Most of personality tests are based primary on traits theory, which believes traits influence behavior. According to Gordon Allport, the founder of personality psychology, traits are generalized response-units to stimuli that reflect one’s personality. In other words, personality consists of a collection of traits. We know one’s traits through behavior such as habits or tendency. If one’s habits are joking, smiling and talking a lot, then extroversion would be the trait that generalizes and includes those relative habits. Because we possess different traits and they vary in their degree, we response to a stimuli differently, producing different behaviors. Between a stimulus and a behavior is a trait, directing the behavior. For example, if a stimulus is a new friend, one’s behavior can be being shy and nervous or it can be introducing oneself and initiating a conversation immediately. The reason why behavior to the same stimulus varies is because each one of us have different trait, introverted or extroverted in this case. However, trait psychologists cannot predict how an individual will behave in a particular situation because we don’t always behave according to our traits. For instance, you may probably not joke at funeral even if you are extroverted or you may try to talk a lot to impress a potential customer even if you are introverted. Now, if our behaviors differ from situation to situation, then it must be the situation that determines behaviors, not broad personality traits. This position is called “situationalism”, first proposed by Walter Michel with the publication of his groundbreaking book Personality and Assessment. Traits theorists, in response, formulated new theoretical perspectives, trying to save the idea of traits. Two of the most significant changes that they have made are aggregation and the notion of “person-situation interaction”. First, aggregation is the process of averaging several single observations to obtain better results of personality traits than a single observation of behavior. There would be days when your cheerful girlfriend may not be cheerful for some reasons. But what matters to you is her behavior over a long term and not her mood on any given day. The practice of aggregation gives traits theorists better results in assessing personality traits and predicting behavior. Person-situation interaction, on the other hand, can be expressed as follows; B=F (P×S), meaning behavior is a production of the interaction between personality traits and situational forces. This can easily be explained with “If..., if..., then...” statement. If the situation is overwhelming, and if the person is shy, then upset will be the result. Traits theory further proposed some ways personality traits interact with situations, which strengthen their perspective. The most important one is “situational selection”, the tendency to select situations in which one finds oneself. Snyder states, “quite possibly, one’s choice of the settings in which to live one’s life may reflect features of one’s personality; an individual may choose to live his or her life in serous, reserved, and intellectual situations precisely because he or she is a serious, reserved, and thoughtful individual”. Situational forces can certainly influence and direct particular behaviors. Quite frequently however, these situations which produce certain behaviors are the ones that an individual have chosen with the internal causal properties, reflecting or possibly supporting the existence of personality traits. Situational critiques lead to the reformulation of trait theory. But it also made the traits theorist, essentially the personality tests, to admit their defect and invalidity in assessing one’s personality traits though a series of questions. Despite traits theorists’ embrace of situational forces as one of the factors of producing behaviors, inconsistency of behavior across situation still remains in their perspective and personality tests with the absence of situational forces can hardly get to the core of personality and results from such an assessment cannot be a way to predict one’s behavior.
