Personality
Theories & Assessment
Personality: Some Common Terms
Personality: a person’s internally based characteristic
way of acting and thinking
Character: Personal characteristics that have been
judged or evaluated
Temperament: Hereditary aspects of personality,
including sensitivity, moods, irritability, and distractibility
Personality Trait: Stable qualities that a person shows in
most situations
Personality Type: People who have several traits in
common
Personality
“Distinctive and relatively stable pattern
of behaviors, thoughts, motives, and
emotions that characterizes an
individual’s personal style of interacting
with the physical and social
environment”
Types of Personality Theories
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Psychodynamic Theories
Humanistic Theories
Social-Cognitive Theories
Biological and Environmental Factors
Trait Theories
Psychodynamic Theories
Focus on the inner workings of personality,
especially internal conflicts and struggles
1. Freud’s psychoanalysis
2. Jung’s Theory
3. Adler’s Theory
1. Psychoanalysis - Sigmund Freud
Explains behavior and personality in terms of
•Unconscious dynamics within the individual
•Emphasizes internal conflicts, attachments, and
motivations
•Adult personalities are formed by experiences in
early childhood
The structure of personality
Id = Unconscious
Ego = Unconscious + preconscious + conscious
Superego = Unconscious + Preconscious + Conscious
The ID
•Operates on pleasure
principle
•Present from birth
(Primitive)
•basic needs and wants
2 competing instincts
1. Life Instinct (EROS,
sexual in nature) – Libido
2. Death Instinct
(THANATOS, aggressive
in nature) Unconscious
EROS:
• Life instinct includes food, water, air and sex.
• It motivates behaviors that satisfy basic needs.
THANATOS: It is a destructive instinct and called as
death instinct.
• It includes aggression, suicide, hatred, cruelty and
masochism.
Both instincts are present at birth.
The Ego
•Operates according to the
reality principle
• Arises in first 3 years of life
•Mediates between ID and
Superego
Rational part of mind
you can’t always get what you
want
•Floats between all 3 levels of
consciousness
The Ego
• The primary role of ego is to ensure the
survival of Id.
• It needs to deal with real environmental
problems.
• Its role is to minimize anxiety.
Anxiety has three types;
a) Realistic anxiety
b) Neurotic anxiety
c) Moral anxiety
a) Realistic / Objective Anxiety:
“anxiety that is caused by danger in the environment”
e.g. real threat
b) Neurotic Anxiety:
“it concerns with the harm that will result from yielding a
powerful and dangerous Id impulses or Ego becomes
unable to keep the irrational desires of Id out of
conscious awareness that threaten to reach
consciousness”
c) Moral Anxiety:
“it is caused by acts or wishes that violates one’s
standards of right and wrong. It also includes feelings
of shame and guilt”.
The Superego
•Moral Conscience
•Develops around age 3-5 at end of Phallic Stage
•Stores and Enforces Rules: Inner voice that tells
you not to do something or that what you did was
wrong
•It strives for perfection
•2 Subsystems:
Ego Ideal = parents approve/value
Conscience = parents disapproval
Super ego floats between all 3 levels of consciousness
Defense mechanisms
Repression
When a threatening idea, memory, or emotion is
blocked (either consciously or unconsciously) from
consciousness.
The feeling component may remain conscious,
detached from its associated ideas.
Projection
When repressed feelings are attributed to someone
else
Displacement
• When a person’s emotions are directed towards
people or animals that are not the real object (less
threatening) of the emotion
Regression
• Returning to a previous stage of development
(childhood behaviors).
• In order to reduce the anxiety and tension, individual
wants to go back in that stage when he/she was in
peace.
Sublimation: acting out socially unacceptable
impulses in a socially acceptable way by channeling
potentially maladaptive feelings or impulses into
socially acceptable behavior. E.g. sports, social
work, join armed forces etc.
Reaction formation
When a feeling or belief that causes anxiety is
transformed into the opposite feeling or belief in our
consciousness (it usually occur with repression).
Denial
• Refusal to admit something unpleasant or that
something that provokes anxiety is happening.
Humor
• The individual deals with emotional conflicts
or stressors by emphasizing the amusing
aspects of the conflict or situation.
Freud’s Psychoanalysis: Summary
According to Freud, much of what people do, think and
feel is really a way of avoiding anxiety.
Anxiety is the way the body signals us when we face a
threatening situation.
Threat comes from the unconscious: an unacceptable
sexual or aggressive impulse.
