Personality psychology is the study of people's individual patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving over time. How do we determine what those patterns are for each person?
An assessment, or a test, is a way to help to measure the various different traits and aspects of a person's personality. There are different tests for different kinds of theories.
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There could be one test for trait theories, one for psychodynamic, and one for humanistic; however, they could also be applicable to a wide range of theories.Each one of these different types of assessments has different strengths and limitations. Two important assessments are:
These are two types of assessments that are more qualitative in nature. That means they are based on descriptions and observations themselves, and they are a little subjective. The questions depend more on the subject and on the psychologist, and are not necessarily the same for each person.
An interview is a face-to-face conversation that a person has with a psychologist. They are asked questions by a psychologist and share information about their psychological history, their current status, and their personality in general. Interviews can take two different forms:
The strength of interviews is that they can be tailored to individual subjects. A great deal of information can be gathered from interviews because it allows the psychologist to talk to one subject in depth.
Interviews do have some weaknesses, however. They can be affected or biased by the subject or interviewer's preexisting beliefs.
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What the subject looks like might affect how the psychologist is rating the person within the system.There's also what is called the halo effect. The halo effect is the tendency to view a person as generally positive or negative based on things like attractiveness or age.
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It's been shown that when a person is physically attractive, others are generally more likely to look at them as being intelligent or more worthwhile than other people.Within an interview, a person can also lie, which can affect the information as well.
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A person might go to a school and watch a child playing and interacting with other children. This can provide information about that child's personality and their social interactions.Direct observations can give more in-depth information about the subjects. They can also provide more accurate information because it's within a natural setting, so they're not being affected by being in a room with a psychologist or in some strange environment.
However, direct observation can be affected by observer bias, meaning preexisting beliefs or ideas that impact the observation process.
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If you think that teens are more argumentative, then you may tend to focus on more argumentative behavior that you observe, versus non-argumentative behavior.To prevent this, a lot of direct observations have different tools that help to control bias. They might use a rating scale, which is a list of traits or behavioral aspects that guides the observations and prevents misinterpretations. It tells the researcher what to look for, so they don't necessarily miss it within those situations.
Researchers can also do what's called a behavioral assessment. This is when an observer records how many times they observe certain kinds of behaviors. Instead of trying to measure the internal processes that are going on or the different personality traits, they can just note each time they see a behavior that they're looking for. They can create categories for different behaviors.
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For example, a researcher can record how many times a person mentions a particular subject in a conversation.Source: This work is adapted from Sophia author Erick Taggart.
