Psychology : Psychometric Report

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PSY4046 and PSY3018

Applied Psychometrics Business Psychology Term 2

Introduction to the Trait Approach Dr Jackie Meredith

Learning outcomes § At the end of this session, you should be able to:

§ Understand the principles within the trait approach to individual differences

§ Explain the concept of measurement of personality using the psychometric process § Including the importance of validity and reliability in selection testing

§ Appreciate the types of scales and applications of personality tests in the workplace

§ Critically evaluate the use of psychometric assessment in the workplace

PSY4046 Students – this is the background in psychological theory as to why, and how, psychometrics is thought to be able to predict performance and behaviour. This material will constitute the main part of your Introduction to the measurement of personality. You will need to present something of the history and the rationale for psychometric testing in the workplace. Include a sentence or two for your ‘Client’ when you write the profile – so that they understand why they are being tested and that it has relevance and meaning. This would go at the end of your introduction to the report.

Learning outcomes

PSY3018 Students – you will need to use this material in the first section of your HR report – so giving the background and rationale for why psychometric assessment is important in the workplace an how it fits into the whole area of personnel selection. You will need to include a couple of sentences in summary to give the psychological background for why and how psychometrics claims to predict behaviour (and therefore performance in job related areas) but you do not need to go into detail.

§ At the end of this session, you should be able to: § Understand the principles within the trait approach to individual

differences § Explain the concept of measurement of personality using the

psychometric process § Including the importance of validity and reliability in selection testing

§ Appreciate the types of scales and applications of personality tests in the workplace

§ Critically evaluate the use of psychometric assessment in the workplace

‘PSYCHO’ – ‘METRICS’ Measuring the Mind

"Measurement in psychology and physics are in no sense different. Physicists can measure when they can find the operations by which they may meet the necessary criteria; psychologists have but to do the same. They need not worry about the mysterious differences between the meaning of measurement in the two sciences." (Reese, 1943, p. 49)

• Reese, T. W. (1943). "The application of the theory of physical measurement to the measurement of psychological magnitudes, with three experimental examples". Psychological Monographs 55: 1–89.

Theoretical Models of Personality • According to stage theorists the individual develops through a series of stages from early infancy;

resolution of these stages shape the personality. • For example, Freud maintains the individual is shaped by unconscious responses to frustrations in

infancy and early childhood: defences and fixations established in this period are the main determining factors in the development of personality.

• According to Eysenck and other biological theorists, there are biological and genetic factors which dominate the development of our personality.

• According to behaviourist and social learning theory the major influence on personality is our environment, which shapes who we are through a process of conditioning and imitative learning.

• According to social cognitive theory, we are the product of our thought processes and preferences, our culture, social groups and the patterns we choose to accept as our own.

• According to humanistic theory we have an inner drive to feel complete and ‘self-actualised’; each individual holds inner resources for growth and healing.

• According to trait theory personality emerges from a combination of genetic propensities and nuture to form stable dispositions that are enhanced by practice and become, over development, predictive of future behaviour and therefore measurable. 5

THE RISE OF PSYCHOMETRICS

TE RM

1 - PE RS O N AL IT Y

History of Psychometrics

• Psycho-metrics = mind measurement • Broadly speaking then, anything that measures the mind is a psychometric test

• Psychometrics in it’s broadest sense covers the entire history of mental testing rather than the robust modern application of psychometrics. • For your coursework assessments (PSY3009 and PSY4023) you are only interested in the latter)

• Psychometrics became popular with the rise of intelligence testing in the early 20th century with WW1

History of Intelligence • Charles Darwin – “men do not differ in intelligence, only zeal and hard work” = intelligence not worth measuring

• James Galton, 1869 (cousin of Darwin) – “I object to pretensions of natural equality. The experiences of the school, the University, and of professional careers, are a chain of proof to the contrary.” = people do differ in their intelligence, and heredity is the key

• James McKeen Cattell, 1890 – a series of 10 mental tests to establish ability (he did not claim intelligence) • But no correlation between scores on these tests

• Columbia undergraduates, Wissler, 1901 • Alfred Binet, 1896 - intelligence consists of ‘higher’ psychological factors, such as attention, memory, imagination, common sense, judgement & abstraction • Adapted to measure the intelligence and adaptability of children

• Binet and Simon, 1911 – proposed a mental age could be ascertained through mental testing

• Stern 1912 – introduced the concept of intelligence quotient (IQ) defined as mental age/chronological age.