Protecting ourselves from this anxiety is normal and
natural. Carried to an extreme, it becomes a
psychological disorder
Pop up Quiz
Your math instructor caught you with the textbook open
during a test. Despite the fact that you know he knows
you were cheating, you protest your innocence. This
defense mechanism is:
1. Denial
2. Reaction formation
3. Regression
4. Displacement
Personality Development:
Psychosexual Stages
`
Personality Development:
Psychosexual Stages
Fixation
Fixation occurs when the conflicts at a given stage aren’t
resolved successfully
Oral (birth – 18 months)
Babies learn about the world with their mouths, oral pleasures
Oral dependents – A passive person who takes more than he
gives
Oral Aggressive – A hostile vocal person who is also exploitative
Anal (18 months – 3 years)
Control of eliminating and retaining feces, toilet training issues
Anal retentive – obsession with cleanliness, perfection, control
Anal expulsive – messy, disorganized
Phallic personality (3 – 6 years) – Narcissistic, Exhibitionist
Neo-Freudian Theories of Personality
Neo-Freudian Psychoanalysts:
Psychoanalysis who were
trained in traditional Freudian
theory but who later rejected
some of its major points.
2. Analytical Psychology – Carl Jung
The Structure of Personality
1. Consciousness
• Consciousness in psychoanalytic theory is often
depicted as the tip of a huge iceberg, with the
unconscious represented by the vast portion below the
water.
Similarly, consciousness in analytical psychology
resembles a small island rising from the midst of a
vast sea (Jung, 1928/1969d, p. 41).
It comprises of 2 parts; The Ego & The Persona
a) The Ego.
“The ego is a complex of conscious ideas that constitutes
the center of awareness”.
• It begins to develop at about the fourth year of life.
• Jung conceives of the ego as a relatively weak entity
that is often at the mercy of more powerful forces,
tossed like a shuttlecock between the demands of
reality and those of the unconscious.
• However, it can consign threatening material to the
(personal) unconscious by means of repression.
b) The Persona:
• We usually cannot afford to confront the world with our true
feelings. Instead, we must fashion an outward appearance that
will satisfy the demands of society.
• This protective facade is a complex of conscious material called
the persona, after the masks worn by ancient actors to signify
the roles that they played.
• In general, people with underdeveloped personas appear to be
incompetent, boring, tactless, eternally misunderstood, and
blind to the realities of the world.
• E.g. The doctor’s professional role is validated in the
patient’s eyes by an appropriately reassuring manner,
whereas, the college professor is supposed to display a
persona of expertise.
• If the doctor or professor violates these expectations by
acting anxious and uncertain, this will provoke suspicion
and resistance.
Jung’s (Analytical Psychology)
Jung divided unconscious into 2 parts, Personal
unconscious and Collective unconscious:
2. Personal Unconscious
The personal unconscious begins to form at birth,
and contains material that is no longer (or
is not yet) at the level of awareness.
•Reservoir of personal information and memories
that was once conscious, but has been forgotten or
suppressed and is unique to the individual.
The Shadow:
The shadow is the primitive and unwelcome side of
personality that derives from our animal forebears/
ancestors. (See Jung, 1951.)
• It consists of material that is repressed into the personal
unconscious because it is shameful and unpleasant, and
it plays a compensatory role to the more positive
persona and ego.
• Just as it is impossible to have sunshine without shadow,
the light of consciousness must always be accompanied
by the dark side of our personality. Rather than turn
away in disgust from our shadow, we must open this
Pandora’s box and accept its contents.
• Jung does not regard repression as actively maintained,
so a person who honestly wishes to examine the shadow
can do so, but this is a highly threatening task that most
prefer to avoid.
3. Collective unconscious
• Although the personal unconscious and the ego
originate after birth, the newborn infant is far from a
tabula rasa. Its psyche is a complicated, clearly defined
entity consisting of the collective (or transpersonal)
unconscious, a storehouse of archetypes inherited
from our ancestral past.
• Deepest level of the human psyche that contains
universal memories, symbols, and experiences of all
humans.
• A reservoir of inherited experiences
Collective unconscious:
Archetype:
“universal symbolic representations of a particular
person, object or experience (good or evil)”
A predisposition to perceive the world in certain ways that is
inherited from past generations; not a specific idea or belief. Is
much the same across different cultures (a “universal thought
form”).
