Personality Tests In Psychology

Personality tests are used to determine what sort of personality someone has, and how that personality is likely to affect the type of behaviour they display.

Although there are many different types of personality tests, lets have a look at three which each use different testing methods.

The Rorschach Test

The Rorschach test is best known as the inkblot test, and consists of ten inkblots on a card with bilateral symmetry (right half matches the left half).

There are ten cards in total, and half of them are in black and white and the other half are in colour.

The cards are always shown in the same order preceded by the instruction “tell me what you see, or are able to imagine to be there, in each card.”

The Rorschach test is defined as a “projective test” because the subject taking the test makes some kind of structure out of a series of dots that have no structure.

In other words, they project a structure onto the inkblots (which could be perceived in many ways, i.e. they are ambiguous), and this projection is thought to be a representation of what is going on in their unconscious mind.

This test is considered to be a fairly good test of a person’s personality, and can reveal such things as introversion, extroversion, repressed desires and emotional stability.

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

The Thematic Apperception Test uses a set of twenty cards, nineteen of which contain pictures and the remaining card is blank.

The cards with pictures show people either on their own, or with other people. These images are ambiguous, and therefore can be interpreted in many different ways. For the blank card, the person is asked to imagine a picture.

The key instruction given before the cards are shown is “tell me a story about what you see in this card. The story should have a beginning, middle and an end. Also, tell me what the person or people are thinking and feeling.”

The Thematic Apperception Test is also a projective test, and can be used to determine what motivates a person such as whether they are motivated by achievement, power or other people etc…

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory consists of a series of 550 statements which can either be answered: True, False or Cannot Say.

The ultimate aim of this test is to provide results in terms of clinical scales (pathological aspects of a personality), so that different aspects of a personality can be measured. 

The ten scales used in this test are:

Hypochondriasis

How concerned someone is with their health.

Depression

A measure of depression.

Hysteria

Measures tendency to develop conversion disorders in which anxiety is converted into a physical symptom such as paralysis.

Psychopathic Deviation

How likely a person is to violate moral standards without feelings of guilt.

Masculinity-Femininity

How interested a person is in the opposite sex.

Paranoia

How mistrustful a person is of others.

Psychasthenia

The tendency to develop neurotic reactions.

Schizophrenia

Tendency to have delusions and distorted thoughts.

Hypomania

Tendency to become overly emotional and excessively excited.

Social Introversion

Tendency to withdraw from other people.

The higher the score you get in each scale, the more “sick” you are considered to be for that area of your personality.

Summary

• The Rorschach Test is a projective test and gives clues at to what is going on inside someone’s unconscious mind.

• The Thematic Apperception Test is a projective test that can determine what motivates someone based on how they perceive scenarios of people on cards.

• The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory uses a series of statements to determine pathological aspects of a personality.