Chapter 3

Personality
Assessment
Contents

Conception of personality assessment

Purpose of ‘’personality Assessment ‘’

Approaches to personality assessment

 A)Objective tests
 B)Behavioral observations
 C) Projective and Implicit Tests
Brainstorming questions
 What is the purpose of Personality Assessment?
 What are major techniques used to assess
personality ?
 Why is it difficult to measure unconscious

aspects of personality with self -report

inventories ?
The concept of ‘’Personality Assessment
(PA)’’
PA refers to the estimation of one’s personality
make up, that is the person’s characteristic
behavior patterns and salient and stable
characteristics.
 Personality assessment in a simple terms is a

process designed to measure one’s personality.

 PA is a proficiency in psychology that involves

the administration, scoring, and interpretation

measures of personality traits and styles.
Cont’d
 Personality assessment varies as personality conception differs

across perspectives . For example

 Humanistic views - prefers to ask people directly about their

personality as they believe people have clear, well-defined

goals and are actively striving to achieve .
 Where as in psychodynamic view , people are lack insight

(unconscious ) so that needs to adopt an entirely different

approach .
 Most professional psychologist prefer eclectic approach

(integrate different views together)

Purpose
 Diagnose psychological problems
 Screen candidates for college and
employment( Job-fit)
 To look at changes in personality (self –

development )
 To evaluate the effectiveness of therapy
 For assessing theories
Types of personality Assessment
A)Objective tests
B)Behavioral observations
C) Projective and Implicit Tests
Objective tests
Mainly consists self –reported PERSONALITY
INVENTORIES
 Objective tests involve administering a standard set of

items, each of which is answered using a limited set of

response options .(e.g., true or false; strongly disagree,
slightly disagree, slightly agree, strongly agree).
 Responses to these items then are scored in a

standardized, predetermined way.

This are questionnaire designed assess personality based on
responses generated from respondents.
 Respondents are asked describe themselves assuming that

have a pretty good idea of how they typically think, feel, and
behave.
E.g Personality inventories and personality scales such as
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory ,(MMPI), MBTI,
Advantage

 Access to wealth of information

 simplest, easiest, and most cost-effective approach to

assessing personality.
 validity and reliability
Disadvantage
 Raters may be motivated to present themselves in socially desirable way
 Subjected to self-enhancement bias
 Subjected to reference group effect
Behavioral measures
 A person’s personality can be measured by observing their behavior or the
traces of their behavior.
 Behaviorists assume that personality is a composite set of learned

responses to stimuli in the environment, they undertake to watch such

behavior as a preferred method to study
 E.g
 Observation of one’s interaction with a group of strangers.
 Behavioral rating
 Situational Judgment
Advantage
 Objectivity: Behavior is easy to observe and is

quantifiable in a meaningful way.

 Personality is easier to measure.
Limitation
 Some behaviors are hard to link specifically to one

personality trait.
 Observer's Bias
 There is no control over the external environment and

this may lead to interpret the events in fruitless

direction
Projective tests
 Projective tests use ambiguous images or stimuli to
assess an individual’s unconscious fears, desires, and
challenges.
 This approaches assumes that people lack awareness

about important thoughts, feelings, and motives

 E.g The Rorschach Inkblot Test, the TAT, the RISB, and

the C-TCB are all forms of projective tests

 Assessing the
Unconscious--TAT
Thematic
Apperception
Test (TAT)
• people express
their inner
motives through
the stories they
make up about
ambiguous
scenes
 Result could be analyzed in related
with needs such as Achievement,
affiliation and aggression. whereas
“press” refers to environmental forces
that may facilitate or interfere with
need satisfaction.
Advantages
 Reveal important information about hidden

experiences
 Wide areas of personality could be addressed
 Depth of information
Limitations
 Projective tests are basically subjective in nature and the

interpretation
 Reliability and validity related problems always exist in

projective tests.
 There are no standard grading scales for projective tests.
 Person’s varying mood may decide the person’s answer which

may vary considerably from one day to another