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personality assessment, the
measurement of personal
characteristics. Assessment is an
end result of gathering
information intended to advance
psychological theory and
research and to increase the
probability that wise decisions
will be made in applied settings
(e.g., in selecting the most
promising people from a group of
job applicants). The approach
taken by the specialist in
personality assessment is based
on the assumption that much of
the
observable variability in
behaviour from one person to
another results from differences
in the extent to which individuals
possess particular underlying
personal characteristics (traits).
The assessment specialist seeks
to define these traits, to measure
them objectively, and to relate
them to socially significant
aspects of behaviour.

Key People: June Etta Downey

Henry Murray
Related Topics: phrenology
Barnum Effect projective test
normative measurement
graphology
A distinctive feature of the
scientific approach to personality
measurement is the effort,
wherever possible, to describe
human characteristics in
quantitative terms. How much of
a trait manifests itself
in an individual? How many traits
are present? Quantitative
personality measurement is
especially useful in comparing
groups of people as well as
individuals. Do groups of people
from different cultural and
economic backgrounds differ
when considered in the light of
their particular personality
attributes or traits? How large are
the group differences?

Overt behaviour is a reflection of

interactions among a wide range
of underlying factors, including
the bodily state of the individual
and the effects of that person’s
past personal experiences.
Hence, a narrowly focused
approach is inadequate to do
justice to the complex human
behaviour that occurs under the
constantly changing set of
challenges,
pleasures, demands, and
stresses of everyday life. The
sophisticated measurement of
human personality inescapably
depends on the use of a variety
of concepts to provide trait
definitions and entails the
application of various methods of
observation and evaluation.
Personality theorists and
researchers seek to define and
to understand the diversity of
human traits, the many ways
people have of thinking and
perceiving and learning and
emoting. Such nonmaterial
human dimensions, types, and
attributes are constructs—in this
case, inferences drawn from
observed behaviour. Widely
studied personality constructs
include anxiety, hostility,
emotionality, motivation, and
introversion-extroversion.
Anxiety, for example, is a
concept, or construct, inferred in
people from what they say, their
facial
expressions, and their body
movements.

Personality is interactional in two

senses. As indicated above,
personal characteristics can be
thought of as products of
interactions among underlying
psychological factors; for
example, an individual may
experience tension because he
or she is both shy and desirous
of social success. These
products, in turn, interact with the
types of situations people
confront in their daily lives. A
person who is anxious about
being evaluated might show
debilitated performance in
evaluative situations (for
example, taking tests), but
function well in other situations in
which an evaluative emphasis is
not present. Personality makeup
can be either an asset or a
liability depending on the
situation. For example, some
people approach evaluative
situations with fear and
foreboding, while others seem to
be motivated in a desirable
direction by competitive
pressures associated with
performance.

Measuring constructs

Efforts to measure personality

constructs stem from a variety of
sources. Frequently they grow
out of theories of personality;
anxiety and repression (the
forgetting of unpleasant
experiences), for example, are
among the central concepts of
the theory of psychoanalysis. It is
understandable that efforts would
be made to quantify one’s
degree of anxiety, for example,
and to use the score thus
obtained in the assessment of
and in the prediction of future
behaviour. Among the major
issues in the study of personality
measurement is the question of
which of the many
personality constructs that have
been quantified are basic or
fundamental and which can be
expected to involve wasted effort
in their measurement because
they represent poorly defined
combinations of more elemental
constructs; which measurement
techniques are most effective
and convenient for the purpose
of assessment; and whether it is
better to interview people in
measuring personality, or to ask
them to say, for example, what
an inkblot or a cloud in the sky
reminds them of.

Efforts to measure any given

personality construct can fail as a
result of inadequacies in
formulating or defining the trait to
be measured and weaknesses in
the assessment methods
employed. An investigator might
desire to specify
quantitatively the degree to
which individuals are submissive
in social and competitive
situations. His effectiveness will
depend on the particular theory
of submissiveness he brings to
bear on the problem; on the
actual procedures he selects or
devises to measure
submissiveness; and on the
adequacy of the research he
performs to demonstrate the
usefulness of the measure. Each
of these tasks must be
considered carefully in evaluating
efforts to measure personality
attributes.

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The methods used in personality
description and measurement fall
into several categories that differ
with regard to the type of
information gathered and the
methods by which it is obtained.
While all should rely on data that
come from direct observations of
human behaviour if they are to
have at least the semblance of
scientific value, all may vary with
regard to underlying
assumptions, validity, and
reliability (consistency, in this
case).

