PSYC 4520 1st Edition Lecture 13Outline of Last Lecture I. Types vs. TraitsA. Typologies and traitsII. The Trait ApproachA. Personality as trait dimensionsB. Special features of the trait approachIII. Important Trait TheoristsA. Gordon AllportB. Four-category model IV. Factor Analysis and the Search for the Structure of PersonalityA. How many basic traits exist?B. Factor analysisC. Sixteen Personality Factor QuestionnaireV. The Big FiveA. The five basic factors of personalityB. NeuroticismC. ExtraversionD. OpennessE. AgreeablenessThese notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor’s lecture. GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes, not as a substitute.F. ConscientiousnessVI. Criticisms and Limitations of the Big Five ModelA. The first limitationB. The second limitationC. The third limitationD. The fourth limitationVII. Criticisms of the Trait ApproachA. Trait measures and test scores do not predict behavior wellB. Little evidence for cross-situational consistencyVIII. In Defense of Personality TraitsA. Measuring behaviorB. Identifying relevant traitsC. Importance of 10% of the varianceIX. Application: The Big Five in the Workplace:A. What makes the best employee?Outline of Current Lecture I. Assessment: Self-Report InventoriesA. What are self-report inventories?B. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality InventoryII. Problems with Self-Report InventoriesA. FakingB. Carelessness and sabotageC. Response tendenciesIII. Strengths and Criticisms of the Trait ApproachA. StrengthsB. Criticisms Current LectureI. Assessment: Self-Report InventoriesA. What are self-report inventories?i. These include tests that you take about yourself, and they range from aptitude tests to quizzes in a magazine. They typically ask people to respond to a series of questions about themselves, and then researchers use simple scoring procedures to generate a score/set of scores that can be compared with others along a trait continuum. ii. These are the most widely used form of personality assessment. They are easily administered—they can be given in groups or even online, and by someone with little training. Secondly, scoring a self-report inventory is easy and objective—researchers typically count matched items or total response values. Thirdly, they have greater face validity than other tests —we can be reasonably confident from looking at the items on a self-esteem test that they actually measure self-esteem. B. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventoryi. This is the prototypic self-report inventory used by clinical psychologists. The original MMPI was developed in the late 1930s, and a revised version of it (MMPI-2) was published in 1989.ii. The MMPI-2 contains 567 true-false questions. These items generate several scale scores that are combined to form a profile of the test taker. The original scales were designed to measure psychological disorders such as depression, hysteria, paranoia, and schizophrenia. They can also measure hypochondriasis, masculinity/femininity, psychasthenia, hypomania, social introversion, and psychopathic deviate.iii. Critics debate the validity of some scales, the appropriateness of some of the norm data provided by test makers, and the nature of some of the constructs the test is designed to measure, along with other issues. iv. Validity scales include the L-scale, F-scale, and K-scale. The L-scale measures participants’ “faking good,” meaning they create an inaccurate favorable impression. The F-scale measures participants’ “faking bad,” meaning they make themselves look bad (this indicates psychosis). The K-scale measures participants’ “defensiveness,” such as when participants say they have no psychological problems when they clearly do.II. Problems with Self-Report InventoriesA. Fakingi. Sometimes test takers intentionally give misleading information on self-report inventories. Some people “fake good”: they try to present themselves as better than they really are. This is common when scales areused to make employment decisions: why would anyone trying to get a job admit something bad about themselves? Others “fake bad” to make themselves look worse than they really are. This may be done by a personwho wants to escape a “safe” hospital environment and come across as someone with psychological problems.ii. To solve this, a test taker should use multiple data sources to make important decisions: for example, an employer should not promote a worker who scores high on a leadership test if he or she has never shown leadership in 5 years of employment. Test makers may also build safeguards into tests to reduce faking: if possible, they can make the purpose of a test less obvious by adding filler items. However, this is probably only partially successful.iii. Test makes can also test for faking directly. To create these scales, they compare responses of people instructed to fake good/bad with other populations’. Test makers find certain items differ between fakers and, for example, genuine schizophrenics. People trying to look schizophrenic check these items, thinking they indicate a disorder, but real schizophrenics do not. When testers detect faking, they can throw out theresults or adjust the scores to account for faking.B. Carelessness and sabotagei. The test taker may not always take the test seriously. Participants in experiments and newly admitted patients can get bored with long tests and not bother to read carefully. Also, they may not want to admit to poor reading skills or their failure to fully understand the instructions, so they may select responses randomly or after only briefly skimming the question. Test takers may also report frivolous or intentionally incorrect information to sabotage a test.ii. The best defense against these problems may be to explain instructions thoroughly, stress the importance of the test, and maintain some surveillance throughout the testing session. Tests can also be constructed to detect carelessness: for example, some tests present items more than once, and the test taker examines the repeated items to determine if the participant is answering consistently.C. Response tendenciesi. Some tests measure a response tendency called social desirability—the extent to which people present themselves favorably. This is not the sameas faking; faking is intentionally answering test items inaccurately, while people high in social desirability unintentionally present