What Are Personality Assessments in Psychology?
Personality is a tricky concept to define in concrete terms, and this is reflected both in the number of personality theories that exist and the lack of consensus among personality psychologists.
However, for this article, we can think of personality as the totality of one’s behavioral patterns and subjective experiences (Kernberg, 2016).
All individuals have a constellation of traits and experiences that make them unique yet simultaneously suggest that there are some generalizable or distinct qualities inherent in all humans.
In psychology, we are interested in understanding how traits and qualities that people possess cluster together and the extent to which these vary across and within individuals.
Now, it’s all very well and good knowing that personality exists as a concept and that your employees and clients differ in their groupings of traits and subjective experiences, but how can you apply this information to your professional work with them?
This is where measuring and assessing personality comes into play. Like most psychological concepts, researchers want to show that theoretical knowledge can be useful for working life and brought to bear in the real world.
For example, knowing a client’s or employee’s personality can be key to setting them up for success at work and pursuing and achieving work-related goals. But we first need to identify or assess personality before we can help others to reap these benefits.
Personality assessments are used for several reasons.
First, they can provide professionals with an opportunity to identify their strengths and reaffirm their sense of self. It is no coincidence that research on strengths is so popular or that strengths have such a prominent place in the working world. People like to know who they are, and they want to capitalize on the qualities and traits they possess.
Second, personality assessments can provide professionals with a social advantage by helping them to understand how they are perceived by others such as colleagues, managers, and stakeholders — the looking glass self (Cooley, 1902).
In the sections below, we will explore different personality assessments and popular evidence-based scales.
4 Methods and Types of Personality Assessments
There are multiple ways personality is routinely assessed. Below we outline four key methods used, what they entail, and what their limitations are.
1. Self-report assessments
Self-reports are one of the most widely used formats for psychometric testing. They are as they sound: reports or questionnaires that a client or employee completes themselves (and often scores themselves).
Self-report measures can come in many formats. The most common are Likert scales where individuals are asked to rate numerically (from 1 to 7 for example) the extent to which they feel that each question describes their thoughts, feelings, or behaviors.
These types of assessments are popular because they are easy to distribute and complete, they are often cost effective, and they can provide helpful insights into behavior.
However, they also have downsides to be wary of, including an increase in unconscious biases such as the social desirability bias (i.e., the desire to answer “correctly”). They can also be prone to individuals not paying attention, not answering truthfully, or not fully understanding the questions asked.
Such issues can lead to an inaccurate assessment of personality. Self-reports can be completed in both personal and professional settings and can be particularly helpful in a coaching practice, for example.
However, if you are a professional working with clients in any capacity, it is advised to first try out any self-report measure before suggesting them to clients. In this way, you can gauge for yourself the usefulness and validity of the measure.
2. Behavioral observation
Another useful method of personality assessment is behavioral observation. This method entails someone observing and documenting a person’s behavior.
While this method is more resource heavy in terms of time and requires an observer (preferably one who is experienced and qualified in observing and coding the behavior), it can be useful as a complementary method employed alongside self-reports because it can provide an external corroboration of behavior.
Alternatively, behavioral observation can fail to corroborate self-report scores, raising the question of how reliably an individual has answered their self-report.
3. Interviews
Interviews are used widely from clinical settings to workplaces to determine an individual’s personality. Even a job interview is a test of behavioral patterns and experiences (i.e., personality).
During such interviews, the primary aim is to gather as much information as possible by using probing questions. Responses should be recorded, and there should be a standardized scoring system to determine the outcome of the interview (for example, whether the candidate is suitable for the role).
While interviews can elicit rich data about a client or employee, they are also subject to the unconscious biases of the interviewers and can be open to interpretation if there is no method for scoring or evaluating the interviewee.
4. Projective tests
These types of tests are unusual in that they present individuals with an abstract or vague object, task, or activity and require them to describe what they see. The idea here is that the unfiltered interpretation can provide insight into the person’s psychology and way of thinking.
A well-known example of a projective test is the Rorschach inkblot test. However, there are limitations to projective tests due to their interpretative nature and the lack of a consistent or quantifiable way of coding or scoring individuals’ responses.
7 Evidence-Based Inventories, Scales, and Tests
Personality assessments can be used in the workplace during recruitment to gauge whether someone would be a good fit for a job or organization and to help determine job performance, career progression, and development.
Below, we highlight a few commonly used inventories and tests for such career assessments.
1. The Hogan personality inventory (HPI)
The Hogan personality inventory (Hogan & Hogan, 2002) is a self-report personality assessment created by Robert Hogan and Joyce Hogan in the late 1970s.
It was originally based on the California Personality Inventory (Gough, 1975) and also draws upon the five-factor model of personality. The five-factor model of personality suggests there are five key dimensions of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Digman, 1990).
The Hogan assessment comprises 206 items across seven different scales that measure and predict social behavior and social outcomes rather than traits or qualities, as do other popular personality measures.