Assessment methods
Personality tests provide
measures of such characteristics
as feelings and emotional states,
preoccupations, motivations,
attitudes, and approaches to
interpersonal relations. There is
a diversity of approaches to
personality assessment, and
controversy surrounds many
aspects of the widely used
methods and techniques. These
include such assessments as the
interview, rating scales, self-
reports, personality inventories,
projective techniques, and
behavioral observation.

The interview
In an interview the individual
under assessment must be given
considerable latitude in “telling
his story.” Interviews have both
verbal and nonverbal (e.g.,
gestural) components. The aim
of the interview is to gather
information, and the adequacy of
the data gathered depends in
large part on the questions asked
by the interviewer. In an
employment interview the focus
of the interviewer is generally on
the job candidate’s work
experiences, general and
specific attitudes, and
occupational goals. In a
diagnostic medical or psychiatric
interview considerable attention
would be paid to the patient’s
physical health and to any
symptoms of behavioral disorder
that may have occurred over the
years.
Two broad types of interview
may be delineated. In the
interview designed for use in
research, face-to-face contact
between an interviewer and
interviewee is directed toward
eliciting information that may be
relevant to particular practical
applications under general study
or to those personality theories
(or hypotheses) being
investigated. Another type, the
clinical interview, is focused on
assessing the status of a
particular individual (e.g., a
psychiatric patient); such an
interview is action-oriented (i.e.,
it may indicate appropriate
treatment). Both research and
clinical interviews frequently may
be conducted to obtain an
individual’s life history and
biographical information (e.g.,
identifying facts, family
relationships), but they differ in
the uses to which the
information is put.

Although it is not feasible to

quantify all of the events
occurring in an interview,
personality researchers have
devised ways of categorizing
many aspects of the content of
what a person has said. In this
approach, called content
analysis, the particular
categories used depend upon
the researchers’ interests and
ingenuity, but the method of
content analysis is quite general
and involves the construction of
a system of categories that, it is
hoped, can be used reliably by
an analyst or scorer. The
categories may be
straightforward (e.g., the number
of words uttered by the
interviewee during designated
time periods), or they may rest
on inferences (e.g., the degree of
personal unhappiness the
interviewee appears to express).
The
value of content analysis is that it
provides the possibility of using
frequencies of uttered response
to describe verbal behaviour and
defines behavioral variables for
more-or-less precise study in
experimental research. Content
analysis has been used, for
example, to gauge changes in
attitude as they occur within a
person with the passage of time.
Changes in the frequency of
hostile reference a neurotic
makes toward his parents during
a sequence of psychotherapeutic
interviews, for example, may be
detected and assessed, as may
the changing self-evaluations of
psychiatric hospital inmates in
relation to the length of their
hospitalization.

Sources of erroneous
conclusions that may be drawn
from face-to-face encounters
stem from the complexity of
the interview situation, the
attitudes, fears, and expectations
of the interviewee, and the
interviewer’s manner and
training. Research has been
conducted to identify, control,
and, if possible, eliminate these
sources of interview invalidity
and unreliability. By conducting
more than one interview with the
same interviewee and by using
more than one interviewer to
evaluate the subject’s behaviour,
light can be shed on the reliability
of the information derived and
may reveal differences in
influence among individual
interviewers. Standardization of
interview format tends to
increase the reliability of the
information gathered; for
example, all interviewers may
use the same set of questions.
Such standardization, however,
may restrict the scope of
information elicited, and even a
perfectly reliable (consistent)
interview technique can lead to
incorrect inferences.
Rating scales

The rating scale is one of the

oldest and most versatile of
assessment techniques. Rating
scales present users with an item
and ask them to select from a
number of choices. The rating
scale is similar in some respects
to a multiple choice test, but its
options represent degrees of a
particular characteristic.

Rating scales are used by

observers and also by individuals
for self-reporting (see below Self-
report tests). They permit
convenient characterization of
other people and their behaviour.
Some observations do not lend
themselves to quantification as
readily as do simple counts of
motor behaviour (such as the
number of times a worker leaves
his lathe to go to the restroom). It
is difficult, for example, to
quantify how charming an office
receptionist is. In such cases,
one may fall back on relatively
subjective judgments, inferences,
and relatively imprecise
estimates, as in deciding how
disrespectful a child is. The
rating scale is one approach to
securing such judgments. Rating
scales present an observer with
scalar dimensions along which
those who are observed are to
be placed. A teacher, for
example, might be asked to rate
students on the degree to which
the behaviour of each reflects
leadership capacity, shyness, or
creativity. Peers might rate each
other along dimensions such as
friendliness, trustworthiness, and
social skills. Several
standardized, printed rating
scales are available for
describing the behaviour of
psychiatric hospital
patients. Relatively objective
rating scales have also been
devised for use with other
groups.

A number of requirements should

be met to maximize the
usefulness of rating scales. One
is that they be reliable: the
ratings of the same person by
different observers should be
consistent. Other requirements
are reduction of sources of
inaccuracy in personality
measurement; the so-called halo
effect results in an observer’s
rating someone favourably on a
specific characteristic because
the observer has a generally
favourable reaction to the person
being rated. One’s tendency to
say only nice things about others
or one’s proneness to think of all
people as average (to use the
midrange of scales) represents
other methodological problems
that arise when rating scales are
used.

Self-report tests

The success that attended the

use of convenient intelligence
tests in providing reliable,
quantitative (numerical) indexes
of individual ability has
stimulated interest in the
possibility of devising similar
tests for measuring personality.
Procedures now available vary in
the degree to which they achieve
score reliability and convenience.
These desirable attributes can be
partly achieved by restricting in
designated ways the kinds of
responses a subject is free to
make. Self-report instruments
follow this strategy. For example,
a test that restricts the subject to
true-false answers is likely to be
convenient to give and easy to
score. So-called personality
inventories (see below) tend to
have these characteristics,
in that they are relatively
restrictive, can be scored
objectively, and are convenient to
administer. Other techniques
(such as inkblot tests) for
evaluating personality possess
these characteristics to a lesser
degree.

Self-report personality tests are

used in clinical settings in making
diagnoses, in deciding whether
treatment is required, and in
planning the treatment to be
used. A second major use is as
an aid in selecting employees,
and a third is in psychological
research. An example of the
latter case would be where
scores on a measure of test
anxiety—that is, the feeling of
tenseness and worry that people
experience before an exam—
might be used to divide people
into groups according to how
upset they get while taking
exams. Researchers have
investigated whether the more
test-anxious students behave
differently than the less anxious
ones in an experimental
situation.

Personality inventories

Among the most common of self-

report tests are personality
inventories. Their origins lie in
the early history of personality
measurement, when most tests
were constructed on the basis of
so-called face validity; that is,
they simply appeared to be valid.
Items were included simply
because, in the fallible judgment
of the person who constructed or
devised the test, they were
indicative of certain personality
attributes. In other words, face
validity need not be defined by
careful, quantitative study; rather,
it typically reflects one’s more-or-
less imprecise, possibly
erroneous,
impressions. Personal judgment,
even that of an expert, is no
guarantee that a particular
collection of test items will prove
to be reliable and meaningful in
actual practice.

A widely used early self-report

inventory, the so-called
Woodworth Personal Data
Sheet, was developed during
World War I to detect soldiers
who were emotionally unfit for
combat. Among its ostensibly
face-valid items were these:
Does the sight of blood make
you sick or dizzy? Are you happy
most of the time? Do you
sometimes wish you had never
been born? Recruits who
answered these kinds of
questions in a way that could be
taken to mean that they suffered
psychiatric disturbance were
detained for further questioning
and evaluation. Clearly,
however, symptoms revealed by
such answers are exhibited by
many people who are relatively
free of emotional disorder.

Rather than testing general

knowledge or specific skills,
personality inventories ask
people questions about
themselves. These questions
may take a variety of forms.
When taking such a test, the
subject might have to decide
whether each of a series of
statements is accurate as a self-
description or respond to a series
of true-false questions about
personal beliefs.
Several inventories require that
each of a series of statements be
placed on a rating scale in terms
of the frequency or adequacy
with which the statements are
judged by the individual to reflect
his tendencies and attitudes.
Regardless of
the way in which the subject
responds, most inventories yield
several scores, each intended to
identify a distinctive aspect of
personality.

One of these, the Minnesota

Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI), is probably the
personality inventory in widest
use in the English-speaking
world. Also available in other
languages, it consists in one
version of 550 items (e.g., “I like
tall women”) to which subjects
are to respond “true,” “false,” or
“cannot say.” Work on this
inventory began in the 1930s,
when its construction was
motivated by the need for a
practical, economical means of
describing and predicting the
behaviour of psychiatric patients.
In its development efforts were
made to achieve convenience in
administration and scoring and to
overcome many of the known
defects of earlier personality
inventories. Varied types of items
were included and emphasis was
placed on making these printed
statements (presented either on
small cards or in a booklet)
intelligible even to persons with
limited reading ability.

