: The TAT was developed by the American psychologist; Henry A. Murray and Christiana D. Morgan at Harvard during the 1930’s to explore the underlying dynamics of personality, such as internal conflicts, dominant drives, interests and motives. The TAT is popularly known as the Picture Interpretation Technique because it uses a standard series of provocative, yet ambiguous pictures about which the subject is asked to tell a story or interpret a picture as a dramatic story from their own perspective of the picture presented.

What it Measures: The TAT is a projective psychological test and has been among the most widely researched tool used in helping subjects to reveal repressed aspects of their personality, motives and needs for achievement, power, intimacy and problem solving ability. Other measures are:

1. It measure and evaluates a pattern of thought, attitudes, and observational capacity and emotional responses to ambiguous test materials.

2. It is an attitude measurement for ones unconscious state of mind.

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3. Administered to individuals who have already received a diagnosis in order to match them with the type of psychotherapy best suited in their personalities.

4. It measures progress in psychotherapy or in some cases, it is used to help therapist understand why a treatment seems to be stalled or blocked or not working.

Psychometric Properties: There are some doubts regarding the psychometric soundness of the TAT in this regards; Spangler (1992) conducted a meta-analysis of a TAT based achievement motivation. According to him, their analysis indicated that these measures exhibited convergent validity with two classes of real world achievement measures, but the absolute magnitude of the validity was relatively low with average correlation falling between 19 and 22 in magnitude.

Costa (1984) also reported that even when studies conducted using the TAT based measure have relatively high correlations they have proven difficult to replicate, also there is also relatively little evidence that the TAT based achievement measures shows incremental validity beyond the measurement of intelligence.

Strength:

1. It helps to investigate a various extent to which people are emotionally involved in a relationship with others and their ability to understand the complexities of human relationship.

2. It helps investigate individual abilities to distinguish between their viewpoints about a situation and the perspective of others involved.

3. Help to investigate clients’ ability to control aggressive impulses, self esteem issues of personal identity.

Weaknesses:

1. It lacks a standardize method of administration as well as a lack of standard norms for interpretation.

2. Thematic Apperception Test do not yield a score so its results can be difficult to interpret this is because the original scoring system device in 1943 by Henry Murray attempts to account for every variable that is measured but the whole process is time consuming and unyielding as results can be of little use.

3. TAT is assumed to be unscientific because it cannot be proved to be valid (that is, it may not measure what it claims to actually measures) or reliable

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(that is give a consistent result over time due to the challenges of standardizing interpretations of the narratives provided by subjects.

4. The pictures used in a TAT are found to evoke a lot of deviant stories (i.e. more negative) leading researchers to conclude that the difference in result was as a result of the characteristics of the images used as stimuli.

5. The “Five-Factor Model” (FFM):

Author/Year of Design: The “Five-Factors Model” of personality is five broad domains or dimensions of personality which are used to describe human personality. This framework was postulated by McCrae and Costa (in 1987).

The Big Five ‘super traits’ have been researched and validated by many different psychologists (WT Norman 1963, McCrae & Costa 1987, Brand & Egan 1989, LR Goldman 1990 and P Sinclair 1992) and are at the core of many other personality questionnaires.

While Raymond Cattell ‘uncovered’ 16 traits from his factor analysis (a statistical way of reducing a variety of things down to a smaller number of related clusters) which further lead to the development of the FFM.

What it Measures: “The Big Five” is the commonly used term for the model of personality which describes the five fundamental factors of our personality. The Big Five major domains and their respective facets can be summarized as (OCEAN) and can be described as following:

Openness to experience- (Inventive/Curious vs. Consistent/Cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity and variety of experience.

Conscientiousness- (Efficient/Organized vs. Easy-going/Careless). A tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully and aim for achievement; planned rather than spontaneous behaviour.

Extraversion- (Outgoing/Energetic vs. Solitary/Reserved). Energy, positive emotions, surgency, and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others.

Agreeableness- (Friendly/Compassionate vs. Cold/Unkind). A tendency to be compassionate and co-operative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others.

Neuroticism- (Sensitive/Nervous vs. Secure/Confident). A tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, or vulnerability.

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Psychometric Properties: The Big Five Factor models has been very well validated, and while it has shown correlations with performance in jobs, studies indicate that the correlation with particular jobs does not exceed 0.30, which accounts for no more than 15% of the variables. There is a big difference between measuring job suitability, style, etc., and measuring personality per se.

Suffice it to say, validation studies were published and presented to the British Psychology Society by the end of the 1990s the Big Five was established as a significant and fundamental personality testing model. The Big Five model is a modern, widely replicated and validated methodology for understanding, explaining and measuring personality.

Strength:

1. The Big Five model gives us an accurate and fast way of assessing the main drivers of a subject’s personality.

2. The strengths of the Big Five Factor model lie in its speed and ease of use and this makes it a very useful tool for gaining a rapid overview of a person's key drivers.

Weaknesses:

1. The model by itself is not able to drill down into complex management capabilities or competencies. For this we must refer more to work-related behaviours rather than ‘pure’ personality.

2. Management performance depends more on the subtle use of discretionary elements of the job, which the Big Five will not measure.

3. The Big Five is a ‘broad brush’ personality methodology. A different approach is required for management assessment, to gauge the components of people's behaviour and the detailed combinations of working style.

4. It lacks some of the rigour required for assessing people in or destined for managerial and executive roles.

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References:

Chris Nwabuoku (2010) “Essentials of Psychology”. Dunjoy Prints & Publishers, Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti. ISBN: 978 6631-26-4

Meyer, Gregory J. and Kurtz, John E. (2006) 'Advancing Personality Assessment Terminology: Time to Retire "Objective" and "Projective" as Personality Test Descriptors,' Journal of Personality Assessment, 87: 3, 223-225.

Mellenbergh, G. J. Mellenbergh (Eds.) (with contribution by D. J. Hand), ‘Advising on Research Methods; A consultants companion (pg 183-209). Huizen The Netherlands: Johannes van Kessel Publishing.

Michell, J. B (1997) “Quantitative science and the definition of measurement of psychology”. British Journal of Psychology 88 (3): 355-383

Thurstone, L. L. (1959). The measurement of Values. Chicago: The University of Chicago.

Tellegen, A; B Porath, Y. S. McNulty, J.L., Aribisi, P.A, Graham, J. R., & Kaemmer, B. (2003). The MMPI- 2 Restructured Clinical Scales: Development, Validation and Interpretation. Minneapolis, MN; University of Minnesota Press.

Hathaway, S. R., & McKinley, J. C. (1940). A Multiphasic Personality Schedule (Minnesota): I. Construction of the Schedule. Journal of Psychology. 10, 249-254.

Butcher, J. N., Dahlstorm W.G., Graham, J.R., Tellegen, A, & Kaemmer, B. (1989) The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory -2 (MMPI- 2): Manual for Administration and Scoring. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Mattews, G. Deary, I, J., & Whiteman, M.C. (2003). Personality Traits. Cambridge University Press.

Costa, P. T., Jr. & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R) and NEO Five Factor Inventory (NEO –FFI) manual. Odessa, FL.: Psychological Assessment Resources.

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