Personality Assessment Methods – Objective, Projective & Behavioral Approaches

Objective Personality Assessment

  • Definition & Format
    • Short-answer / forced-choice items (MCQ, T–F, matching).
    • \text{Scoring}\rightarrow fixed keys; minimal scorer judgment.
    • “Objective” = descriptor of test format, not a guarantee of score objectivity, reality, or theoretical neutrality.
  • Advantages
    • Rapid administration & scoring (hand → template, optical scanner, computer).
    • Suitable for large groups & computerized delivery.
    • Broad item sampling across many traits in limited time.
  • Limitations & Caveats
    • No single correct answer → scores always theory-laden (e.g., oedipal-conflict scale only meaningful to analysts).
    • Heavy reliance on self-report ⇒ faking good / bad, social desirability, limited insight.
    • Validity scales, forced-choice, or response-inconsistency checks inserted to detect protocol irregularities.

Projective Methods

  • Projective Hypothesis
    • Confronted with ambiguous / unstructured stimuli, people supply their own structure → responses reflect unique patterns of conscious + unconscious needs, conflicts, perceptions.
  • General Features
    • Indirect: assessee talks about the stimulus; assessor infers about assessee.
    • Lower susceptibility to overt faking; minimal language demands; perceived cross-cultural promise.
    • Historically born in rebellion against trait-norm orientation; sought to honor individuality over averages.
  • Stimulus Media
    • Inkblots, pictures, words, sentences, sounds, drawings, even clouds & chalkboards.

Inkblots – The Rorschach

  • History & Materials
    • Hermann Rorschach’s “form-interpretation test” (1921, 10 symmetrical blots: 5 achromatic, 2 black-white-red, 3 multicolored; printer’s accidental shadings retained).
    • Kit = cards only; no manual → proliferation of divergent scoring systems.
  • Administration Phases
    1. Free-association: “What might this be?” – record verbatim responses, latencies, rotation, gestures.
    2. Inquiry: “What made it look like …?” – clarify loci & determinants.
    3. Testing-the-limits (optional): restructure task to probe flexibility, confusion, anxiety, or to elicit final responses.
  • Scoring Variables
    • Location (whole, large detail, small detail, white space).
    • Determinants (form, color, shading, texture, movement).
    • Content (human, animal, anatomy, blood, sexual, etc.).
    • Popularity (common vs rare percepts).
    • Form quality (good/poor reality testing).
  • Interpretive Inferences (clinically derived)
    • Many Whole responses → conceptual thinking.
    • Low Form level → impaired reality testing / psychosis.
    • Human Movement → imaginative resources.
    • Color use → emotional reactivity.
    • Themes & category interrelations → personality narrative.
  • Scoring Systems Evolution
    • Diverse manuals (Beck, Klopfer & Davidson, Lerner, etc.).
    • Exner’s Comprehensive System (CS) – integration of prior systems; brought comparability, inter-scorer reliability (≈87 %).
    • R-PAS (2011) – evolution of CS; online scoring; behavioral-task framing.
  • Psychometrics & Controversies
    • Split-half inappropriate (each blot unique).
    • Test–retest compromised by familiarity & state variance.
    • Validity literature mixed; meta-analyses show some indices predict IQ, psychosis, suicide, therapy outcome; other indices weak.
    • Critics (Wood, Garb) vs supporters (Meyer, Weiner); moratorium call later rescinded for limited uses.
    • Courts generally accept Rorschach; still widely taught & used.