Most earlier inventories lacked

subtlety; many people were able
to fake or bias their answers
since the items presented were
easily seen to reflect gross
disturbances; indeed, in many of
these inventories maladaptive
tendencies would be reflected in
either all true or all false
answers. Perhaps the most
significant methodological
advance to be found in the MMPI
was the attempt on the part of its
developers to measure
tendencies to respond, rather
than actual behaviour, and to rely
but little on assumptions of face
validity. The true-false item “I
hear strange voices all the time”
has face validity for most people
in that to answer “true” to it
seems to provide a strong
indication of abnormal
hallucinatory experiences. But
some psychiatric patients who
“hear strange voices” can still
appreciate the socially
undesirable implications of a
“true” answer and may therefore
try to conceal their abnormality
by answering “false.” A major
difficulty in placing great reliance
on face validity in test
construction is that the subject
may be as aware of the
significance of certain responses
as is the test constructor and
thus may be able to mislead the
tester. Nevertheless, the person
who hears strange voices and
yet answers the item “false”
clearly is responding to
something—the answer still is a
reflection of personality, even
though it may not be the
aspect of personality to which the
item seems to refer; thus, careful
study of responses beyond their
mere face validity often proves to
be profitable.

Much study has been given to

the ways in which response sets
and test-taking attitudes
influence behaviour on the MMPI
and other personality measures.
The response set called
acquiescence, for example,
refers to one’s tendency to
respond with “true” or “yes”
answers to questionnaire items
regardless of what the item
content is. It is conceivable that
two people might be quite similar
in all respects except for their
tendency toward acquiescence.
This difference in response set
can lead to misleadingly different
scores on personality tests. One
person might be a “yea-sayer”
(someone who tends to answer
true to test items);
another might be a “nay-sayer”; a
third individual might not have a
pronounced acquiescence
tendency in either direction.

Acquiescence is not the only

response set; there are other
test-taking attitudes that are
capable of influencing personality
profiles. One of these, already
suggested by the example of the
person who hears strange
voices, is social desirability. A
person who has convulsions
might say “false” to the item “I
have convulsions” because he
believes that others will think less
of him if they know he has
convulsions. The intrusive
potentially deceiving effects of
the subjects’ response sets and
test-taking attitudes on scores
derived from personality
measures can sometimes be
circumvented by varying the
content and wording of test
items. Nevertheless, users of
questionnaires
have not yet completely solved
problems of bias such as those
arising from response sets.
Indeed, many of these problems
first received widespread
attention in research on the
MMPI, and research on this and
similar inventories has
significantly advanced
understanding of the whole
discipline of personality testing.

Attributes of the MMPI

The MMPI as originally published
consists of nine clinical scales (or
sets of items), each scale having
been found in practice to
discriminate a particular clinical
group, such as people suffering
from schizophrenia, depression,
or paranoia (see mental
disorder). Each of these scales
(or others produced later) was
developed by determining
patterns of response to the
inventory that were
observed to be distinctive of
groups of individuals who had
been psychiatrically classified by
other means (e.g., by long-term
observation). The responses of
apparently normal subjects were
compared with those of hospital
patients with a particular
psychiatric diagnosis—for
example, with symptoms of
schizophrenia. Items to which the
greatest percentage of “normals”
gave answers that differed from
those more typically given by
patients came to constitute each
clinical scale.

In addition to the nine clinical

scales and many specially
developed scales, there are four
so-called control scales on the
inventory. One of these is simply
the number of items placed by
the subject in the “cannot say”
category. The L (or lie) scale was
devised to measure the
tendency of the test taker to
attribute socially desirable
attributes to himself. In response
to “I get angry sometimes” he
should tend to mark false;
extreme L scorers in the other
direction appear to be too good,
too virtuous. Another so-called F
scale was included to provide a
reflection of the subjects’
carelessness and confusion in
taking the inventory (e.g.,
“Everything tastes the same”
tends to be answered true by
careless or confused people).
More subtle than either the L or F
scales is what is called the K
scale. Its construction was based
on the observation that some
persons tend to exaggerate their
symptoms because of excessive
openness and frankness and
may obtain high scores on the
clinical scales; others may exhibit
unusually low scores because of
defensiveness. On the K-scale
item “I think nearly anyone would
tell a lie to keep out of trouble,”
the defensive person is apt to
answer false, giving the same
response to “I certainly feel
useless at times.” The K scale
was designed to reduce these
biasing factors; by weighting
clinical-scale scores with K
scores, the distorting effect of
test-taking defensiveness may
be reduced.

