One of the oldest human desires is to understand oneself and other persons. And it is often much harder to understand oneself!
One tool that may make it easier are personality tests.
A personality test aspires to describe aspects of a person’s persona that remain stable throughout that person’s life-time, the individual’s character pattern of conduct, ideas, and feelings.
Already the old Greeks…
An early model of personality was posited by Greek philosopher/physician Hippocrates.
His theory divided personalities into four groups sanguinic, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic
Modern tests
The 20th century heralded a new interest in defining and identifying separate personality types, in close correlation with the growth of the of psychology. As such, several distinct tests emerged; some attempt to identify specific characteristics, while others attempt to describe personality as a whole.
There are many different types of personality tests. Common personality tests consist of a large number of items, where test subjects must rank the applicability of each statement to themselves.
Projective tests, such as the TAT and ink blot tests are a different type of personality test which attempt to measure personality indirectly.
Scoring
Personality tests can be scored using a dimensional, where different aspects of personality ar rated on scales, or a typological, where each aspect is placed either in one type or in another, approach.
Dimensional approaches such as the Big 5 describe personality as a set of continuous dimensions on which individuals differ.
Typological approaches such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator describe opposing categories of functioning where individuals differ. Normative responses for each category can be charted as gaussian curves (normal curves), implying that some aspects of personality are better than others.
Ipsative test responses offer two equally “good” responses between which an individual must choose. Such responses (e.g., on the MBTI) would result in bi-modal graphs for each category, rather than bell curves.
Personality tests such as the Strength Deployment Inventory (r), which assesses motivation, or purpose, of behavior, rather than the behavior itself, combine a dimensional and typological approach as described here. Three continuums of motivation are combined to yield 7 distinct types.
Many, but by no means all, psychological researchers believe that the dimensional approach is more accurate, although as judged by the popularity of the Myers-Briggs tool, typological approaches have substantial appeal as a self-development tool.
Few personality tests accurately predict behavior in a specific context. For example, with some of the five factor model tests, only one of the five factors is significantly correlated with job performance.
Emotive tests can become prey to unreliable results as most people strive to pick the answer they feel the best fitting of an ideal character and therefore not their personal response.
Test evaluation
There are several criteria for evaluating a personality test. Fundamentally, a personality test is expected to demonstrate reliability (produce similar results when a person takes the test again) and validity (the results show what they claim to show).
Criticism and controversy
Biased test taker interpretation
One problem of a personality test is that the users of the test could only find it accurate because of the subjective validation involved. This is where the person only acknowledges the information that applies to them. This is related to what is called in psychology as the Forer effect.
Personality versus social factors
In the 60s and 70s some psychologists dismissed the whole idea of personality, considering much behaviour to be content specific. This idea was supported by the fact that personality often does not predict behaviour in specific contexts. However, more extensive research has showed than when behaviour is aggregated across contexts, that personality can be a modest to good predictor of behaviour. Almost all psychologists now acknowledge that both social and individual difference factors (i.e., personality) influence behaviour. The debate is currently more around the relative importance of each of these factors and how these factors interact.
Respondent faking
One problem with self-report measures of personality is that respondents are often able to distort their responses. This is particularly problematic in employment contexts and other contexts where important decisions are being made and there is an incentive to present oneself in a favourable manner. Work in experimental settings (e.g., Viswesvaran & Ones, 1999; Martin, Bowen & Hunt, 2002) has clearly shown that when student samples have been asked to deliberately fake on a personality test, they clearly demonstrated that they are capable of doing so.
Several strategies have been adopted for reducing respondent faking. One strategy involves providing a warning on the test that methods exist for detecting faking and that detection will result in negative consequences for the respondent (e.g., not being considered for the job). Forced choice item formats (ipsative testing) have been adopted which require respondents to choose between alternatives of equal social desirability. Social desirability and lie scales are often included which detect certain patterns of responses, although these are often confounded by true variability in social desirability. More recently, Item Response Theory approaches have been adopted with some success in identifying item response profiles that flag fakers. Other researchers are looking at the timing of responses on electronically administered tests to assess faking.
Psychological Research
Personality testing is frequently used in psychological research to test various theories of personality.
Research published by David Dunning of Cornell University, Chip Heath of Stanford University and Jerry M. Suls of the University of Iowa reveals that observers who are not involved in any type of relationship with an individual are better judges of the individual’s relationships and abilities. These workers have studied a large body of investigations into self-evaluation, indicating that individuals may have flawed views about themselves and their social relationships, sometimes leading to decisions that can impact negatively on other persons’ lives and/or their own.
Additional applications
A study by American Management Association reveals that 39 percent of companies surveyed use personality testing as part of their hiring process. However, ipsative personality tests are often misused in recruitment and selection, where they are mistakenly treated as if they are normative measures.[1] More people are using personality testing to evaluate their business partners, their dates and their spouses. Salespeople are using personality testing to better understand the needs of their customers and to gain a competitive edge in the closing of deals. College students have started to use personality testing to evaluate their roommates. Lawyers are beginning to use personality testing for criminal behavior analysis, litigation profiling, witness examination and jury selection.
Dangers of using personality tests
It is easy for personality test participants to become complacent about their own personal uniqueness and instead become dependent on the decription associated with them. This can be potentially dangerous with persons who are already suffering from a form of identity disorder or may be a catalyst to instigate particular behaviours in a person who was previously believed to be of sound mental health.
Examples of personality tests
* The Rorschach inkblot test was introduced in 1921 as a way to determine personality by the interpretation of abstract inkblots.
* Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is a 16-type indicator based on Carl Jung’s Psychological Types, developed during World War II by Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs.
* Keirsey Temperament Sorter developed by David Keirsey is influenced by Isabel Myers sixteen types and Ernest Kretschmer’s four types.
* The 16PF Questionnaire (16PF) was developed by Raymond Cattell and his colleagues in the 1940′s and 1950′s in a search to try to discover the basic traits of human personality using scientific methodology. The test was first published in 1949, and is now in its 5th edition, published in 1994. It is used in a wide variety of settings for individual and marital counseling, career counseling and employee development, in educational settings, and for basic research.
* The Strength Deployment Inventory, developed by Elias Porter, Ph.D. in 1971 and is based on his theory of Relationship Awareness. Porter was the first known psychometrician to use colors (Red, Green and Blue) as shortcuts to communicate the results of a personality test.