Week 5 - Personality Assessment

Question 1

Describe self-report inventories

Answer 1

Asks people to respond to a series of questions about themselves

Question 2

Describe the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

Answer 2

• Self-report inventory tool, widely used for clinical assessment
• Comprises of 567 items; Duration spans over 1-2 hours
• Dozens of personality factors

Question 3

Describe the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

Answer 3

• Measures Jungian types
• Commonly used in business
• Components:
  1. E/I - Getting energy: Extraversion or Introversion
  2. S/N - Perceiving information: Sensing or Intuitive
  3. T/F - Making decisions: Thinking/Feeling
  4. J/P - Orienting to the external world: Judging or Perceiving

Question 4

Describe the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

Answer 4

• Assessed extraversion and neuroticism
• 48 items -> later reduced to 24 items

Question 5

Ten-Item Personality Trait (TIPI)

Answer 5

• 10 items for the 5 traits in The Big Five
• Short and easy to implement

Question 6

How does personality assessment apply in the real world?

Answer 6

• Industrial/Organizational Psychology
• Organizational behaviour; Focused on understanding, explaining and improving attitudes of individuals in organizations

Question 7

What does poor organizational behaviours lead to?

Answer 7

• Poor employee satisfaction
• Greater attrition of employees
• Low morale and motivation

*Literature evidence: American employees would rather have a better boss than a pay raise (Kiisel, 2012)

Question 8

Why is predicting behaviours important to managers?

Answer 8

• Employees have the ability to influence their coworkers
• Managers can anticipate what employees may do in situations
• May provide an index of “fit” in organization

Question 9

What are the uses of personality assessment in organizations?

Answer 9

• Conflict resolution and team building
• Hiring decisions
• Person-Job fit

Question 10

What is meant by Person-Job fit?

Answer 10

• Refers to when the job’s characteristics align with employees’ personalities, motivations and abilities
• Lack of fit -> increase in burnout and physical symptoms
• Good fit -> higher job satisfaction, organizational commitment and better performance

Question 11

What are the 5 desirable traits for a good person-job fit, based on The Big Five?

Answer 11

1. Openness
2. Conscientiousness
3. Extraversion
4. Agreeableness
5. Neuroticism

Question 12

How is Openness desirable for person-job fit?

Answer 12

• Willingness to embrace new ideas and new situations
• Can adjust better to organizational change
• Linked to higher creativity and adaptability

Question 13

How is Conscientiousness desirable for person-job fit?

Answer 13

• Follows through and gets things done
• Strongest predictor of job performance
• Too much can be a bad thing

Question 14

How is Extraversion desirable for person-job fit?

Answer 14

• Sociable, gets along with others
• Linked to higher performance in sales and management
• Related to social interactions and persuasion

Question 15

How is Agreeableness desirable for person-job fit?

Answer 15

• Being a nice person in general
• Effective in jobs requiring cooperation and helpfulness

Question 16

How is Neuroticism desirable for person-job fit?

Answer 16

• Emotional stability relates to stress coping
• Also strong predictor of job performance

Question 17

Describe the Whole Trait Theory

Answer 17

• Personality is multifaceted
• We have a distribution of personality states, which can be explained by social and cognitive factors
• Personality states depend on context and environment
• Standard personality assessment the “average” of our behaviour

Question 18

Explain the Within and Across Context framework

Answer 18

• Expands on the Whole Trait Theory
• Attempts to capture situational factors that predict personality
• Measures situational context during personality measurement

Question 19

Explain the ADEPT-15

Answer 19

• Workplace scale which expands on The Big Five
• Proprietary scale developed for consulting firms

Question 20

What are the strengths of self-report inventories?

Answer 20

• Standardized and use established personality traits
• Predict behaviour and employee fit (to some extent)

Question 21

What are the limitations of self-report inventories?

Answer 21

• Participants may “fake” responses to look better (or worse); Social desirability
• High number of items may lead to loss of interest
• Self-judgement is not always accurate
• No personality test, by itself, is likely to provide a definitive description of any given individual

Question 22

Describe projective tests

Answer 22

• Freudian defense mechanism
• Access unconscious by providing ambiguous stimulus
• Participants “project” personalities as they describe the object

Question 23

Projective Tests: Explain the Rorschach Inkblot Test

Answer 23

• View series of inkblots and describe what you see
• Manual used for scoring participant responses

Question 24

Projective Tests: Explain the Thematic Apperception Test

Answer 24

• Create a story about a highly evocative, ambiguous scene
• Through this, the person is thought to project their own motives, conflicts and other personality characteristics into the story they make

Question 25

What are the strengths of projective tests?

Answer 25

- Provides qualitative information about individual's personality - Information can facilitate therapy

Question 26

What are the limitations of projective tests?

Answer 26

- Scoring is highly subjective - Fails to produce consistent results - Poor at predicting future behaviour

Question 27

Explain the Barnum Effect

Answer 27

When someone believes a personality description specifically applies to them, even though the description actually applies to a large group of people - ex. horoscopes

Question 28

Explain the problem of faking in self-report assessments

Answer 28

- Faking: Test takers intentionally give misleading information on self-report inventories - Fake good -> Presenting themselves as better than they really are - Fake bad -> Presenting themselves as worse than they really are - Test makers build safeguards into tests to reduce faking

Question 29

How to prevent faking?

Answer 29

- Use forced-choice response options - Ask for written elaboration - Include warnings that fakers can be caught - Correct the test for social desirability - Use behavioural personality tests

Question 30

Explain the problem with carelessness and sabotage in self-report assessments

Answer 30

- Carelessness -> Participants can get bored with long tests and select responses randomly *Some tests include "attention check" items *There are statistical tests to examine effortful responding - Test takers sometimes report incorrect information to sabotage a research project) - Can be reduced through instruction explanation, surveillance and stressing the importance of the test

Question 31

Explain the problem with social desirability in self-report assessments

Answer 31

- Social desirability: The extent to which people present themselves favorably - Problematic for embarrassing or illegal behaviours (ex. alcohol/substance use, sexual activity) - Leads to inaccurate reflection of the individual's personality

Question 32

What are the things to keep in mind when designing assessments?

Answer 32

1. Keep it simple (ex. use simple language) 2. Avoid double-barrelled items (e.g. asking participants for one response to two different Qs) 3. Use neutral or unbiased language (e.g. do not use offensive language; capitalize Black and White to identify racial groups) 4. Minimize the use of negative wording (e.g. the use of words tha tindicate the opposite of what was asked; "How much do you not like working?" -> "How much do you dislike working?") 5. Avoid repetitive responses. Add in reverse-coded items as well. 6. Use rating scales consistently 7. Use of Likert scales; Keep it between 4 and 7 points, and use anchor points to indicate the rating scale 8. Minimize item and survey length