Lesson 10: Objective personality tests

personality

unique and usual pattern of behaviour, feelings, and thoughts

Personality traits

A model to conceptualize personality. Able to describe how people differ from each other.

Multivariate historical tradition

The tradition of looking at multiple traits, their structures and the way they interact to describe differences

Lexical tradition

A historical way to see important traits. Important traits will be represented by single words across many languages

Lexical analysis

The cataloguing of all adjectives that describe personality and the subsequent factor analysis of these words to simplify the catalogue. Ex. Sensitive, caring, easy to live with=agreeableness

The Big five

Five major clusters of personality traits, which include Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness,
Neuroticism, Openness. The list starts with the most common trait

Are the Big five distinct categories or a continuum?

Although the labels are used as categories, they function on a continuum.

NEO

The test used to measure the big five

NEO-PI-R norms

very high 66+
high 56-65
average 45-55
low 35-44
very low 34 and below

Logical-content strategy

A deductive strategy of developing the meaning of a test response. Uses reason and deductive logic to develop personality measures.

Theoretical Strategy

A deductive strategy of developing the meaning of a test response. Begins with a theory about the nature of the characteristic being measured, followed by an attempt to deduce items based on the theory.

Criterion-Group strategy

An empirical strategy of developing a test, which relies on data collection. This strategy involves comparing the test results between a criterion group that has a shared trait and a control group to determine how they contrast. After distinguished items are determined, cross-validation is performed with an independent criterion sample.

Factor Analytic Strategy

Uses an empirical database of a large number of items and then uses factor analyses to find the minimum number of factors. The strategy used in lexical analysis