Lecture 5 - Personality measurement Flashcards
(9 cards)
Assessing personality
Self-report inventories
- asks people to respond to a series of questions about themselves
- widely used form of personality assessment
- used by researchers, manages, and clinical psychologists
Minnesota Multiphasic Persoanlity Inventory (MMPI)
- self-report inventory used by clinical psychologists
- widely used clinical assessment tool
- very long (567 items)
- 1-2 hours
- dozens of personality factors
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- measures Jungian types
- most widely known personality test
- commonly used in business
~ E, Extraverted (Expressive)
~ S, Sensing (observant)
~ T, Thinking (tough-minded),
~ J, judging (scheduling)
~ I, introverted (reserved)
~ N, intuitive (introspective)
~ F, feeling (friendly)
~ P, perceiving (probing)
Hans Eysenck (1985)
- extraversion
- neuroticism
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
- 48 items
- later reduced to 24 items
The big five
- several scales developed
- which is the most useful?
Assessing the big five
John and Srivastava (1999)
- widely used assessment of the big 5
- derived from the lexical/dictionary approach
- 44 items
~ often translated for cross-cultural validation
~ consistent across most western and European cultures
Two-item personality inventory (TPI)
- 10 items
- 2 questions per trait
- short
- easy to implement
Applying psychology
Industrial/organisational psychology
- psychology of the workplace
- occupational psychology (UK)
Organisational behaviour
- focused on understanding explaining, and improving attitudes of individuals in organisations
I/O Psychology
Poor organisational behaviour leads to
- poor employee satisfaction
- greater attrition of employees
- low moral and motivation
American employees would rather have a better boss than a pay rise (Kiisel, 2012)
Predicting behaviour is of interest to managers
- employees have the ability to influence coworkers
- anticipate what employees may do in situations
- may prove index of “fit” in organisation
Uses of personality assessment in organisations
- conflict resolution and team building
- hiring decisions
- person-job fit
Person-job fit:
- when a job characteristics align with employees’ personality, motivation and abilities
- lack of fit increases burnout and physical symptoms
- good fit results in higher job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and better performance of the job
Selection:
- assessing and evaluating fit between the person and job
- based on reduction and assumption personality is stable
The big five in the worlpac
Desirable traits for a good person-job fit
Openness
- willingness to embrace new ideas and new situations
- may adjust better to organisational change
- linked to higher creativity and adaptability
Conscientiousness
- follows through and gets things done
- strongest predictor of job performance
- too much can be a bad thing
Extraversion
- an outgoing, talkative, and sociable as well as enjoys social interaction
- linked to higher performance in sales and management
- related to social interactions and persuasion
Agreeableness
- being a nice person in general
- effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness
Neuroticism
- tendency to be anxious or moody
- emotional stability related to stress coping
- also strong predictor of job performance
- Table information -
Trait -> advantages -> disadvantages
Conscientiousness -> job performance, job satisfaction, counterproductive behaviours, turnover -> adaptability
Emotional stability (neuroticism) -> job performance, job satisfaction, leadership, turnover -> identifying threats, high risk behaviour
Extraversion -> sales performance, leadership, emergence, job satisfaction -> absenteeism, accidents
Agreeableness -> team behaviour, helping, counterproductive behaviour -> career success, coping with conflict, lenient ratings
Openness -> creativity, leadership, adaptability -> commitment, counterproductive behaviours, accidents
Employers used scores from personality tests to make hiring and promotion decisions
- critics complain that employers misinterpret or rely too heavily on these test scores the making these decisions
- research provides stronger evidence for the relationship between personality and job performance
Employers used scores from personality tests to make hiring and promotion decisions
- critics complain that employers misinterpret or rely too heavily on these test scores when making these decisions
- research provides stronger evidence for the relationship between personality and Job performance
Beyond the big five
Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
- measures Jungian types
- most widely uses personality test in business
- questionable evidence in predicting workplace performance
Personality assessments designed for the workplace
- too many to count
- account for changes in personality
~ personality not always consistent
~ attempt to provide framework of why personality changes
Whole trait theory
- personality is multifaceted
- we have a distribution of personality states
- personality states depend on context and environment
- standard personality assessment capture “average” but not entire distribution of variability of our behaviour
- each person has a different distribution shape
- individuals can have more or less variation from baseline
- variation can be explained by social and cogntive factors
With and across contact framework:
- expands on whole trait theory
- attempted to capture situational factors that predict personality
- measures situational context during personality measurement
What other traits are I/O psychologist interested in?
- ADEPT-15
- workplace seal which expands on big 5
- proprietary scale developed for consulting firm
Self-report inventories
Strengths
- standardised and use established personality traits
- predict behaviour and employee fit (to see extent)
Limitations
- ppts make ‘fake’ responses to look better (or worse)
- high number of items leads to loss of interest
- takers not always accurate in self-judgments
- no personality test, by itself, is likely to provide a definitive description of any given individual
Assessing personality
Projective Tests
- Freudian defence mechanism (i.e. projection)
- access unconscious by providing an ambiguous stimulus
- ppts ‘project’ personalities as they describe the object
Projective tests
Rorschach Inkblot tests
- view series of inkblots and desire what you see
- manual used for scoring ppts responses
Thematic apperception test
- create a story about a highly evocative, ambiguous scene
- the person is thought to project their own movies, conflicts and other personality characteristics into the story
Strengths
- provides qualitative information about individual’s personality
Limitation
- scoring highly subjective
- ails to produce consistent results
- poor at predicting future behaviour