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
BLOG #4 Body Paragraph 1
Content Validity Vs. Internal Consistency Reliability
Validity is concerned about which characteristic is being assessed, sociability or selfishness for instance. One significant aspect regarding validity is content validity. It refers to component of questions in relate to a characteristic. An assessment with a high content validity has components of question items that are relevant to the characteristic that is being measured. Though it may seem easy to achieve a high content validity, choosing question items can be tricky and sometimes it is difficult to determine what kinds of content should be included in question items and what kinds of content should be excluded from them. Suppose that we are to measure sociability of individuals. We may include questions such as preference to spend free time with people rather than alone. But what about being good at speaking in public? Or tendency to initiate a conversation? Are those considered as one of the aspects of sociability or not? We can achieve high content validity by including question components that are relevant to a characteristic and by excluding those that are not relevant to it. Meanwhile, reliability refers to whether or not the data from an assessment is trustworthy. The most significant part in reliability is internal consistency reliability. It refers to whether question items of an assessment are accurately measuring an intended characteristic. Using the same example, we would choose three question items to which individuals rate their likings with the scale of 0 to 10; disco, nightclub and party at a friend’s house. However, those three items are only partially measuring one’s sociability. More importantly, they are assessing some other variables that are unique to those items. The first item may probably measure one’s liking of music and dance, in addition to sociability. The second item may probably measure one’s liking of drinking, in addition to sociability. Finally, the third item may probably measure liking of homey atmosphere, again, in addition to sociability. In order to maximize the internal consistency reliability, we have to increase either the number of question items or the correlation among the questions. For instance, we can add some more question items such as liking of local event or meeting new people. Now, the core elements of sociability are strengthened and unique elements to each question item are weakened. In this way, we achieve high internal consistency reliability. On the other hand, we can increase the correlation among question items. For instance, we can choose questions like preference to spend time with friends, preference to spend time with classmates and preference to spend time with coworkers. Then, the correlation among these three items becomes quite high and it indicates that the characteristic is most likely presenting sociability, not the liking of music or alcohol. However, the solutions come with a new problem. Trying to achieve a high internal consistency reliability, by increasing either the number of question items or the correlation among them, we are forced to sacrifice the content validity instead. As we increase question items, the content of a characteristic is automatically being expanded. This means that the components of the question items become less and less relevant to the content of the characteristic , resulting in a poor content validity. Meanwhile, in increasing the correlation, we have to choose very similar question items. This means that the question items would represent only a small part of the characteristic. In other words, content of the characteristic is now very limited to only one specific aspect of the characteristic, also leading to a poor content validity. Content validity and internal consistency reliability cannot be high at the same time. Therefore, assessments always have to lack or compromise to some extent either content validity or internal consistency validity.
Validity is concerned about which characteristic is being assessed, sociability or selfishness for instance. One significant aspect regarding validity is content validity. It refers to component of questions in relate to a characteristic. An assessment with a high content validity has components of question items that are relevant to the characteristic that is being measured. Though it may seem easy to achieve a high content validity, choosing question items can be tricky and sometimes it is difficult to determine what kinds of content should be included in question items and what kinds of content should be excluded from them. Suppose that we are to measure sociability of individuals. We may include questions such as preference to spend free time with people rather than alone. But what about being good at speaking in public? Or tendency to initiate a conversation? Are those considered as one of the aspects of sociability or not? We can achieve high content validity by including question components that are relevant to a characteristic and by excluding those that are not relevant to it. Meanwhile, reliability refers to whether or not the data from an assessment is trustworthy. The most significant part in reliability is internal consistency reliability. It refers to whether question items of an assessment are accurately measuring an intended characteristic. Using the same example, we would choose three question items to which individuals rate their likings with the scale of 0 to 10; disco, nightclub and party at a friend’s house. However, those three items are only partially measuring one’s sociability. More importantly, they are assessing some other variables that are unique to those items. The first item may probably measure one’s liking of music and dance, in addition to sociability. The second item may probably measure one’s liking of drinking, in addition to sociability. Finally, the third item may probably measure liking of homey atmosphere, again, in addition to sociability. In order to maximize the internal consistency reliability, we have to increase either the number of question items or the correlation among the questions. For instance, we can add some more question items such as liking of local event or meeting new people. Now, the core elements of sociability are strengthened and unique elements to each question item are weakened. In this way, we achieve high internal consistency reliability. On the other hand, we can increase the correlation among question items. For instance, we can choose questions like preference to spend time with friends, preference to spend time with classmates and preference to spend time with coworkers. Then, the correlation among these three items becomes quite high and it indicates that the characteristic is most likely presenting sociability, not the liking of music or alcohol. However, the solutions come with a new problem. Trying to achieve a high internal consistency reliability, by increasing either the number of question items or the correlation among them, we are forced to sacrifice the content validity instead. As we increase question items, the content of a characteristic is automatically being expanded. This means that the components of the question items become less and less relevant to the content of the characteristic , resulting in a poor content validity. Meanwhile, in increasing the correlation, we have to choose very similar question items. This means that the question items would represent only a small part of the characteristic. In other words, content of the characteristic is now very limited to only one specific aspect of the characteristic, also leading to a poor content validity. Content validity and internal consistency reliability cannot be high at the same time. Therefore, assessments always have to lack or compromise to some extent either content validity or internal consistency validity.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
BLOG #3 Sample Introduction
(Despite my enthusiasm to do research on my original topic, I have narrowed it down as follows after reconsidering.)
