U4.2 PERSONALITY (Cont.)

After completing the questions, you will get a full personality profile that is customized based on your responses. The MBTI is based on the conceptual theory proposed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who had speculated that people experience the world using four principal psychological functions – sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking – and that one of these four functions is dominant for a person most of the time. 

The M.B.T.I. tests four categories, which are Introversion/Extraversion, Sensing/Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, Judging/Perception. Each person is said to have one preferred quality from each category, producing 16 unique types. 

The differences between people’s personalities can be broken down in terms of five major traits—often called the “Big Five.” Each one reflects a key part of how a person thinks, feels, and behaves. 

The Big Five traits are:

• Openness to experience (includes aspects such as intellectual curiosity and creative imagination)
• Conscientiousness (organization, productiveness, responsibility)
• Extroversion (sociability, assertiveness; its opposite is Introversion)
• Agreeableness (compassion, respectfulness, trust in others)
• Neuroticism (tendencies toward anxiety and depression)

Individual personalities are thought to feature each of these five broad traits to some degree. When the traits are measured, some people rate higher and others rate lower: Someone can be more conscientious and less agreeable than most people, for instance, while scoring about average on the other traits. These traits remain fairly stable during adulthood.

People can also differ on the more specific facets that make up each of the Big Five traits. A relatively extroverted person might be highly sociable but not especially assertive.

The five-factor model is widely used by personality researchers, but it is not the only model. A more recently introduced six-factor model known as HEXACO adds the factor of honesty-humility to the original five traits. 

 The original version of the measurement was the Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness Inventory (NEO-I). This version only measured three of the Big Five personality traits. It was later revised to include all five traits and renamed the NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI)

The Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) is a personality inventory that examines a person's Big Five personality traits (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). In addition, the NEO PI-R also reports on six subcategories of each Big Five personality trait (called facets).  

Historically, development of the Revised NEO PI-R began in 1978 with the publication of a personality inventory by Costa and McCrae. These researchers published three updated versions of their personality inventory in 1985, 1990, and 2005 which are called the NEO PI, NEO PI-R (or Revised NEO PI), and NEO PI-3, respectively. The revised inventories feature updated norms.  

These personality inventories have both longer and shorter versions. For example, the NEO PI-R consists of 240 items (questions), whereas the shorter NEO-FFI (NEO Five-Factor Inventory) has only 60 items (12 per domain). The test was originally developed for use with adult men and women without overt psychopathy, but was later shown to also be useful for people at younger ages. 

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a psychological test that assesses personality traits and psychopathology. It is primarily intended to test people who are suspected of having mental health or other clinical issues.  The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is considered a protected psychological instrument, meaning it can only be given and interpreted by a psychologist trained to do so (you cannot find the test online).  

The MMPI is currently commonly administered in one of two forms — the MMPI-2, which has 567 true/false questions, and the newer MMPI-2-RF, published in 2008 and containing only 338 true/false items. While the MMPI-2-RF is a newer measure and takes about half the time to complete (usually 30 to 50 minutes), the MMPI-2 is still the more widely used test because of its existing large research base and familiarity with psychologists. (Another version of the test — the MMPI-A — is designed exclusively for teenagers.)  

While it’s commonly administered by computer nowadays (and requires no direct professional involvement during its administration), psychological testing is nearly always preceded by a clinical interview by the psychologist who is doing the testing. After the computer scores the test results, the psychologist writes up a report interpreting the test results in the context of the person’s history and current psychological concerns 

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective psychological test. Proponents of the technique assert that subjects' responses, in the narratives they make up about ambiguous pictures of people, reveal their underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world. Historically, the test has been among the most widely researched, taught, and used of such techniques. 

The TAT is popularly known as the picture interpretation technique because it uses a series of provocative yet ambiguous pictures about which the subject is asked to tell a story. The TAT manual provides the administration instructions used by Murray, although these procedures are commonly altered. The subject is asked to tell as dramatic a story as they can for each picture presented, including the following:

• what has led up to the event shown
• what is happening at the moment
• what the characters are feeling and thinking
• what the outcome of the story was

If these elements are omitted, particularly for children or individuals of low cognitive abilities, the evaluator may ask the subject about them directly. Otherwise, the examiner is to avoid interjecting and should not answer questions about the content of the pictures. The examiner records stories verbatim for later interpretation. 

The Rorschach test is a psychological test in which subjects' perceptions of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using psychological interpretation, complex algorithms, or both. 

Some psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. It has been employed to detect underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly.

 
The test is named after its creator, Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach. The Rorschach can be thought of as a psychometric examination of pareidolia, the active pattern of perceiving objects, shapes, or scenery as meaningful things to the observer's experience, the most common being faces or other pattern of forms that are not present at the time of the observation. In the 1960s, the Rorschach was the most widely used projective test.