Archetypes play an important role in determining our day to
day reaction, attitudes and values
• Everyone inherits a tendency to fear objects that our
ancestors found to be potentially dangerous, such as
snakes, so it will be easier to learn to fear snakes than
to fear flowers. But an individual who grows up
enjoying only pleasant encounters with snakes will not
be greatly affected by this archetype.
• The persona and shadow have existed in the human
psyche throughout countless generations.
1. The Anima:
An inner feminine part of the male personality / The
female archetype in man. Predisposes man to
understand the nature of woman, is sentimental, and
compensates for the powerful male persona.
2. The Animus:
An inner masculine part of the female personality /
the male archetype in woman. This is an archetype of
reason and spirit in women. Predisposes woman to
understand the nature of man, is powerful, and
compensates for the sentimental female persona.
• Other Archetypes.
• Other archetypes include the wise old man, the mother,
the father, the child, the parents, the wife, the husband,
God, goddess, the hero, various animals, energy, the
self (the ultimate goal of personality development), the
trickster, rebirth or recreation, the spirit, the forecaster,
the disciple, and numerous archetypes representative of
situations.
Commonly seen archetypes
Family archetypes
The father:
Strict, powerful, controlling
The mother:
Feeding, nurturing, soothing
The child:
Birth, beginnings, rescue / dependant
Story archetypes
The hero:
Rescuer, champion
The maiden:
Purity, desire
(young lady, unmarried)
The wise old man: Knowledge, guidance
The magician:
Mysterious, powerful
The earth mother: Nature
The witch:
Dangerous
The trickster:
Deceiving, hidden
Commonly seen archetypes
Animal Archetypes
The faithful dog:
The enduring horse:
Unquestioning loyalty
Never giving up
Persona : Our public self, the mask we wear to
represent ourselves to others
Personality Types:
Extraversion : A person’s characteristic who usually
focuses on social life and the external world instead
of on his or her internal experience.
Introversion : A characteristic where a person
usually focuses on his or her own thoughts and
feelings.
Psychological Types (Jung)
Extraversion Type:
• Thinking: Tries to understand and interpret aspects of the external
world. Is logical, practical, objective. May be a scientist (Darwin,
like Einstein).
• Feeling: Makes judgments that conform to external standards.
Conservative; enjoys popular trends. May seem emotional,
unpredictable.
• Sensation: Interested in perceiving and experiencing the external
world. Realistic, unimaginative; often sensual, pleasure-seeking.
• Intuition: Seeks new possibilities in the external world. Easily
bored; often unable to persist in one job or activity. May be a
investor or industrialist.
Psychological Types (Jung)
Introversion Type:
• Thinking: Tries to understand and interpret own ideas. May be a
philosopher, theorist like Freud, or absent-minded professor.
• Feeling: Makes judgments based on own standards.
Nonconformist; views are often contrary to public opinion. May
seem cold, reserved.
• Sensation: Interested in perceiving and experiencing own inner
self. May be modern artist or musician whose work is often
misunderstood.
• Intuition: Seeks new possibilities within own inner self. May
develop brilliant new insights or be a mystical dreamer, self-styled
forecaster, or “misunderstood genius.”
3. Individual Psychology - Alfred
Adler
1. BASIC NATURE OF HUMAN BEINGS
Social Interest: Every human being has the innate potential
to relate to and cooperate with other people.
• Social interest establishes the guidelines for proper personality
development, and enables us to tame the superior forces of
nature through cooperation.
• It is only a tendency, however, and it is all too possible to reject
our inherent social interest and become pathologically selfcentered.
• According to Adler, heredity exerts virtually no influence on
personality.
Life Goals :
• We select our own life goals and the means of achieving them,
usually by the fifth year of life.
• It is these future aspirations, rather than prior causes, that
determine one’s personality.
Feelings of Inferiority and the Striving for
Superiority:
• The primary goal underlying all human behavior is that of
striving for superiority (or self-perfection), which is motivated
by the child’s feelings of inferiority relative to the formidable
environment.
• Healthy strivings for superiority are guided by social interest,
whereas pathological strivings are characterized by
selfishness and a lack of concern for others.
• Everyone grows up with at least some feelings of
inferiority, which may stimulate socially interested forms of
compensation. If the child is exposed to pathogenic
conditions, however, the feelings of helplessness may
become overwhelming and result in a shattering inferiority
complex.
2. THE STRUCTURE OF PERSONALITY
• Adler’s holistic theory treats personality as an indivisible
unity, and he makes no assumptions about its structure.
• He does accept the existence of some sort of unconscious,
which includes those unpleasant character traits that we do
not wish to understand.
