Maudsley's Personality Inventory

Aim:
To assess the introversion-extraversion, emotional stability-neuroticism dimensions of
personality of the subject using MPI.

Theories of Personality

Behavioural Theories
Behavioral theories suggest that personality is a result of interaction between the individual and
the environment. Behavioral theorists study observable and measurable behaviors, rejecting
theories that take internal thoughts and feelings into account. Behavioral theorists include B. F.
Skinner and John B. Watson.

Psychodynamic theories
Psychodynamic theories include Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stage theory and Erik Erikson's
stages of psychosocial development. Psychodynamic theories of personality are heavily
influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, and emphasise the influence of the unconscious mind
and childhood experiences on personality.

•Structure of Personality
According to Freud, personality is divided in three parts – Id, ego and super-ego. Id operates on
the pleasure principle, while ego works on reality principle and super-ego works on the morality
principle.

•Division of mind
The mind is divided into three parts- conscious, preconscious and unconscious.

•Psychosexual stages
Erikson believed that personality progressed through a series of stages, with certain conflicts
arising at each stage. Success in any stage depended upon successfully overcoming these
conflicts.
Post/neo Freudian Approach
The Neo-Freudian psychiatrists and psychologists were a group of loosely linked American
theorists of the mid-twentieth century, who were all influenced by Sigmund Freud, but who
extended his theories, often in social or cultural directions.

•Carl Jung
He was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. The
central concept of analytical psychology is individuation—the psychological process of
integrating the opposites, including the conscious with the unconscious, while still maintaining
their relative autonomy. Jung considered individuation to be the central process of human
development. Jung created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the
archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and extraversion and introversion.

•Alfred Adler
His emphasis on the importance of feelings of inferiority—the inferiority complex—is recognized
as an isolating element which plays a key role in personality development. Alfred Adler
considered human beings as an individual whole; therefore he called his psychology "Individual
Psychology".

•Karen Horney

She was a German psychoanalyst who practised in the United States during her later career.
Her theories questioned some traditional Freudian views. This was particularly true of her
theories of sexuality and of the instinct orientation of psychoanalysis. She is credited with
founding feminist psychology in response to Freud's theory of penis envy. She disagreed with
Freud about inherent differences in the psychology of men and women, and she traced such
differences to society and culture rather than biology.

Humanist Theories

Humanist theories emphasise the importance of free will and individual experience in the
development of personality. Humanist theorists emphasised the concept of self actualization,
which is an innate need for personal growth that motivates behaviour. Humanist theorists
include Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.
Trait Theories

The trait theory approach is one of the largest areas within personality psychology. According to
this theory, personality is made up of a number of broad traits. A trait is basically a relatively
stable characteristic that causes an individual to behave in certain ways. Some of the best
known trait theories include Eysenck's three-dimension theory and the five factor theory of
personality.

Gordon Allport (1897–1967)

Gordon Allport was one of the first modern trait theorists. Allport and Henry Odbert worked
through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language available and
extracted around 18,000 personality-describing words. From this list they reduced the number of
words to approximately 4,500 personality-describing adjectives which they considered to
describe observable and relatively permanent personality traits. Allport organised these traits
into a hierarchy of three levels:

• Cardinal traits dominate and shape an individual's behaviour, such as Ebenezer Scrooge’s
greed or Mother Theresa’s altruism. They stand at the top of the hierarchy and are collectively
known as the individual's master control. They are considered to be an individual's ruling
passions. Cardinal traits are powerful, but few people have personalities dominated by a single
trait. Instead, our personalities are typically composed of multiple traits.
• Central traits come next in the hierarchy. These are general characteristics found in varying
degrees in every person (such as loyalty, kindness, agreeableness, friendliness, sneakiness,
wildness, or grouchiness). They are the basic building blocks that shape most of our behaviour.
- - Secondary traits exist at the bottom of the hierarchy and are not quite as obvious or
consistent as central traits. They are plentiful but are only present under specific circumstances;
they include things like preferences and attitudes. These secondary traits explain why a person
may at times exhibit behaviours that seem incongruent with their usual behaviours. For
example, a friendly person gets angry when people try to tickle him; another is not an anxious
person but always feels nervous speaking publicly.

Cattel`s Classification
He believed that there is a common structure in which people differ. This could be determined
empirically by a statistical technique. He then developed the Sixteen Personality Factor
Questionnaire (16PF), an assessment tool commonly utilised today. The 16 personality traits
include:
1. Warmth (A)
2. Reasoning (B)
3. Emotional Stability
4. Dominance (E)
5. Liveliness (F)
6. Rule-consciousness (G)
7. Social Boldness (H)
8. Sensitivity (I)
9. Vigilance (L)
10. Abstractedness (M)
11. Privateness (N)
12. Apprehension/Apprehensiveness (O)
13. Openness to change (Q1)
14. Self-reliance (Q2)
15. Perfectionism (Q3)
16. Tension (Q4)

Type Approach
It is based on grouping people on the basis of psychological traits.

One of the first of these theories proposed by Hippocrates grouped people on the basis of
bodily fluids:
•Sanguine – Cheerful and confident
•Melancholic - depressed
•Choleric – Hot tempered
•Phlegmatic – Calm and slow

Friedman and Rosenman

They have classified individuals into Type A and Type B personalities. The theory describes
Type A individuals as ambitious, rigidly organised, highly status-conscious, sensitive, impatient,
take on more than they can handle, want other people to get to the point, anxious, proactive,
and concerned with time management. People with Type A personalities are often
high-achieving "workaholics", push themselves with deadlines, and hate both delays and
ambivalence.