• Terman, 1916 – Stanford-Binet test for IQ in children

WW1 – the dilemma of selection • Huge number of American recruits, but limited supplies • Robert Yerkes, then President of the APA, argued for the inclusion of psychologists in the process of selection

• Formed a committee with Terman, Goddard, Bingham, Thorndike and Walter Scott (first American professor of Applied Psychology) to choose an appropriate method of adapting IQ testing for army recruits

• Yerkes initially proposed a brief 10 minute individual test intended to select out the so-called "mentally unfit"

• Scott objected strenuously and advocated a much more practical group testing design to assess the familiarity of recruits with particular aspects of military work… • A modification of his pre-war Rating Scale for Selecting Salesmen

Scott’s test for subordinate officers: a rating scale for selecting Captains

(Photo from Schultz & Schultz, 1996)

Scott’s Legacy • This form (previous slide) was a compromise solution resulting from Scott’s disagreement with the Yerkes group. • It was designed to measure ‘intelligence’ as defined by the criterion characteristics of a military officer.

• Similar assessment and questionnaire forms for other military occupations were worked out after extensive interviews with union, business and military leaders as to essential requirements of each job. • This formed the argument for the practical worth of psychology in the area of vocational assessment

Yerkes Psychometric testing • A team of psychologists led by Yerkes delivered mental tests to over 1.75 million army recruits in an attempt to quantify their ‘intelligence’.

• 3 types of test: 1. Army Alpha - A written test for literacy

• 8 parts, such as analogies, filling in the missing number and unscrambling a sentence.

• Forms the basis of modern IQ tests. 2. Army Beta - A pictorial test for men who were illiterate or who

failed the alpha. • 7 parts including running a maze, number work and the picture

completion task 3. Individual Examination

• Individual spoken test for men who failed the Beta 13

Example: Alpha Test

• Crisco is a: patent medicine, disinfectant, toothpaste, food product

• Washington is to Adams as first is to . . .

• Christy Mathewson is famous as a: writer, artist, baseball player, comedian.

14 Okay, so I’m a moron… L

Example: Beta Test

Why Test? • Tests were used for officer selection and assignment of inductees to specific military occupations or units.

• Yerkes claimed they measured ‘innate intelligence’ • But heavy reliance on culture awareness, writing skills, literacy

• Heralded post war as being the psychometric exemplar for investigating latent intelligence. • Nationalities also quantified in age according to average results

• Americans average age = 13, other races considerably lower • Racism • Eugenics

• Gould, S.J. (1982) A nation of morons. New Scientist (6 May 1982), 349 - 52

Yerkes’ Legacy

• Yerkes received ‘a steady stream of requests from commercial concerns, educational institutions and individuals for the use of army methods of psychological examining or for adaptation of such methods to special needs’ following the war.

• Yerkes’ methods also made the concept of GROUP TESTING using a psychometric process popular • Less time consuming • Efficient

Post war vocational testing – and the advent of modern psychometrics • The Scott Company for "applied vocational testing” became the first post-war psychological consulting organization • Philadelphia, 1919

• Forced to fold due to the economic dip of 1921 and 1922 • However a consortium of 18 professors including James Cattell and Yerkes put up the funds to reinstate the non-profit company in an attempt to convince industrialists of the benefit of psychological testing

• This organisation of psychometric psychologists offered a multitude of applied vocational, school, so-called intelligence, aptitude or achievement measures • (Achilles, 1937)

• The interest in PERSONALITY testing did not emerge until later, with the work of Allport and Raymond Cattell (no relation to James Cattell) 18

More about Cattell and Allport in Lecture 2

What is Modern Psychometrics?