• But he views conscious and unconscious as united in the
service of the individual’s chosen life goals, rather than as
engaged in conflict.
3. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PERSONALITY
• The mother serves as the child’s bridge to social life, and
proper maternal contact is responsible for the child’s
development of social interest.
• The father’s role is to encourage feelings of self-reliance,
and to stress the need for choosing an appropriate
occupation.
Pathogenic Developmental Factors:
• Personality development is strongly influenced by such
potentially pathogenic factors as pampering, neglect, and
organ inferiorities.
Birth Order: The child’s position in the family influences
personality development.
1st Born:
• The oldest child enjoys a temporary period as the unchallenged
center of attention. This pleasurable position is likely to involve
considerable pampering, however, and it comes to an abrupt and
shocking end with the arrival of a younger sibling. Unless the
parents carefully prepare the oldest child to cooperate with the
newcomer, and continue to provide sufficient attention after the
second child is born, this painful dethronement may well cause an
inferiority complex.
• For this reason, first-born children are the ones most likely to
become neurotics, criminals, and alcoholics (Adler, 1931/1958, pp.
144, 147–148).
• They are likely to be conservative and follow in the footsteps of the
parent’s occupation.
• “Oldest children… often… have the feeling that those in power
should remain in power.).
Middle Born:
• The middle child experiences pressure from both sides. “He
behaves as if he were in a race, as if someone were a step or
two in front and he had to hurry to get ahead of him”
(Adler, 1931/1958, p. 148).
• Second-born children tend to be competitive or even
revolutionary, prefer to see power change hands, and have
dreams of racing.
Last Born:
• The youngest child, confronted with the presence of several
older rivals, tends to be highly ambitious. Such children
often follow a unique path, as by becoming the only
musician or merchant in a family of scientists (or vice
versa).
• Although they avoid the trauma of being dethroned by a
younger sibling, their position as the baby of the family
makes them the most likely target of pampering. Therefore
“the second largest proportion of problem children comes
from among the youngest” (Adler, 1931/1958, p. 151)
• For example, they may turn away from the challenge of
competition and resort to chronic evasions, excuses, and
laziness.
Only children:
• are usually pampered, develop unrealistic expectations of
always being the center of attention, and form exaggerated
opinions of their own importance.
• They also tend to be timid and dependent, since parents
who refuse to have more than one child are typically
anxious or neurotic and cannot help communicating their
fears to the child.
• The third of three boys or girls often faces a most unenviable
situation, namely parents who longed to have a child of the
opposite sex. And a first-born boy who is closely followed
by a girl will probably suffer the embarrassment of being
overtaken in maturity by his younger sister, since the girl’s
physiological development proceeds at a faster rate
The Style of Life:
• The child responds to the various developmental factors by
choosing its life goals and the means of achieving them.
These goals and methods, and the corresponding
perceptions and memories, are known as the style of life.
• Every lifestyle is unique and is reflected by a person’s
character traits, physical movements, and early
recollections.
Alfred Adler: Individual
Psychology
• Compensation : According to Adler, the
person’s effort to overcome imagined or real
personal weaknesses.
• Inferiority : In Adler’s theory, the fixation
on feelings of personal inferiority that results
in emotional and social paralysis.
Humanistic Approaches: The Uniqueness
of You
Humanistic Theories: Focus on people innate
goodness and desire to achieve higher levels of
functioning.
They focus on the conscious, self-motivated ability
to change and improve, along with people’s unique
creative impulses that humanistic theories argue
make up the core of personality.
Humanist psychologists:
Abraham Maslow
Carl Rogers
Abraham Maslow: Humanistic Psychology
Personality development is a gradual progression to
self-actualization.
Self-Actualization:
“A state of self-fulfillment in which people realize their
highest potential, each in a unique way”.
Carl Rogers: Humanistic Psychology
• Carl Rogers (1902-1987) was a Humanistic psychologist
who agreed with the main assumptions of Abraham
Maslow, but added that for a person to "grow", they need
an environment that provides them with genuineness
(openness and self-disclosure), acceptance (being seen with
unconditional positive regard), and empathy (being
listened to and understood).
• Without these, relationships and healthy personalities will
not develop as they should, much like a tree will not grow
without sunlight and water.
Self-Actualization: "The organism has one basic
tendency and striving - to actualize, maintain, and
enhance the experiencing organism” (Rogers, 1951,
p. 487).
