Psych 11 Class 13 - The Big 5 + Personality Assessment

Personality

People’s typical ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving

Trait

Relatively enduring predisposition that influences our behavior across many situations

How we identify traits

• lexical approach

• factor analysis

Lexical approach

the most crucial features of personality are embedded in our language

Factor analysis

statistical technique that analyzes the correlations among responses

The big 5 model of personality

• extraversion

  • outgoingness/enthusiasm

• neuroticism

  • anxiety/ easily upset

• agreeableness

  • sympathy and warmness

• conscientiousness

  • dependability, self discipline

• openness to experience

  • inventiveness, curiosity

Relation to behavior: Conscientiousness

• Job proficiency

• GPA

• Physical health

• “predictive validity”: the extent to which a test or measure accurately predicts future behavior, performance, or outcomes

Stability of traits

stabilizes with age

Personality assessment: types of tests

structured: empirical methods, rationally/theoretically constructed

Empirical method

• data based

• criterion groups

• determine items that best identify these groups

  • can result in low face validity

    • extent to which respondents can tell what the items are measuring

Examples of the empirical method

• Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

  • Assesses symptoms of psychological disorders

  • true-false format

  • validity scales

  • evaluation

• California Psychological Inventory

  • assesses personality in the normal range

Rationally/Theoretically Constructed

• Starts with an idea of a personality trait

• Items developed based on that idea

• Examples: NEO Personality Inventory (revised NEO-PI-R)

what type of test is Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Rationally constructed

Projective tests

• Ambiguous stimuli

  • project aspects of personality onto stimuli

  • look at answers to infer aspects of personality

• Examples

  • Thematic Apperception Test

  • Human Figure Drawing

  • Graphology

  • Rorschach inkblot test

Rorschach inkblot tests

• symmetrical inkblots

• participants report what the blots look like

• Critiques

  • reliability and validity

  • lack of incremental validity

    • the extent to which a new assessment or predictor adds to the predictive power of an existing assessment, beyond what is already known from existing measures

Thematic Apperception Test

Looking at a drawing and telling a story based off of it - “Tell a Tell”

Issues in personality assessment

• P.T. Barnum Effect

  • the tendency to apply descriptions that are applicable to many people specifically to ourselves

• Illusory Correlation