Pictures – Story-Telling Techniques

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

  • Origins: Christiana Morgan & Henry Murray (1935). 31 cards (1 blank) with “classical human situations”.
  • Task: For each selected picture (commonly 20), tell a story: past, present, future, thoughts & feelings of characters.
  • Flexibility: Cards tailored by examiner (age, gender, verbosity).
  • Data Sources:
    1. Story content.
    2. Extra-test behavior & storytelling style.
    3. Examiner’s process notes.
  • Key Murray Concepts
    • Need = internal determinant.
    • Press = environmental determinant.
    • Thema = recurring interaction of need × press.
  • Interpretive Systems: Defense Mechanism Manual, Westen’s Social Cognition, Jenkins, RATC for children, etc.
  • Psychometric Notes
    • Split-half & test-retest unsuitable (cards differ; stories sensitive to transient states).
    • Inter-rater reliability adequate when standardized coding used.
    • Validity: implicit motives differ from self-attributed motives; low convergence with questionnaires.
    • Situational pull, hunger, mood, examiner identity all influence stories.
  • Research Example: Suicide-lyric rock study – TAT suicide imagery linked to personality traits, mood reactivity, altruistic themes.
  • Intuitive Appeal vs Transparency: Clinicians value rich narrative; high face validity allows faking.

Other Picture-Story & Related Tests

  • Variants for culture/age (TEMAS for Hispanic youth; CAT/CAT-H; Senior Apperception Technique; Roberts Apperception Test; Blacky Pictures; Make-a-Picture-Story; Education Apperception Test).
  • Hand Test – 10 cards of hands; scored on 24 action categories.
  • Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Study – cartoons with blocked goals; code direction (intra/extra/in-punitive) × reaction type.
  • Apperceptive Personality Test (APT) – 8 contemporary scenes + MCQ follow-ups for objective scoring.

Word-Based Stimuli

  • Word Association Tests
    • Galton → Jung → Rapaport: 60 words (neutral vs “traumatic”: love, suicide, breast).
    • Variables: response content, latency, popularity, retest consistency.
    • Used to explore conflict areas; limited modern clinical use.
  • Kent–Rosanoff Free Association Test (100 neutral words; focus on popular vs idiosyncratic responses; decline due to creativity / education confounds and low link to psychosis).

Sentence Completion

  • Format: Stem + blank ("I like to ___").
  • Levels: General vs setting-specific; atheoretical vs theory-linked (e.g., Washington Univ. SCT for ego development).
  • Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank
    • 40 items; high-school, college, adult forms; 7-point maladjustment scale.
  • Pros/Cons: Broad info, easy, high face validity ⇒ susceptible to impression management; could be made less transparent via disguised stems or forced-choice adjuncts.

Sound-Based Stimuli

  • Skinner’s Verbal Summator (1930s)
    • Muffled vowel-like sounds → “auditory inkblots”.
    • Rechristened tautophone by Rosenzweig & Shakow.
    • Subsequent Auditory Apperception/Sound Association Tests & Murray’s Azzageddi.
    • Declined: weak differentiation, bland responses, scoring issues, redundancy with visual tests.

Figure-Drawing Techniques

  • Draw-A-Person (DAP) – Machover (1949)
    • “Draw a person.” → opposite-sex figure → inquiry.
    • Indicators: placement (future = right/up; past = left/down), size (tiny ↔ insecurity; off-page ↔ impulsivity), line quality, shading, erasures, body emphasis (e.g., huge eyes → paranoia; large tie → sexual aggression).
    • Case prototypes: rapist drawing = muscular upper body, nudity, page-dominance; pedophile drawing = small, childlike, shaded, needy sun symbol.
  • House-Tree-Person (HTP) – symbolic meaning of each element; look for pathology themes.
  • Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD) – family members “doing something”; assesses family dynamics; spin-offs: Kinetic School Drawing, KDS, Collaborative Drawing Technique.
  • Validity Debates: High clinical use; tenuous empirical support; observer expertise ≠ accuracy; risk of over-interpretation.

Core Issues in Projective Testing

  • Key Assumptions Challenged
    • Ambiguity ⇒ increased projection.
    • Responses are idiosyncratic.
    • Stronger need ⇒ more frequent appearance in protocol.
    • Parallels between test behavior & real life.
    • Existence of “unconscious” as measurable entity.
  • Situational Variables: Examiner presence, age, subtle cues; instructions; reinforcement; cultural context; state factors (hunger, sexual tension).
  • Psychometrics: Variable protocol lengths, lack of alternate forms, difficulty with standard reliability indices; still, inter-scorer reliability can be high with training.
  • Objective vs Projective Revisited
    • So-called objective tests not immune to bias & projection.
    • Proposal: call them structured vs unstructured tests (Weiner, 2005).