Alexander Nininger, twenty-three years old then, was newly commissioned as a lieutenant in the United State Army and sent to the South Pacific to serve with the 57th Infantry of the Philippine Scouts. Quiet and thoughtful by nature, he loved theater, would spend many hours with a friend and often sit by the fireplace in the living room, having tea and listening to Tchaikovsky. When he went serve in South Pacific, he wrote a letter to a friend, saying that he had no feelings of hate and didn’t think that he could ever kill anyone out of hatred. In January of 1942, when Japanese attacked, slipping hundreds of snipers through the American lines, Nininger went to his commanding officer and told him that he wanted to be assigned to another company so he could go hunting for Japanese snipers. He carried several weapons such as grenades, ammunition belts, a Garand rifle and a submachine gun. He crawled through the jungle and shot and killed snipers. He was wounded in the leg but kept going, shooting Japanese snipers for the comrades behind him. He was wounded again but waved off a medic who tried to bring him back; he saw a Japanese bunker and two enlisted men up ahead. He kept charging at the bunker although he was shot in the shoulder. He killed one soldier with a double thrust of his bayonet, clubbed down the other, and bayoneted the officer. Then, with outstretched arms, he collapsed face down. He was awarded the Medal of Honor.
How could we know Nininger’s personality beforehand? A man who loved theater and afternoon with tea and Tchaikovsky and who was so fearless and tenacious. Knowing one’s personality helps us predict his or her behavior. But asking Nininger himself or his friends to describe his personality would not be of any help. He did not even know that he was fearless. His friends would only recall him as a quiet and thoughtful person. Then, how can we get to the heart of one’s personality? What we need is psychological assessments of great delicacy and sophistication. There are twenty-five hundred kinds of personality tests based on each theory and testing is a four-hundreds-million-dollar-a year industry. However, personality tests are fundamentally flawed with controversial aspects and issues regarding reliability, validity and limitations and they cannot predict behavior.
-Additional resource-
Gladwell, Malcolm. “Personality Plus.” The New Yorker 20 Sept 2004: 42-48. Print
Keiko Matsuura
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
BLOG #2 Annotated Bibliography
Annotated Bibliography
l Aiken, Lewis R. Personality assessment Methods and practices. Seattle: Hogrefe & Huber Publishers, 1996. Print.
This book argues some issues such as bias on personality test and continuing controversies including trait vs. situation in personality. It also discusses some new methods and measurements of personality.
l Ashton, Michael C. Individual differences and personality. Amsterdam: Elservier Academic Press, 2007, Print.
This book approaches personality psychology from several different perspectives; developmental changes and stability of personality, genetic and environmental influences and cross-generational and cross national differences. It also discusses reliability and validity of personality assessment in terms of content, construct, consistency and criteria.
l Goleman, Daniel. “Personality: Major Traits Found Stable Through Life.” New York Times (Jun 9. 1987): C1. Print.
This article talks about the three major traits that are stable through life (which are anxiety level, friendliness and eagerness for novel experiences) and their evidence. It also states some other traits that can vary greatly as a person goes through life.
l Goodstein, Leonard D. and Richard I. Lanyon. Readings in personality assessment. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 1971, Print.
This book contains criticism of personality assessment and problems of application such as social desirability and other response distortions. It also contains some new directions in personality assessment.
l Herson, Michel. Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment Industrial and Organizational Assessment. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2004. Print.
l Hilsenrothn, Mark J. and Daniel L. Segal. Comprehensive Handbook of Psychological Assessment Personality Assessment. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc, 2004. Print.
Those two highly academic books contain trait theories with its interpretation, the range of applicability and limitations, cross-cultural factors and future development as well.
l Lanyon, Richard I. and Leonard D. Goodstein. Personality assessment. New York: John Wiley & sons, Inc, 1971. Print.
This book contains descriptions of various personality theories in depth.
And some more books and articles as I find.
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