• A mathematical process used to measure psychological tendencies, abilities and traits like traditional intelligence, emotion, personality, or other mental- based abilities

• A modern psychometric test will produce a RAW SCORE which must then be compared to an average group’s performance in the same area • Otherwise it is meaningless

Your scores in your report will be compared to 350 and 561 (for two tests respectively) other people studying psychology.

THE PSYCHOMETRIC PERSPECTIVE

• ‘Psychometrics’ is the branch of psychology concerned with individual differences.

• Sometimes referred to as a ‘soft science’ it has an important place in applied psychology and in the ‘real world’.

• It includes the measurement of aptitude, intelligence and personality, amongst other aspects.

• These are all areas which can utilise QUESTIONNAIRES to identify differences.

• Personality assessments aim to address the problem of subjectivity through the application of psychometric principles and objectivity to the study of human behaviour.

• Personality measures are generally self-report but they can involve other report, observation and demonstration.

THE DISPOSTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

• The term ‘personality’ is widely used but an exact definition is difficult as this is dependent upon the supported theoretical construct.

• We often use the term ‘personality’ when referring to a person’s most striking characteristics - we may describe somebody as having a jovial personality or an aggressive personality, or being particularly kind.

• Such a description refers to dominant aspects of a person (their disposition) and we call these ‘traits’.

• These traits can be described using language. • This is called a ‘lexical’ approach to understanding personality.

PERSONALITY : A DISPOSTIONAL PERSPECTIVE

• By the 21st century trait psychology had become the established scientific method of understanding personality:

• “If there is to be a speciality called personality, its unique and therefore defining characteristic is traits.” • Buss 1989

• WHAT IS THE DISPOSITIONAL PERSPECTIVE? • When we describe somebody’s personality we assume their characteristics

to be fairly stable, not only in different situations but also over time. • This means that people tend to respond to a variety of situations in a particular

way because it is part of their disposition. • Knowing their disposition allows us to broadly predict their behaviour. • These traits, or dispositions, are universal (they occur in everyone to some

extent). • Because they are universal, measuring them is meaningful.

Defining Personality - traits • Traits have been associated with personality for thousands of years

• Hippocrates, Galen = theory of 4 TYPES, exhibiting certain traits • 20th century saw a new theoretical constructs designed to explain personality

development. • Each theoretical area could posit a different definition of personality

• Allport counted 50 in literature as early as 1937.

• Allport arguably the first person to try to identify the traits underlying type theories. • Defined personality as:

• “a neuropsychic structure having the capacity to render many stimuli functionally equivalent, and to initiate and guide equivalent (meaningfully consistent) forms of adaptive and expressive behaviour”. (1937)

• “the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his characteristic behaviour and thought.” (1961).

• Cattell (1965) defined personality very simply: • “that which permits a prediction of what a person will do in a given situation”.

Definitions reflect the focus of the theory = understanding vs. predictability

PSYCHOMETRICS : QUANTIFYING TRAITS

• If traits can describe a person, how many traits does a single person possess?

• Allport & Odbert counted approximately 17,953 adjectives FROM Webber’s Dictionary to describe personality characteristics but many of these were related/synonyms (1936).

• In order to have a meaningful measurement it is necessary to decide how many CORE traits reflect human personality. • This small number of traits would account for a person’s core consistencies.

• The method for discovering these core traits factor analysis - the process of reducing a large amount of data to a smaller number of identifiable themes or factors based on the response of many individuals to words (adjectives) relating to personality characteristics.

CATTELL - 16 Core Traits

• Both Allport & Cattell believed that language captured the important aspects of personality.

• Cattell (1966) factor analysed the traits of Allport – by hand. • He established 16 basic personality traits as found in the 16PF

Questionnaire. • His methodology was complex including observation and life data.

• In a later revision he proposed 5 global domains comprised of the 16 traits.

• These traits claim to reliably predict behaviour • For example if somebody scores high on the statistical dimension

of extraversion we know that this person probably tends to be outgoing, talkative and sociable.

• Cattell’s factors are OBLIQUE – they correlate with each other.