These seven scales include:
- Adjustment
- Ambition
- Sociability
- Interpersonal sensitivity
- Prudence
- Inquisitiveness
- Learning approach
The HPI’s primary use is within organizations to help with recruitment and the development of leaders. It is a robust scale with over 40 years of evidence to support it, and the scale itself takes roughly 15–20 minutes to complete (Hogan Assessments, n.d.).
2. DISC test
The DISC test of personality developed by Merenda and Clarke (1965) is a very popular personality self-assessment used primarily within the corporate world. It is based on the emotional and behavioral DISC theory (Marston, 1928), which measures individuals on four dimensions of behavior:
- Dominance
- Inducement
- Submission
- Compliance
The self-report comprises 24 questions and takes roughly 10 minutes to complete. While the test is simpler and quicker to complete than other popular tests (e.g., the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), it has been subject to criticism regarding its psychometric properties.
3. Gallup – CliftonStrengths™ Assessment
Unlike the DISC test, the CliftonStrengths™ assessment, employed by Gallup and based on the work of Marcus Buckingham and Don Clifton (2001), is a questionnaire designed specifically to help individuals identify strengths in the workplace and learn how to use them.
The assessment is a self-report Likert scale comprising 177 questions and takes roughly 30 minutes to complete. Once scored, the assessment provides individuals with 34 strength themes organized into four key domains:
- Strategic thinking
- Executing
- Influencing
- Relationship building
The scale has a solid theoretical and empirical grounding, making it a popular workplace assessment around the world.
4. NEO-PI-R
The NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 2008) is a highly popular self-report personality assessment based on Allport and Odbert’s (1936) trait theory of personality.
With good reliability, this scale has amassed a large evidence base, making it an appealing inventory for many. The NEO-PI-R assesses an individual’s strengths, talents, and weaknesses and is often used by employers to identify suitable candidates for job openings.
It uses the big five factors of personality (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism) and also includes an additional six subcategories within the big five, providing a detailed breakdown of each personality dimension.
The scale itself comprises 240 questions that describe different behaviors and takes roughly 30–40 minutes to complete. Interestingly, this inventory can be administered as a self-report or, alternatively, as an observational report, making it a favored assessment among professionals.
5. Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ)
The EPQ is a personality assessment developed by personality psychologists Hans Eysenck and Sybil Eysenck (1975).
The scale results from successive revisions and improvements of earlier scales: the Maudsley Personality Inventory (Eysenck 1959) and Eysenck Personality Inventory (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1964).
The aim of the EPQ is to measure the three dimensions of personality as espoused by Eysenck’s psychoticism–extraversion–neuroticism theory of personality The scale itself uses a Likert format and was revised and shortened in 1992 to include 48 items (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1992).
This is a generally useful scale; however, some researchers have found that there are reliability issues with the psychoticism subscale, likely because this was a later addition to the scale.
6. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)
The MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) is one of the most widely used personality inventories in the world and uses a true/false format of questioning.
It was initially designed to assess mental health problems in clinical settings during the 1940s and uses 10 clinical subscales to assess different psychological conditions.
The inventory was revised in the 1980s, resulting in the MMPI-2, which comprised 567 questions, and again in 2020, resulting in the MMPI-3, which comprises a streamlined 338 questions.
While the revised MMPI-3 takes a lengthy 35–50 minutes to complete, it remains popular to this day, particularly in clinical settings, and enables the accurate capture of aspects of psychopathy and mental health disturbance. The test has good reliability but must be administered by a professional.
7. 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)
The 16PF (Cattell et al., 1970) is another rating scale inventory used primarily in clinical settings to identify psychiatric disorders by measuring “normal” personality traits.
Cattell identified 16 primary personality traits, with five secondary or global traits underneath that map onto the big five factors of personality.
These include such traits as warmth, reasoning, and emotional stability, to name a few. The most recent version of the questionnaire (the fifth edition) comprises 185 multiple-choice questions that ask about routine behaviors on a 10-point scale and takes roughly 35–50 minutes to complete.
The scale is easy to administer and well validated but must be administered by a professional.
In addition to the collection of science-based interventions, we also have to mention a controversial but well-known personality assessment tool: Myers-Briggs.
We share two informative videos on this topic and then move on to a short collection of questions that can be used for career development.
1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Many of us have heard of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (Myers & McCaulley, 1985), and for good reason. It is one of the most popular and widely used personality assessments out there.
A mother and daughter team developed the MBTI in the 1940s during the Second World War. The MBTI comprises 93 questions that aim to measure an individual on four different dimensions of personality:
- Introversion/extraversion
- Sensing/intuition
- Thinking/feeling
- Judging/perceiving
The test provides individuals with a type of personality out of a possible 16 combinations. Whilst this test is a favorite in workplaces, there are serious criticisms leveled at how the scale was developed and the lack of rigorous evidence to support its use.
For more information on the MBTI, you might enjoy the below videos:
