Personality Measurement and Testing: An Overview

Abstract

A colleague recently remarked: "Psychologists who specialize in the study of personality and individual differences spend a lot of time coming up with various descriptions of people, like Machiavellianism, external locus of control, openness to experience, and Neuroticism.Even more effort is spent trying to measure these ideas with tests like the MMPI-2, brief anxiety scales, and Rorschach Inkblots.But do they really tell us anything about human behaviour in general or about the individual?Does it make a difference in how we view people, select them for jobs, or guide therapy choices and assist in evaluating outcomes"?This is a very loaded question and one that appears to challenge both the technical adequacy of our personality measures, but especially the construct and criterion validity or effectiveness of personality instruments in describing individual differences, clinical diagnosis and guiding and evaluating interventions.Technically; there are very few actual "tests" of personality-the Objective-Analytic Battery being an exception.Most socalled "tests" of personality are in fact self-report scales or reports of others' rating scales.Such scales quantify subjective introspections, or subjective impressions of others' personality make-up.At the same time, it is a relevant question and one that we will continue to face in the study of personality and the application of the findings, including assessment of personality, within psychological practice areas such as clinical, and school psychology, and within settings such as the military, business and sporting fields, among

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