EYSENCK –must have Biological Bases

• Eysenck proposed only three measurable personality dimensions

• Based on biological systems within the brain • Therefore HERITABLE

• These were: • neuroticism-stability • extraversion-introversion • psychoticism (added later – anti-social, hostile and disturbed)

• Eysenck’s extraversion and neuroticism dimensions are similar to those of the Big Five.

• They are ORTHOGONAL factors – they do not correlate. • The Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) is still

popular. 26

ARE FIVE TRAITS THE IDEA MODEL?

• There is good evidence that basic trait dimensions exist – 3, 16 but probably 5 or so (McCrae & Costa, 1992).

• The dominant model in personality today is the Five Factor model (The Big 5) • NEO-Pi, ORPHEUS…. Openness Conscientiousness Extraversion

Agreeableness Neuroticism • Validated cross-culturally but there are variations between

cultures • Some countries score higher than others on average in different

factors • The Five Factor Model emerged from extensive factor analyses of

adjectives used to describe personality and from equally extensive factor analyses of various personality tests and scales (Goldberg, 1990; John, 1990; McCrae & Costa, 1985; Norman, 1963; Tupes & Christal, 1961). • Although this is a research-based rather than theory-based model McCrae and

Costa’s test was constructed, based on previous research. 27

Not for your assessment – but interesting J

• Mount claims that even 5 factors is too many – and found intercorrelations between factors using four FFM questionnaires • Mount et al. (2005)

• 2 superfactors emerged: • α or stability - covering agreeableness, conscientiousness and (low)

neuroticism • β or plasticity - covering openness and extraversion.

• Musek claims stability and plasticity in turn correlate, suggesting a ‘big one’ model, covering low neuroticism and higher conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and openness. • Musek (2007)

• As Cook (2012) comments, this is reflective of early work by Webb, in 1915, who provisionally proposed there could be two global personality themes: ‘mental ability’ and ‘willpower’.

Question – what would be the value in a single factor model of personality?

CHALLENGES TO THE LEXICAL HYPOTHESIS: WESTERNISATION

• “Linguistic symbols have demonstrated utility; they have been tested throughout the ages for their power of representing stable facts of experience. If many human beings were not in fact egotistic, aggressive, or timid, the epithets would not have found a permanent place in language. If traits exist at all it is natural and proper to name them.” • (Allport and Odbert, 1936)

• The 21st century challenge to the Lexical hypothesis is that it is very much a Western construction. Whereas recent studies (2010, 2011) have charted trait terms for personality in other European and non-European languages, behaviour may not be suggestive of the same underlying traits…

• For example what individualistic Western societies consider to be assertiveness and self-confidence may be considered by communally oriented societies as aggressive, anti-social and egotistic (conceited). • Cook, 2012

CHALLENGES TO THE LEXICAL HYPOTHESIS: SITUATIONALISM

• Is trait theory the best explanation of personality differences? • Do stable traits exist or does behaviour change according to the

situation? • Trait theory proposes the most important influence in personality is

stable dimensions along which we all differ in a predictable manner • Because traits predict behaviour… • Proponents of this approach include Guilford, Cattell, Eysenck,

Goldberg and Costa & McCrae. • Situationalism argues an individual’s behaviour depends on the

situation. • The influence of social factors, cognitive appraisal of events, etc. is greater than

any dispositional tendency • Proponents of a situational approach include Mischel, Zimbardo and

Milgram. 30

CHALLENGE TO SITUATIONALISM • Trait theory acknowledges behaviour can be situationally influenced –

but proposes that this does not change basic underlying tendencies • Behaviour may be influenced without personality change

• Allport • Some peoples’ behaviour is more inclined to change in different

circumstances • Part of their individual differences

• A constant portion of personality is stable for each person and it is this constant portion that is captured by the notion of traits

• Other, more flexible and situationally dependent traits are secondary traits. • An efficient model of stable personality must contain only conceptually stable

factors • Allport proposed 4 categories of traits:

• Cardinal (developed through time and experience – overarching tendencies which then affect other areas of life – like altruism)

• Central (core stable traits; limited in number) • Secondary (transient, situationally dependent factors)