In general, it has been found that

the greater the number and
magnitude of one’s unusually
high scores on the MMPI, the
more likely it is that one is in
need of psychiatric attention.
Most professionals who use the
device refuse to make
assumptions about the
factualness of the subject’s
answers and about his personal
interpretations of the meanings
of the items. Their approach
does not depend heavily on
theoretical predilections and
hypotheses. For this reason the
inventory has proved particularly
popular with those who have
strong doubts about the eventual
validity that many theoretical
formulations will show in
connection with personality
measurement after they have
been tested through painstaking
research. The MMPI also
appeals to those who demand
firm experimental evidence that
any personality assessment
method can make valid
discriminations among
individuals.

In recent years there has been

growing interest in actuarial
personality description—that is,
in personality description based
on traits shared in common by
groups of people. Actuarial
description studies yield rules by
which persons may be classified
according to their personal
attributes as revealed by their
behaviour (on tests, for
example). Computer programs
are now available for diagnosing
such disorders as hysteria,
schizophrenia, and paranoia on
the basis of typical group profiles
of MMPI responses.
Computerized methods for
integrating large amounts of
personal data are not limited to
this inventory and are applicable
to other inventories, personality
tests (e.g., inkblots), and life-
history information.
Computerized classification of
MMPI profiles, however, has
been explored most intensively.

Comparison of the MMPI and

CPI
The MMPI has been considered
in some detail here because of
its wide usage and because it
illustrates a number of important
problems confronting those who
attempt to assess personality
characteristics. Many other
omnibus
personality inventories are also
used in applied settings and in
research. The California
Psychological Inventory (CPI),
for example, is keyed for several
personality variables that include
sociability, self-control, flexibility,
and tolerance. Unlike the MMPI,
it was developed specifically for
use with “normal” groups of
people. Whereas the judgments
of experts (usually psychiatric
workers) were used in
categorizing subjects given the
MMPI during the early item-
writing phase of its development,
nominations by peers (such as
respondents or friends) of the
subjects were relied upon in work
with the CPI. Its technical
development has been evaluated
by test authorities to be of high
order, in part because its
developers profited from lessons
learned in the construction and
use of the MMPI. It also provides
measures of response sets and
has been subjected to
considerable research study.

From time to time, most

personality inventories are
revised for a variety of reasons,
including the need to take
account of cultural and social
changes and to improve them.
For example, a revision of the
CPI was published in 1987. In
the revision, the inventory itself
was modified to improve clarity,
update content, and delete items
that might be objectionable to
some respondents. Because the
item pool remained largely
unchanged, data from the
original samples were used in
computing norms and in
evaluating reliability and validity
for new scales and new
composite scores. The
descriptions of high and low
scorers on each scale have been
refined and sharpened, and
correlations of scale scores with
other personality tests have
been reported.

Other self-report techniques

Beyond personality inventories,

there are other self-report
approaches to personality
measurement available for
research and applied purposes.
Mention was made earlier of the
use of rating scales. The rating-
scale technique permits
quantification of an individual’s
reactions to himself, to others,
and, in fact, to any object or
concept in terms of a standard
set of semantic (word) polarities
such as “hot-cold” or “good-bad.”
It is a general method for
assessing the meanings of these
semantic concepts to individuals.

Another method of self-report

called the Q-sort is devised for
problems similar to
those for which rating scales are
used. In a Q-sort a person is
given a set of sentences,
phrases, or words (usually
presented individually on cards)
and is asked to use them to
describe himself (as he thinks he
is or as he would like to be) or
someone else. This description is
carried out by having the subject
sort the items on the cards in
terms of their degree of
relevance so that they can be
distributed along what amounts
to a rating scale. Examples of
descriptive items that might be
included in a Q-sort are “worries
a lot,” “works hard,” and “is
cheerful.”
Typical paper-and-pencil
instruments such as personality
inventories involve verbal stimuli
(words) intended to call forth
designated types of responses
from the individual. There are
clearly stated ground rules under
which he makes his
responses. Paper-and-pencil
devices are relatively easy and
economical to administer and
can be scored accurately and
reliably by relatively
inexperienced clerical workers.
They are generally regarded by
professional personality
evaluators as especially valuable
assessment tools in screening
large numbers of people, as in
military or industrial personnel
selection. Assessment specialists
do not assume that self-reports
are accurate indicators of
personality traits. They are
accepted, rather, as samples of
behaviour for which validity in
predicting one’s everyday
activities or traits must be
established empirically (i.e., by
direct observation or
experiment). Paper-and-pencil
techniques have moved from
their early stage of assumed
(face) validity to more advanced
notions in which improvements in
conceptualization and
methodology are clearly
recognized as basic to the
determination of empirical
validity.