Objective Assessment of Personality IPertemuan 1

Matakuliah : Psikologi DiagnostikTahun : 2010

Psychological Tests and Their Uses

Psychological assessment techniques are designed to evaluate a person’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social functioning.

Tests of personality and psychopathology can be further subdivided into two specific types: objective and projective.

Bina Nusantara University 3

Theories of Personality? The dynamic organization within an individual of

those systems that determine his or her characteristic behavior and thought.

? Enduring, constant, and stable? Distinctive and relatively stable pattern of

behaviours, thoughts, motives, and emotions that characterizes an individual throughout life.

• Four groups of such theories have been developed in the past century: trait, psychoanalytic, behavioral or social learning, and humanistic views.

Bina Nusantara University 4

Bina Nusantara University 5

Type of Theory

Theorists/Theory Basic Idea

Biological (or trait)

Gordon Allport, Raymond B. Cattell

Human behavior is traced to the joint effects of the organism’s inherited capabilities and past experience

Psycho-analytic

Sigmund Freud, Alfred Adler, Erik Erikson, Carl Jung

Human behavior is determined by a person’s past experiences, which color his/her perceptions of current events

Social learning

Dollard & Miller, Bandura, Skinner

Human behavior results from an organism’s past learning, current perceptions, and higher-level processes of thinking and organization

HumanisticCarl Rogers,

Abraham Maslow

Human behavior can be understood only in terms of the person’s internal perceptions of self and others leading toward personal fulfillment

* Major theories of personality

Historical Overview WW I – U.S. armed services

Army Alpha (verbal) and Army Beta (nonverbal) tests of intelligence for literate and nonliterate recruits, respectively.

Robert S. Woodworth – Personal Data Sheet (1920) later became known as the Woodworth Psychoneurotic Questionnaire.

Cross-Out Test (Pressey & Pressey, 1919) – categorize emotional states. lists of pleasant and unpleasant words.

Bernreuter Personality Inventory (1933), which Six subscales: Neurotic Tendency, Self-Sufficiency, Introversion-

Extraversion, Dominance-Submission, Sociability, and Confidence. 1940s Hathaway & McKinley -- MMPI

Bina Nusantara University 6

Bina Nusantara University

7

Theoretical Considerations of Test Construction

Theoretical Bases Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III Child Abuse Potential Inventory

Empirical Bases Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) – Raymond Catell (1940s) Costa & McCrae (1985) – 5 factor model

Diagnostic BasesThe Beck Depression Inventory aligned with a current diagnostic system like the DSM-IV-TR (2000) or ICD-10 (1992)

Objective tests : Related issues

• Psychometric concern• Range of population• Cross-cultural factors• Accommodation for populations with disabilities• Legal and Ethical issues

Bina Nusantara University 8

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

• Most widely used personality instrument• Clinical & Employment settings• Measures aspects of personality that, if extreme, suggest

a problem • Long test ‑ 567 questions• Has several different scales (multiphasic)• Scales thought to measure different kinds of

psychological disorders (e.g., depression)• Overall assessment is interpretive

– From inspecting profile of different scales

Bina Nusantara University 9

MMPI Score Profile

Bina Nusantara University 10

MMPI Validity Scales

• Four scales designed to determine whether respondent is presenting self accurately.

• Scales L (Lie), K (Defensiveness), and F (Infrequency) are the validity scales originally developed by Hathaway and McKinley

• ‘?’ (Cannot say) Scale• Example: L scale (‘Fake Good’) - Trying too hard to present

self in a positive light.– “I smile at everyone I meet” (T) – “I read every editorial every day” (T)

Bina Nusantara University 11

MMPI Sample Items

• I usually feel that life is worthwhile and interesting– Depression

• Evil people are trying to influence my mind– Paranoia

• I seem to hear things that other people can’t hear– Schizophrenia

Bina Nusantara University 12