The Thematic- Apperception Test presents the individual with pictures around which the individual has to create a story in order to explain what is happening in the pictures they see. Again, the individual’s personality profile depends on the story they create and how the psychologist interprets it.
Another way of measuring one’s personality if through objective measures, including one put forward by Hans Eysenck. He took a psychometric approach. Completing Eysencks Personality questionnaire can test an individual’s personality. The EPQ asks the respondent closed questions, requiring a simple yes or no answer from which a score is calculated, after which the individuals position on the extrovert- introvert and stable- neurotic dimensions can be established, indicating the personality trait that the individual may tend to have. The test includes a lie scale, indicating whether the respondent may be giving socially desirable answers.
One other method includes interviewing the individual face to face, asking both closed and open-ended questions. They can be formal or informal chats, structured with pre- determined questions. Open-ended questions can provide detailed information concerning the individual’s personality whilst the closed questions make it possible to assess personality traits and to make comparisons with others. One example would be, “How do you feel after loosing an extremely important match- shame, anger, jealously?”
- Evaluate attempts made by Psychologists to measure personality (10)
One such attempt is the Rorschach inkblot, classified as a projective test, which is used by psychoanalysts to measure personality as an indirect method of revealing an individual’s unconscious desire, which, according to the psychoanalysis approach drives human behaviour.
The individual’s responses are interpreted solely by the psychoanalyst, which is a disadvantage since different testers may hold different opinions regarding the response given by the individual. The data collected is qualitative; it can be attacked for its lack of objectivity. This indicates that this type of test is low in inter- rater reliability, which refers to how consistent a method measures within itself. The measures in the Rorschach test are not standardised and can give distorted final outcomes. Different interpretators using the same observation/ interpretational definitions/ techniques simultaneously may interpret the individual as having different personality traits.
For example, one psychoanalyst may perceive the response given by an individual to be aggressive and another psychoanalyst may think that the individual they are analysing may be not aggressive at all- it is an opinion. The psychologists past experience provides the framework for evaluating the individual responses.
The tester can be biased, in addition, and see what they wish to find out, which suggests that the validity of this type of test can be quite poor if this occurs since the test would not measure what it aims to measure- it would be measuring what the tester expects to discover.
An additional evaluative point that can be made concerning the Rorschach test, and in fact any projective test, is that they tend find information about the motives and emotions that the individual is experiencing at that time rather than the personality traits they have. It provides only partial information, which means a restricted picture of the individuals personality, so although these tests can provide insights into emotions and thoughts they do not seem to be good predictors of skills, motivation or success, for example, which all play a crucial part in behaviour. For example, an individual may perceive the image of a heart in an inkblot, which may not necessary mean that he or she is generally loving and thinks happy thoughts but rather that they may have recently become engaged to their long term partner or they may have found out that they have been cured of a long term illness.
Another attempt made to measure an individual’s personality includes one proposed by Hans Eysenck. An individual is tested by completing his questionnaire. It asks the respondent closed questions, those requiring a yes or no answer from which a score is calculated after which the individuals position on the extrovert- introvert and the stable- neurotic dimensions can then be established, indicating what personality traits the individual may have.
The validity of this test, which is what the test claims to measure, is extremely good in that Eysenck includes a lie detector so that socially desirable answers, answers which are dishonest because the subject wants to appear in good light for example, can be detected and eliminated from the results so the honest answers can be considered.
Furthermore, to support the validity of this test, Eysenck arranged for 700 people who were diagnosed as neurotics to complete his EPQ to see if the results indicated that they were stable neurotics, which is exactly what was discovered, reinforcing the high validity.
Interviews, another attempt to measure one’s personality, can be criticised greatly. They are face-to-face conversations between the researcher and the individual, which means that experimenter effect is a possibility, which is where the researcher can affect the answer given by the participants, thus affecting the validity of the study. The researcher may unwittingly communicate his or her expectations to the participants. This could happen through only small changes in the body language or tone of voice. This may result on socially desirable answers being given and not honest ones. Unlike Eysenks high in validity study, which makes use of a lie detector to eliminate any, dishonest answers being given, and similarly to projective tests interviewers cannot pick up on whether the individual is lying and thus record and analyse answers which are invalid.
