Personality – Lecture 2 1/10/2012 7:06:00 AM
Personality is critical in the domain of research
-you can devise a test to measure traits
some psychologists devote their whole career to generating tests
-if we can not measure traits, personality theories cannot make meaningful
predictions
-personality assessment is a central part in personality research
-in clinical studies psychologists like to use psychological tests
-a good psychological report should say something about patients
personality, even when that is not the focus
-sometimes in the real world the reason for referral is to give a report if a
patient is a good candidate for psychotherapy, legal matters
fairly extremely comprehensive personality assessment needs to be
done
someone who is easily irritated is not a good candidate
-in clinical settings personality assessment are almost never a meaning less
exercise
-there are a variety of ways of assessing personality
-test that clinical psychologists use depend on their focus
What goes on in a personality assessment
-clinical interview
process that we call observation
observing people can tell us a lot about them
-tangential – have trouble focusing, go off on a tangent
-clinical interview carries a great deal of weight in personality assessment
-Doctor Silverman observed that it took 10 mins to assess a patient
-clinicians vary on the way they assess personality
-personality tests vary according to
their function
o MMPI test – designed to help you make a diagnosis
identifies the presence of psycho-pathology
level of structure
o MMPI is a very structured test
Same questions, same order
o Others are not
How they are constructed
o Distinction between two types of construction
Rational or logical method
Empirical or psycho-metric process
Typical pattern of response for types of traits
Many items in MMPI do not have an obvious
answer to clinical categories – but they help
clinicians make a distinction
Reliability – degree to which any test gives
you consistent stable measures
Validity – how well a given test measures
what it is supposed to measure
*most personality test have a built in assumption that the trait that are
being measured are stable*
-diagnosis criteria for clinical depression range on a various of domains
cognitive symptoms
-tests should have contingent validity
-sometimes we need to make statements about people
discriminant validity
-big problem faced by personality clinical psychologists : most of what we
are interested in measuring has no clear place for us to look
we cannot see shyness, cannot see schizophrenia, generosity
we are in a field where we must rely to a very large extent on a self
report data, we ask patients to tell us what is going on --- which is
problematic, cannot trust what people always say
whenever we rely on self report data we have to ask the question:
am I getting valid data? --- people lie intentionally and
unintentionally
The Rorschach
-very little general findings about it
Buros mental measurements yearbook
o http://www.unl.edu/buros
findings done over the past year
-developed by Hermann Rorschach