이 모듈에서는 성격 평가에 대한 기본적인 개요를 제공합니다. 객관적인 성격 테스트(자기 보고 및 정보 제공자 평가 모두에 기반), 투사적 및 암시적 테스트, 행동/수행 측정에 대해 설명합니다. 각 방법의 기본 특징과 각 접근법의 강점, 약점 및 전반적인 타당성을 검토합니다.

• Measurement
• Objective tests
• Personality
• Projective tests
• Validity

학습 목표

• Appreciate the diversity of methods that are used to measure personality characteristics.
• Understand the logic, strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
• Gain a better sense of the overall validity and range of applications of personality tests.

성격 특성을 측정하는 데 사용되는 다양한 방법을 이해합니다.
각 접근법의 논리, 강점 및 약점을 이해합니다.
성격 테스트의 전반적인 타당성과 적용 범위에 대해 더 잘 이해합니다.

Discussion Questions

1. Under what conditions would you expect self-ratings to be most similar to informant ratings? When would you expect these two sets of ratings to be most different from each other?
2. The findings of Gosling, et al. (2002) demonstrate that we can obtain important clues about students’ personalities from their dorm rooms. What other aspects of people’s lives might give us important information about their personalities?
3. Suppose that you were planning to conduct a study examining the personality trait of honesty. What method or methods might you use to measure it?

Vocabulary

Big Five

Five, broad general traits that are included in many prominent models of personality. The five traits are neuroticism (those high on this trait are prone to feeling sad, worried, anxious, and dissatisfied with themselves), extraversion (high scorers are friendly, assertive, outgoing, cheerful, and energetic), openness to experience (those high on this trait are tolerant, intellectually curious, imaginative, and artistic), agreeableness (high scorers are polite, considerate, cooperative, honest, and trusting), and conscientiousness (those high on this trait are responsible, cautious, organized, disciplined, and achievement-oriented).

High-stakes testing

Settings in which test scores are used to make important decisions about individuals. For example, test scores may be used to determine which individuals are admitted into a college or graduate school, or who should be hired for a job. Tests also are used in forensic settings to help determine whether a person is competent to stand trial or fits the legal definition of sanity.

Honeymoon effect

The tendency for newly married individuals to rate their spouses in an unrealistically positive manner. This represents a specific manifestation of the letter of recommendation effect when applied to ratings made by current romantic partners. Moreover, it illustrates the very important role played by relationship satisfaction in ratings made by romantic partners: As marital satisfaction declines (i.e., when the “honeymoon is over”), this effect disappears.

Implicit motives

These are goals that are important to a person, but that he/she cannot consciously express. Because the individual cannot verbalize these goals directly, they cannot be easily assessed via self-report. However, they can be measured using projective devices such as the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT).

Letter of recommendation effect

The general tendency for informants in personality studies to rate others in an unrealistically positive manner. This tendency is due a pervasive bias in personality assessment: In the large majority of published studies, informants are individuals who like the person they are rating (e.g., they often are friends or family members) and, therefore, are motivated to depict them in a socially desirable way. The term reflects a similar tendency for academic letters of recommendation to be overly positive and to present the referent in an unrealistically desirable manner.

Projective hypothesis

The theory that when people are confronted with ambiguous stimuli (that is, stimuli that can be interpreted in more than one way), their responses will be influenced by their unconscious thoughts, needs, wishes, and impulses. This, in turn, is based on the Freudian notion of projection, which is the idea that people attribute their own undesirable/unacceptable characteristics to other people or objects.

Reference group effect

The tendency of people to base their self-concept on comparisons with others. For example, if your friends tend to be very smart and successful, you may come to see yourself as less intelligent and successful than you actually are. Informants also are prone to these types of effects. For instance, the sibling contrast effect refers to the tendency of parents to exaggerate the true extent of differences between their children.

Reliablility

The consistency of test scores across repeated assessments. For example, test-retest reliability examines the extent to which scores change over time.

Self-enhancement bias

The tendency for people to see and/or present themselves in an overly favorable way. This tendency can take two basic forms: defensiveness (when individuals actually believe they are better than they really are) and impression management (when people intentionally distort their responses to try to convince others that they are better than they really are). Informants also can show enhancement biases. The general form of this bias has been called the letter-of-recommendation effect, which is the tendency of informants who like the person they are rating (e.g., friends, relatives, romantic partners) to describe them in an overly favorable way. In the case of newlyweds, this tendency has been termed the honeymoon effect.

Sibling contrast effect

The tendency of parents to use their perceptions of all of their children as a frame of reference for rating the characteristics of each of them. For example, suppose that a mother has three children; two of these children are very sociable and outgoing, whereas the third is relatively average in sociability. Because of operation of this effect, the mother will rate this third child as less sociable and outgoing than he/she actually is. More generally, this effect causes parents to exaggerate the true extent of differences between their children. This effect represents a specific manifestation of the more general reference group effect when applied to ratings made by parents.

Validity

Evidence related to the interpretation and use of test scores. A particularly important type of evidence is criterion validity, which involves the ability of a test to predict theoretically relevant outcomes. For example, a presumed measure of conscientiousness should be related to academic achievement (such as overall grade point average).

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Authors

• 

  David Watson

  David Watson is the Andrew J. McKenna Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame.  He is well known for his work in personality, clinical, and mood assessment.  He and his colleagues have created a number of widely used instruments, including the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS).

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