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Understanding Personality: Traits, Assessment, and Tests - Prof. Doris Bitler, Study notes of Psychology

The concept of personality, its assessment through tests, and the significance of stable traits in shaping behavior. Topics include the nature of personality, its stability, inheritance, and assessment methods like interviews, objective tests, and projective techniques. The document also covers famous personality tests such as the minnesota multiphasic personality inventory (mmpi) and the rorschach inkblot test.

Typology: Study notes

Pre 2010

Uploaded on 12/03/2009

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18 documents

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Personality an individual’s relatively stable and enduring patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions the consistent and distinctive thoughts, feelings, And behaviors in which an individual engages from the Latin persona - mask

Some puzzles of personality

  • (^) Is personality stable, or are traits changeable?
  • (^) Are personality traits inherited or learned?
  • (^) Which is more important to the way we behave - personality or the situation?

Assessing personality personality tests assume that personality traits (e.g., extroversion, sociability, etc.) are enduring and characterize a person’s behavior in a variety of situations the tests are meant to predict behavior

Interviews and observation unstructured interviews: no specific questions e.g., college interviews, job interviews structured interviews: specific questions allows comparison

roblems with interviews and observation it’s difficult to do well there is little agreement among testers the observation effect (people may behave differently)

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) - 1940 meant to diagnose different types of mental illness 566 question on 10 scales answered true/false

MMPI scales

  1. Hypochondriasis numerous physical complaints
  2. Depression depressed and pessimistic
  3. Hysteria suggestible, immature, demanding
  1. Schizophrenia withdrawn, seclusive, bizarre thinking
  2. Mania distractible, impulsive, dramatic
  3. Social introversion shy, introverted

Examples of MMPI questions “I often feel life is not worth the trouble” (depression) “several people are following me everywhere” (paranoia) “I seem to hear things other people cannot hear” (schizophrenia)

The MMPI has 4 additional scales used to determine if people are misrepresenting themselves these are called validity scales (validity - how well the test does what it claims to do)

  1. Lying scale denial of common problems, “saintliness” “I gossip a little at times” “once in a while I laugh at a dirty joke”
  1. Defensiveness minimizes social and emotional complaints
  2. Cannot say many questions are left unanswered

Personality tests have relatively poor predictive validity, particularly in comparison with past behavior test scores & hospitalization for mental illness - ~30% thickness of patient’s file and re-hospitalization

  • 61%