And self-actualization occurs when a person’s ‘Ideal
Self’ (i.e. who they would like to be) is congruent
with their actual behavior ‘Self-image’.
Characteristics of the fully functioning person
Roger was interested in fully functioning individuals and he
identified Five characteristics of the fully functioning person;
1. Open to experience: both positive and negative emotions
accepted. Negative feelings are not denied, but worked
through (rather than resorting to ego defense mechanisms).
2. Existential living: in touch with different experiences as
they occur in life, avoiding prejudging and preconceptions.
Being able to live and fully appreciate the present, not always
looking back to the past or forward to the future (i.e. living
for the moment).
3. Trust feelings: feeling, instincts and gut-reactions are
paid attention to and trusted. People’s own decisions are
the right ones and we should trust ourselves to make the
right choices.
4. Creativity: creative thinking and risk taking are features
of a person’s life. A person does not play safe all the time.
This involves the ability to adjust and change and seek new
experiences.
5. Fulfilled life: person is happy and satisfied with life, and
always looking for new challenges and experiences.
Personality Development:
Central to Rogers' personality theory is the notion of self or
‘self-concept’. This is defined as "the organized, consistent
set of perceptions and beliefs about oneself".
• The self is influenced by the experiences a person has in
their life, and out interpretations of those experiences.
• Two primary sources that influence our self-concept are
childhood experiences and evaluation by others.
The humanistic approach states that the self is composed of
concepts unique to ourselves. The self-concept includes three
components:
• Self worth (or self-esteem) – what we think about ourselves.
Rogers believed that feelings of self-worth developed in early
childhood and were formed from the interaction of the child with
the mother and father.
• Self-image – How we see ourselves, which is important to good
psychological health. Self-image includes the influence of our
body image on inner personality. At a simple level, we might
perceive ourselves as a good or bad person, beautiful or ugly.
Self-image has an effect on how a person thinks, feels and
behaves in the world.
• Ideal self – This is the person who we would like to be. It
consists of our goals and ambitions in life, and is dynamic – i.e.
forever changing. The ideal self in childhood is not the ideal self
in our teens or late twenties etc.
• Rogers believed that we need to be regarded positively by
others; we need to feel valued, respected, treated with
affection and love. Positive regard is to do with how other
people evaluate and judge us in social interaction.
• Rogers made a distinction between unconditional positive
regard and conditional positive regard.
Unconditional positive regard
• is where parents, significant others (and the humanist
therapist) accepts and loves the person for what he or she
is. Positive regard is not withdrawn if the person does
something wrong or makes a mistake.
• The consequences of unconditional positive regard are that
the person feels free to try things out and make mistakes,
even though this may lead to getting it worse at
times. People who are able to self-actualize are more likely
to have received unconditional positive regard from others,
especially their parents in childhood.
Conditional positive regard is where positive regard,
praise and approval, depend upon the child, for example,
behaving in ways that the parents think correct. Hence the
child is not loved for the person he or she is, but on
condition that he or she behaves only in ways approved by
the parent(s).
• At the extreme, a person who constantly seeks approval
from other people is likely only to have experienced
conditional positive regard as a child.
Congruence
• When a person’s ideal self and actual experience are consistent or
very similar, a state of congruence exists.
• Rarely, if ever, does a total state of congruence exist; all people
experience a certain amount of incongruence.
• Displayed by fully functioning people and is a harmony between
the image they project to others and their true feelings or wishes
• Imagined Self-image + Actual Self = Congruence
• Imagined Self-image – Actual Self = Incongruence
• The development of congruence is dependent on unconditional
positive regard. Carl Rogers believed that for a person to achieve
self-actualization they must be in a state of congruence.
Social-Cognitive Theories
Attribute difference in personality to
socialization, expectations, and mental
processes
Albert Bandura’s Social Learning Theory
Self-system: the set of cognitive processes by which a
person observes, evaluates, and regulates his/her behavior.
Bandura proposed that what we think of as personality is
a product of this self-system.
Modeling: Children observe behavior of models (such as
parents) in their social environment. Particularly if they
are reinforced, children will imitate these behaviors,
incorporating them into personality.
Self-efficacy: The belief that we have the personal
capabilities to master a situation and produce positive
outcomes / a judgment of one’s effectiveness in dealing with
particular situations.
• People with high self-efficacy have higher aspirations and
greater persistence in working to attain goals and
ultimately achieve greater success than those with lower
self-efficacy.
How do we develop self-efficacy?
