Studying Personality

[Ready for Fall 2026]

Modified: 2026-08-03 9:28 PPM CDST

• Living with people is probably the best way to etermine their personality, as many college roommates have found out.
  • Unfortunately, living with someone, as a method of personality assessment, takes too long and is fraught with ethical implications.
    • So, how do psych1ogists measure personality in a reasonable time and without ethical violations?

• All of the methods below will be affected by one of the basic problems in any type of personality assessment, namely the discrepancy between self report and actual behavior.
  • This problem may occur without people realizing it, and it highlights the fact the we are often unaware of the biases we possess about ourselves.
    • We are often struck by the discrepancy in how others view us compared to how we see ourselves.
      • For example, I was shocked to learn some years ago that students find me a fearful stimulus, because I consider myself as easy going and pleasant.
    • My colleagues all laugh when I tell that story, so I guess they do not find me that easy going and pleasant either.
  • Now, I take extra effort in the first few classes to appear less scary.
• The problem of self-report and actual behavior may also be created intentionally.
  • Often, we take pains to present a certain image to the rest of the world, and that image may not reflect our actual personality or behavior.
    • Dating, for instance, has been criticized because people tend to try to project an image, rather than their true selves, while dating.
    • When I have interviewed for jobs, for example, I wear a suit or a sport coat. But they are the only suit and sport coat I own.
    • When I wear them on campus, jaws drop and people ask me why I am wearing them.
      • More seriously, criminals and mental patients may have good reason to cover up their true natures and intentions in order to be discharged from prison or therapy, respectively.
  • With the above in mind, let's examine a few methods for studying personality.
• At first glance, an interview may not seem like a very sophisticated method for determining personality.
  • However, a skilled interviewer may be able to determine and infer much from a short interview.
• Interviews come in two basic types.
  • The structured interview treats all interviewees as similarly as possible in order to assess differences among them.
    • Employment interviews or college admission interviews may be seen as structured interviews.
  • Unstructured interviews are less rigid by definition.
    • An interviewer conducting such interviews may allow each interview to follow its own unique path.
      • Interviewees may be encouraged to pursue topics they have brought up.
        • In the hands of practiced interviewers, unstructured interviews allow deeper penetration into the personality than do structured interviews.
          • All serious decisions concerning therapy, admission to mental health in-patient therapy, or other such situations nearly always include one or more interviews.
• Rating scales have been developed to provide a tool for quickly determining both your own personality and the personality of others.
  • Rating scales of self are particularly subject to problems relating to self-knowledge.
    • In other words, the better you know yourself, the better the rating will be.
    • The same logic applies to ratings of others.
  • An interesting problem with ratings, in general, is the halo effect.
    • The halo effect states that extreme scores on one rating will affect nearby subsequent scores in the same direction.
      • So, an extreme negative rating on an item will bias the next several items in a negative direction.
        • The effect also holds for extreme positive ratings.
    • In essay tests, you can exploit the halo effect by submitting your best answer first.
• Personality inventories have been discussed earlier.
  • They include the 16 PF, the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), the CPI (California Personality Inventory), and many others.
    • All of these techniques ask participants great many questions in a pencil-and-paper format, and then the answers yield scores on a number of scales.
      • Those scale scores are usually reported in a standard way with lines connecting them, thus, the "personality profile."
    • The MMPI also includes scales designed to check for random responding and faking "tough" or "nice."
      • One should not rely on scores on inventories as the only method of assessment. But when used correctly, they provide a valuable shortcut to a quick view into an individual's personality.
• Projective techniques originally stemmed from psychoanalytic theory.
  • They were designed to tap into a person's unconscious without that person being aware of such probing. The most famous such technique is the Rorschach Inkblot test.
    • Participants are asked to describe all of the possible things they perceive a particular inkblot to be. Responses are analyzed according to a prescribed method.
  • Another projective test is the TAT or Thematic Apperception Test.
    • In the TAT, subjects are shown a series of pictures of ambiguous situations.
      • They are then asked to tell a story about the people in the picture:
        • Who are they, how did they get there, what are they doing, what is going to happen?
    • Suppose, for example, a picture of two women walking down a country road at sunset toward a small house in the background, is shown.
      • If a person says that they live in the house, are mother and daughter, they just had dinner, and are enjoying a quiet evening's walk, that is one thing.
      • But, if the story is that the two women's car broke down nearby,
      • they are walking toward the house for help,
      • but will not get it because they will be harmed,
      • then those two stories might prove useful in further questioning of each subject.
    • Today the TAT is used to assess Achievement Motivation.
  • The Draw-a-person type of test asks subjects to draw themselves, their family members, or even their houses.
    • Their drawings are then interpreted.
      • One 6-year-old girl I tested drew her parents and siblings as huge, and herself as very small.
      • I interpreted that as a reflection of her perception of her role in the family.
    • Projective tests can be very useful in individual cases, but are usually not used in making comparisons between people.

• Home page of provider of personality-profiling test, DISC, page has links to information on personality profiling and other topics. http://www.axiomsoftware.com/default.htm