• The Five Factor model is designed to measure CENTRAL TRAITS 31

SUMMARY -Trait Approach = Dispositional Approach

• Attempts to formulate a comprehensive taxonomy of traits • a system incorporating all major aspects of a person’s personality • a system to categorise any person within a structured framework

• What do traits mean? • Traits as internal causal properties

• Traits explain the behaviour of the individual • Traits are internal dispositions, which are linked to desires

• Internal desires affect external behaviour • Traits as purely descriptive summaries

• Traits are attributes of an individual • Traits are related to, but do not cause, behaviour

• Situational aspects may be implicated in cause.

• Type theories assume that a certain type will express certain traits. • Types are really just taxonomies of traits

MEASURING PERSONALITY

The Difference between Trait and Type tests = method of categorisation

• TYPE TESTS assume everyone can be divided into DISCRETE categories that are quantitatively different from each other (‘typed’) • for example Hippocrates and the four humours.

• TRAIT TESTS recognise difference as occurring along a continuous line – a continuum – and provide a SCORE • specific personality characteristics will vary in strength along that continuum.

• So for example:

Brown Eyes Blue Eyes

Most type theories only have two bipolar categories

Trait theory test variants TYPE MEASURES TRAIT MEASURES Dichotomous score Continuous score Categorical labelling Levels and degrees

Inflexible Flexible through use of norms Fixed interpretation Interpreted in relation to norms Easy to interpret Complex to interpret

No room for average Most scores are average Example: MBTI Example: Cattell’s 16Pf5

Type tests are very popular in ‘pop’ psychology Categorisation is cheap and easy to provide How useful is categorisation of personality measures?

EXAMPLE TYPE TEST = MYERS-BRIGGS 4 Bipolar dimensions; 8 preferences

Eight Fundamental Preferences Measured by the Myers-Briggs Indicator

Extraversion E Draws energy from the outside; involved with people; likes action and activity

Introversion I Draws energy from the internal world of thoughts and ideas

Sensing S Prefers taking in information through all five senses; attends to what actually exists

Intuition IN Prefers information derived from a ‘sixth sense’; notices what’s possible rather than what is.

Thinking T Prefers logic, organisation, and clean objective structure

Feeling F Prefers a person and value oriented way of processing information

Judging J Prefers living a well-ordered and controlled life

Perceiving P Prefers to live spontaneously, with room for flexible ‘spur of the moment’ activities.

MBTI classifies people as one of 16 types

EXAMPLE TRAIT TEST - Cattell’s 16Pf5 profile

EXAMPLE TRAIT TEST Five Factor Model (Big 5)

NEO ORPHEUS Area

Neuroticism Emotionalism General level of anxiety and sensitivity to stress

Extraversion Fellowship Preference to be with others or be alone

Openness to experience Conformity Conventionality

Agreeableness Authority Tough minded vs. tender minded in social interaction

Conscientiousness Detail Focus on detail vs. the wider perspective 40

Can mood affect personality tests?

41Markey, P. M., & Markey, C. N. (2011). Changes in women's interpersonal styles across the menstrual cycle. Journal of Research in Personality, 45, 439-499.

What does this tell us? • What is the 16PF measuring – stable dispositional traits or mood-related conditions?

• The 16Pf5 is Cattel’s broad test of personality covering 16 independent items and 5 global items.

• The 16Pf5 is still popular in job recruitment

• Are trait mood responses important indicators within the workplace?

Personality is relative stable after 25…

• Hopwood, C.J., Donnellan, M.B., Blonigen, D.M., Krueger, R.F., McGue, M., Iacono, W.G., & Burt, S.A. (2011). Genetic and environmental influences on personality trait stability and growth during the transition to adulthood: A three wave longitudinal study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 545- 556.

What does this tell us? • What is Hopwood et al’s test measuring?

• Emotional valence and responsiveness are thought to be linked to biological mechanisms

• Is this evidence that emotionality (neuroticism) is a heritable trait, or that intelligent handling of emotion develops with maturity • Related to emotional intelligence?