The theory describes Type B individuals as a contrast to those of Type A. Type B personality, by
definition, are noted to live at lower stress levels. They typically work steadily, and may enjoy
achievement, although they have a greater tendency to disregard physical or mental stress
when they do not achieve. When faced with competition, they may focus less on winning or
losing than their Type A counterparts, and more on enjoying the game regardless of winning or
losing. Unlike the Type A personality`s rhythm of multi-tasked careers, Type B individuals are
sometimes attracted to careers of creativity: writer, counsellor, therapist, actor or actress.
Hans Eysenck: Three Dimensions of Personality

British psychologist Hans Eysenck developed a model of personality based upon just three
universal trails: Unlike Allport and Cattell, theorist Hans Eysenck only included three general
traits in his list. They are:

1. Introversion- Extraversion As in Carl Jung's personality type theory, Eysenck classified people
as either introvert, those who direct focus on the inner world, or extravert, those who gives more
attention to other people and his environment.

2. Neuroticism-Emotional Stability This category is synonymous to "moodiness versus

even-temperedness", where in a neurotic person is inclined to having changing emotions from
time to time, while an emotionally stable person tends to maintain a constant mood or emotion.

3. Psychoticism: This dimension refers to finding it hard to deal with reality. A psychotic person
may be considered hostile, manipulative, anti-social and non-empathetic.

Methods of assessing personality

Personality assessment refers to the procedures used to evaluate people on the basis of certain
characteristics.

The most commonly used methods for assessing personality are – psychometric tests,
self-report measures, projective techniques and behavioural analysis. We are using self-report
measures here, which are fairly structured, often based on a theory, that requires subjects to
give verbal responses using some kind of rating scale. The method requires the subject to
objectively report his/her own feelings with respect to various items. They are scored in
quantitative terms and are interpreted on the basis of norms developed for the test.

Examples – The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI], Eysenk Personality

Questionnaire [EPQ] and 16 Personality factor [PF]

Advantages – Used for career guidance, vocational exploration, personal counselling and
personality development.

Disadvantages – Social desirability is the tendency on the part of respondent to endorse items
in a socially desirable manner. Acquiescence is the tendency of the subject to agree with items
irrespective of their contents.
History and description

A questionnaire designed to measure two major dimensions of personality, namely extraversion

and neuroticism, according to the theory of personality of the British psychologist H. J. Eysenck
(1916–97), first propounded in his books Dimensions of Personality (1947) and The Scientific
Study of Personality (1952). MPI abbrev. was created after the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark
Hill, south London, where Eysenck worked, and which in turn is named after the English
psychiatrist Henry Maudsley.

Each of these two traits are measured by means of 48 questions. Neuroticism refers to general
emotional stability of a person, his emotional over responsiveness and his stability to neurotic
breakdown under stress. Extraversion as opposed to introversion refers to the out-going,
uninhibited, sociable proclivities of a person. The two dimensions are conceived of as being
quite independent: thus all the theoretically possible combinations of scores may in fact be
observed.

Preliminaries
Name: Gunakkshi Garg
Age: 16
Gender: F
Qualification: High School student
Place of conduction: Psychology Lab Time: 12:00 pm

Materials Required
MPI manual, response sheet, MPI questionnaire form, pen/pencil

Rapport Formation
Rapport was established between the subject and the tester, prior to the test so that he/she
could feel comfortable and at ease. In such a state, she/he should answer the questions in a
calm manner and any doubts should be cleared before starting the test.

Instructions
The following instructions were given:
● “There are some questions regarding the way you feel, behave and react.” •In each item
there are three answers: 'yes`, `no` and `?`
 ● Don’t leave any question and try to complete it as soon as possible.
● There are a total of 48 items in this test.
● There are no right or wrong answers •Give the first natural answer as it comes to you.
● When in doubt, give the best possible answer.

Administration
After the instructions were given, the subject was asked to fill in the necessary details. The
tester ensured that the instructions were clear and understood. The MPI questionnaire was
given to the subject and was completed in less than 10-15 minutes. The raw score was obtained
after the subject completed the test.

Introspective report
“The test was quite fun and had me thinking a lot. I was stumped at many points, and it required
much introspection.”

Scoring
The inventory is scored directly from the test forms. The raw scores were converted into
Standard Score through the Short Scale and Long Scale Forms which was added to give a total
of 40 for neuroticism and 22 for extraversion respectively. All the items that are in `YES` are
weighed as 2 [except the ones where NO is allotted 2] and `No` is scored as 0. All the `?` are
scored 1. Results:

Category Raw Score Sten Score

Extraversion 22 4

Neuroticism 40 9

Interpretation
Extroversion is the outgoing, uninhibited and sociable proclivities of a person. The subject’ raw
score for Extraversion = 22 and Sten score for Extraversion= 4 . Since the Sten’s score was 4
for Extraversion, she was seen as ambiverted, implying that she is neither extraverted nor
introverted, but rather adapts according to situations or personal disposition.

The subject’s raw score for “Neuroticism”= 40 and for Sten score= 9 .Since the Sten score was
9 for “Neuroticism”, she was seen to be neurotic, and have constantly changing moods and
emotions, with low emotional stability and regulation.
According to the theories of Hippocrates, this indicates that the subject is moody, anxious, rigid,
sombre, reserved, unsociable and quiet. Accounting for the subject being an ambivert, the
subject also has the tendency to show extrovert traits like being active, optimistic and impulsive.

Conclusion
The subject is an ambivert, and has neurotic tendencies.