Behavioral Assessment Methods

  • Sign vs Sample
    • Sign approach (traditional): test responses = indicators of latent traits/states.
    • Sample approach (behavioral): behaviors are data in their own right; focus on antecedents & consequences.
  • Who, What, When, Where, Why, How
    • Who: Assessee(s) = clients, research participants; Assessor(s) = professionals, trained aides, the assessee (self-monitoring).
    • What: Clearly defined, measurable target behaviors (e.g., “calls out in class” counted in seconds).
    • When: At naturally high-probability times; schedules = event/frequency recording vs interval recording.
    • Where: Natural settings preferred; labs or VR when needed.
    • Why: Establish baseline, identify triggers & maintaining factors, select interventions, track change, satisfy insurers.
    • How: Direct observation, mechanical recording, diaries, handheld devices; analysis debated (traditional psychometrics vs experimental approach).

Specific Behavioral Techniques

  • Behavioral Observation & Rating Scales
    • Running narrative, video coding, or structured checklists (e.g., Marital Interaction Coding System).
    • Direct ↔ Indirect continuum; broad-band vs narrow-band instruments.
    • Training essential; composite judgments average observer error.
  • Self-Monitoring
    • Assessee tracks own behavior/emotions (e.g., food logs, panic diaries).
    • Tools: paper logs, beeping handheld computers → ecological momentary assessment.
    • Technique itself can be therapeutic; risk of reactivity (behavior changes because it is observed).
    • TLFB methodology: calendar-aided retrospective recall of drinks, gambling episodes, etc.
  • Analogue Observation & Studies
    • Create settings that mimic real triggers (e.g., snake video for phobic client).
    • Situational Performance Measures: Real or simulated tasks (driver’s road test, flight simulator, firefighter drills).
      • Leaderless Group Technique – observe initiative, cooperation; used in OSS, industry; identifying “unleaders” for self-managed teams.
    • Role-Play: Simulated interpersonal exchanges to assess competence; validity hinges on generalization to real life.
  • Psychophysiological Assessment
    • Biofeedback: continuous display of HR, GSR, EMG, EEG for training & assessment.
    • Plethysmograph: limb blood volume; penile plethysmograph (phallometry) for sexual-arousal profiles; evidentiary debates & faking-good concerns.
    • Polygraph (Lie Detector): records respiration, GSR, pulse; high false-positive; minimal training; evidentiary inadmissibility in many courts.
  • Unobtrusive Measures
    • Nonreactive physical traces/records (floor wear near exhibits, whiskey bottles in trash, caloric wrappers, circle shrink during ghost stories).

Measurement Issues & Errors

  • Inter-rater Reliability: essential; threatened by vague codes & inadequate training.
  • Contrast Effects: Prior observation influences next rating (e.g., Olympic skating scores).
  • Observer Bias & Equipment Limits: Single-camera angle, cost of multi-camera setups.
  • Ethics & Reactivity: Hidden recording versus informed consent; adaptation periods help.
  • Integration with DSM: Need for bridges between behavioral formulations and categorical diagnoses; emerging g + s models for personality disorders.

Contemporary Perspective

  • Clinical vs Actuarial
    • Early oracular intuition ("third ear") gave way to data-driven actuarial mindset.
    • Today: norms, reliability, validity, IRT even for projectives; creative judgment now parses & integrates multiple standardized findings.
  • Future Trends
    • Greater standardization of formerly “artful” techniques.
    • Dimensional approaches to personality pathology (general g & specific s factors).
    • Technology-mediated observation (wearables, VR, smartphone sensing).
  • Bottom Line
    • Each assessment method offers unique windows; wise assessors triangulate structured tests, unstructured tasks, and direct behavior samples for the fullest, most ethical understanding of personality.