Personality test

About: Personality test is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2812 publications have been published within this topic receiving 149322 citations.

A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.

Abstract: It has long been recognized that personality test scores are influenced by non-test-relevant response determinants. Wiggins and Rumrill (1959) distinguish three approaches to this problem. Briefly, interest in the problem of response distortion has been concerned with attempts at statistical correction for "faking good" or "faking bad" (Meehl & Hathaway, 1946), the analysis of response sets (Cronbach, 1946,1950), and ratings of the social desirability of personality test items (Edwards, 19 5 7). A further distinction can be made, however, which results in a somewhat different division of approaches to the question of response distortion. Common to both the Meehl and Hathaway corrections for faking good and faking bad and Cronbach's notion of response sets is an interest in the test behavior of the subject(S). By social desirability, on the other hand, Edwards primarily means the "scale value for any personality statement such that the scale value indicates the position of the statement on the social desirability continuum . . ." (1957, p. 3). Social desirability, thus, has been used to refer to a characteristic of test items, i.e., their scale position on a social desirability scale. Whether the test behavior of 5s or the social desirability properties of items are the focus of interest, however, it now seems clear that underlying both these approaches is the concept of statistical deviance. In the construction of the MMPI K scale, for example, items were selected which differentiated between clinically normal persons producing abnormal te¥Tpfpfiles~snd^cTinically abnormal individuals with abnormal test profiles, and between clinically abnormal persons with normal test profiles and abnormal 5s whose test records were abnormal. Keyed responses to the K scale items tend to be statistically deviant in the parent populations. Similarly, the development of the Edwards Social Desirability Scale (SDS) illustrates this procedure. Items were drawn from various MMPI scales (F, L, K, and the Manifest Anxiety Scale [Taylor, 1953]) and submitted to judges who categorized them as either socially desirable or socially undesirable. Only items on which there was unanimous agreement among the 10 judges were included in the SDS. It seems clear that the items in Edwards SDS would, of necessity, have extreme social desirability scale positions or, in other words, be statistically deviant. Some unfortunate consequences follow from the strict use of the statistical deviance model in the development of-sOcialTtesirSbTBty scales. With items drawn from the MMPI, it is apparent that in addition to their scalability for social desirability the items may also be characterized by their content which,^n a general sense, has pathological implications. When a social desrrabtltty^scale constructed according to this procedure is then applied to a college student population, the meaning of high social desirability scores is not at all clear. When 5s given the Edwards SDS deny, for example, that their sleep is fitful and disturbed (Item 6) or that they worry quite a bit over possible misfortunes (Item 35), it cannot be determined whether these responses are attributable to social desirability or to a genuine absence of such symptoms. The probability of occurrence of the symptoms represented in MMPI items (and incorportated in the SDS)

Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers.

Abstract: Two data sources--self-reports and peer ratings--and two instruments--adjective factors and questionnaire scales--were used to assess the five-factor model of personality. As in a previous study of self-reports (McCrae & Costa, 1985b), adjective factors of neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness-antagonism, and conscientiousness-undirectedness were identified in an analysis of 738 peer ratings of 275 adult subjects. Intraclass correlations among raters, ranging from .30 to .65, and correlations between mean peer ratings and self-reports, from .25 to .62, showed substantial cross-observer agreement on all five adjective factors. Similar results were seen in analyses of scales from the NEO Personality Inventory. Items from the adjective factors were used as guides in a discussion of the nature of the five factors. These data reinforce recent appeals for the adoption of the five-factor model in personality research and assessment.

The aggression questionnaire.

Abstract: A new questionnaire on aggression was constructed Replicated factor analyses yielded 4 scales: Physical Aggression, Verbal Aggression, Anger, and Hostility Correlational analysis revealed that anger is the bridge between both physical and verbal aggression and hostility The scales showed internal consistency and stability over time Men scored slightly higher on Verbal Aggression and Hostility and much higher on Physical Aggression There was no sex difference for Anger The various scales correlated differently with various personality traits Scale scores correlated with peer nominations of the various kinds of aggression These findings suggest the need to assess not only overall aggression but also its individual components

Private traits and attributes are predictable from digital records of human behavior

Abstract: We show that easily accessible digital records of behavior, Facebook Likes, can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender. The analysis presented is based on a dataset of over 58,000 volunteers who provided their Facebook Likes, detailed demographic profiles, and the results of several psychometric tests. The proposed model uses dimensionality reduction for preprocessing the Likes data, which are then entered into logistic/linear regression to predict individual psychodemographic profiles from Likes. The model correctly discriminates between homosexual and heterosexual men in 88% of cases, African Americans and Caucasian Americans in 95% of cases, and between Democrat and Republican in 85% of cases. For the personality trait “Openness,” prediction accuracy is close to the test–retest accuracy of a standard personality test. We give examples of associations between attributes and Likes and discuss implications for online personalization and privacy.

The mini-IPIP scales: tiny-yet-effective measures of the Big Five factors of personality.

Abstract: The Mini-IPIP, a 20-item short form of the 50-item International Personality Item Pool-Five-Factor Model measure (Goldberg, 1999), was developed and validated across five studies. The Mini-IPIP scales, with four items per Big Five trait, had consistent and acceptable internal consistencies across five studies (= at or well above .60), similar coverage of facets as other broad Big Five measures (Study 2), and test-retest correlations that were quite similar to the parent measure across intervals of a few weeks (Study 4) and several months (Study 5). Moreover, the Mini-IPIP scales showed a comparable pattern of convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity (Studies 2-5) with other Big Five measures. Collectively, these results indicate that the Mini-IPIP is a psychometrically acceptable and practically useful short measure of the Big Five factors of personality.