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Personality Assessment
PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT
There are many different ways of assessing a person s personality. These are used in different settings, such as in occupational settings, educational settings, and clinical settings. They can be used, for example, to decide if a person s personality is suited to a particular job description. One common way of determining personality is the selfreport inventory, which is most commonly used in most settings. These are referred to as Likert scales because each question ranges from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
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The most widely used personality inventory is the MMPI or the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It has 567 questions and are true-false questions. There was a revised test in 1987 called the MMPI-2, which had a wider audience used to standardize the test. There are ten scales measured: depression, hypochondriasis, hysteria, masculinity or femininity, paranoia, psychopathic deviance, hypomania, psychasthenia and social introversion. It is used in many clinical psychology circles. There are scales for lying, faking, and reliability.
There are several different types of projective tests that are based on Freud s defense mechanisms. It is a way of assessing unconscious processes. Instead of questions and answers, the test is open ended and ambiguous. Things like impulses, feelings, and desires are talked about by the person who is exposed to visual cards. There are four common projective tests. These include the following:
• Rorschach Inkblot Test—the person looks at symmetrical inkblot cards and is asked about what they are or what they mean. The goal is to reveal depression, anxiety, and psychosis.
• Thematic Apperception Test—these are ambiguous pictures in which the person is asked to tell a story about the picture. It can be used to look at psychological disorders but has very little standardization.
• Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank—there are different sentences that need to be completed by the person with 1 to 2-word answers. It is related to a word association test. It is used in career counseling and in clinical psychology.