• Paying close attention to our prior successes and failures.
• If the result of our initial efforts appear promising, we’ll
likely to try it again.
• Direct reinforcement and encouragement from others also
play a major role in developing self-efficacy.
Trait Theory
Trait
A characteristic of an individual, describing a habitual
way of behaving, thinking, and feeling
shy, outgoing, ambitious, lazy, easy-going, confident,
grumpy/ cranky, happy, friendly, etc.
Trait Theories: Attempt to learn what traits make up
personality and how they relate to actual behavior
Goldberg’s Big Five Personality Traits
(OCEAN Model)
• This Five Factor Model of personality represents five
core traits that interact to form human personality.
•
•
•
•
•
Openness to Experience
Conscientiousness
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
1. Openness to experience
Open = Curiosity, imaginative, creative
Resistant = compliant, predictable
2. Conscientiousness
Conscientious = Responsible, persistent, self-disciplined
Impulsive = Quick to give up, indecisive, careless
3. Extroversion
Extroversion = Outgoing, talkative, sociable, adventurous
Introversion = Shy – silent, isolated, cautious/vigilant
4. Agreeableness
Agreeable = Good-natured, cooperative, secure
Antagonistic = Irritable, rude, suspicious, jealous
5. Neuroticism
Neurotic = anxious, impulsive, worrier, emotionally
negative
Emotionally stable = only has those feelings when
the circumstances demand
Personality Assessment
Research Approaches to Personality
Two research approaches to personality
include:
Idiographic Approach
• Refers to those methods which highlight the
unique elements of the individual phenomenon—
as in much of history and biography.
Nomothetic Approach
• Seeks to provide more general law-like statements
about social life, usually by following the logic and
methodology of the natural sciences.
Personality assessment
• The personal interview
• Direct observation/ behavioral assessment
• Objective tests/ self-report measures
• Projective tests
1. The personal interviews
•Unstructured
The questions are not in a specific written
format. The interviewer asks questions
according to the situation and flow of
communication.
•Structured
The order and content of the questions are
fixed; mostly in written form and set format
2. Direct Observation
•Systematic observation
•Issues of observer bias
•Time consuming and expensive
•People may alter their behavior when observed
3. Objective Tests (Inventories)
Standardized questionnaires asking a series of
questions where people rate themselves
Self-Rating Scales or Self-Report Measures
• Assumes that you can accurately report
• No right or wrong answers
Personality Profile
The responses on these scales help develop picture of
personality
Common Tests
•Sixteen personality factor questionnaire (16PF) :
Objective personality test created by Cattell that
provides scores on the 16 traits he identified. It consists
of 185 MCQs typequestions
•Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
(MMPI) The most widely used objective personality
test, originally intended for psychiatric diagnosis.
•Myers-Briggs Type Indicator:
The Big 5 Personality Dimensions
Application at work
Some dimensions of personality may correlate more
strongly with particular aspects of a particular job
• Extraversion
→
success in sales
• High conscientiousness & high openness to experience
→
success in job training
• Low agreeableness, low conscientiousness,
→ more likely to engage in counterproductive
work behaviors (e.g., abuse sick leave, break rules, drug
abuse, workplace violence)
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI)
• The test itself consists of a series of 567 items to
which a person responds “true,” “false,” or
“cannot say.” The questions cover a variety of
issues, ranging from mood to opinions to
physical and psychological health.
• This test yields scores on 10 separate scales
(depression, hypochondriasis, hysteria,
psychopath, M/F, paranoia, obsessiveness,
schizophrenia, hypomania, social introversionextraversion) plus 3 validity scales
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory (MMPI)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Sample Items
I feel useless at times.
People should try to understand their dreams.
I am bothered by an upset stomach several times a
week.
I have strange and peculiar/weird thoughts.
I get along well with others.
Sometimes I hear voices telling me to do bad things.
At times I am full of energy.
I am afraid of losing my mind.
Everyone hates me .
Projective tests
• Personality tests, such as the Rorschach inkblot
test, consisting of ambiguous or unstructured
material.
• Rorschach inkblot test: A projective test
composed of ambiguous inkblots; the way
people interpret the blots is thought to reveal
aspects of their personality.
Test comprise ten cards
Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT)
• A projective test composed of ambiguous
pictures about which a person is asked to
write a complete story.
Murray’s Projective Test of
Personality comprising 20 cards
Other Projective Tests
• Sentence Completion Test
• Word Association Test
• Story Completion Test
• Human Figure Drawing Test