A projective test is a personality test in which subjects are shown

ambiguous images and asked to interpret them. The subjects are

to project their own emotions, attitudes, and impulses onto the
image; and then use these projections to explain an image, tell a
story, or finish a sentence. (study.com)

A projective test is a type of personality test in which you offer

responses to ambiguous scenes, words, or images.1 A person's
responses to a projective test are thought to reflect hidden
conflicts or emotions, with the hope that these issues can then be
addressed through psychotherapy or other appropriate
treatments.

History of the Projective Test

This type of test emerged from the psychoanalytic school of

thought, which suggested that people have unconscious thoughts
or urges. Projective tests are intended to uncover feelings,
desires, and conflicts that are hidden from conscious awareness.

By interpreting responses to ambiguous cues, psychoanalysts

hope to uncover unconscious feelings that might be causing
problems in a person's life.

Training in projective testing in psychology graduate settings has

rapidly declined over the past decade or so. Despite the
controversy over their use, projective tests remain quite popular
and are extensively used in both clinical and forensic settings.

At least one projective test was noted as one of the top five tests
used in practice for 50% of 28 worldwide survey-based studies.2

What Is the Unconscious?

How a Projective Test Works

In many projective tests, people are shown an ambiguous image

and then asked to give the first response that comes to mind. The
key to projective tests is the ambiguity of the stimuli.

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According to the theory behind such tests, using clearly defined
questions can result in answers that are carefully crafted by
the conscious mind. When you are asked a straightforward
question about a particular topic, you have to spend time
consciously creating an answer.

This can introduce biases and even untruths, whether or not

you're trying to deceive the test provider. For example, a
respondent might give answers that are perceived as more
socially acceptable or desirable but are perhaps not the most
accurate reflection of their true feelings or behavior.

By providing you with a question or stimulus that is not clear,

your underlying and unconscious motivations or attitudes are
revealed.

The hope is that because of the ambiguous nature of the

questions, people might be less able to rely on possible hints
about what they think the tester expects to see. As a result, they
are hopefully less tempted to "fake good," or make themselves
look good, as a result.

How Attitudes Change and Influence Behaviors

Types of Projective Tests

There are a number of different types of projective tests. Some of

the best-known examples include:

The Rorschach Inkblot Test

This test was one of the first projective tests developed and
continues to be one of the best-known and most widely used.
Developed by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach in 1921,
the test consists of 10 different cards that depict an ambiguous
inkblot.3

People are shown one card at a time and asked to describe what
they see in the image. The responses are recorded verbatim by
the tester. Gestures, tone of voice, and other reactions are also
noted.
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The results of the test can vary depending on which of the many
existing scoring systems the examiner uses.

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

In the TAT test, people are asked to look at a series of ambiguous

scenes and then to tell a story describing the scene. This
includes describing what is happening, how the characters are
feeling, and how the story will end.

The examiner then scores the test based on the needs,

motivations, and anxieties of the main character, as well as how
the story eventually turns out.3

The Draw-A-Person Test

This type of projective test involves exactly what you might

imagine. People draw a person and the image that they created
is then assessed by the examiner.

To score the test, the test interpreter might look at a number of

factors. These may include the size of particular parts of the
body or features, the level of detail given to the figure, as well as
the overall shape of the drawing.

Like other projective tests, the Draw-A-Person test has been

criticized for its lack of validity.

A test interpreter might suggest that certain aspects of the

drawing are indicative of particular psychological tendencies.
However, it might simply mean that the individual has poor
drawing skills.

The test has been used as a measure of intelligence in children,

but research comparing scores on the Wechsler Preschool and
Primary Scale of Intelligence to the Draw-A-Person test found a
very low correlation between the two scores.4

The House-Tree-Person Test

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In this type of projective test, people are asked to draw a house,
a tree, and a person. Once the drawing is complete, they are
asked a series of questions about the images they have drawn.

The test was originally designed by John Buck and included a

series of 60 questions to ask the respondent, although test
administrators may also come up with their own questions or
follow-up queries to further explore the subject's responses. For
example, the test administrator might ask of the house drawing:

 Who lives here?

 Who visits the person who lives here?
 Is the person who lives here happy?

Weaknesses of a Projective Test

Projective tests are most frequently used in therapeutic settings.

In many cases, therapists use these tests to learn qualitative
information about individuals.

Some therapists may use projective tests as a sort of icebreaker

to encourage people to discuss issues or examine their thoughts
and emotions.

While projective tests have some benefits, they also have a

number of weaknesses and limitations, including:

 Projective tests that do not have standard grading scales

tend to lack both validity and reliability. Validity refers to
whether or not a test is measuring what it purports to
measure, while reliability refers to the consistency of the
test results.
 Scoring projective tests is highly subjective, so
interpretations of answers can vary dramatically from one
examiner to the next.
 The respondent's answers can be heavily influenced by the
examiner's attitudes or the test setting.

projective test, in psychology, examination that commonly

employs ambiguous stimuli, notably inkblots (Rorschach

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 Test) and enigmatic pictures (Thematic Apperception Test),
to evoke responses that may reveal facets of the
subject’s personality by projection of internal attitudes,
traits, and behaviour patterns upon the external stimuli.
Projective tests are also used, less frequently, to study
learning processes. Other projective methods involve
requiring subjects to build wooden block structures,
complete sentences, paint with the fingers, or provide
handwriting samples; additional methods include
association tests in which spoken words serve as the
stimuli.

The usefulness and reliability of projective tests depend on

a number of factors, including the extent to which identical
personality interpretations can be reached by different
evaluators using the same test data and the extent to which
those interpretations are supported by assessments of
personality from other sources (e.g., personality inventories
and clinical observation). In consideration of such factors,
psychologists are sharply divided over the value of
projective tests, despite their prominence in both
personality research and therapeutic practice.

Rorschach test, projective method of psychological testing in

which a person is asked to describe what he or she sees in 10
inkblots, of which some are black or gray and others have
patches of colour. The test was introduced in 1921 by Swiss
psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach. It attained peak popularity in
the 1960s, when it was widely used to
assess cognition and personality and to diagnosis certain
psychological conditions.

Responses to the Rorschach test are typically scored on the basis

of the location in the blot of the thing seen, the kind of stimulus
characteristic emphasized (e.g., form or colour), and the content
of the percept (e.g., animal). From response scores, the
psychologist attempts to describe the subject’s personality, often
by comparing scores with established norms.

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Interpretation of a subject’s responses is not highly standardized,
however, despite the introduction in 1974 of the Exner scoring
system, which was developed to address weaknesses in the
Rorschach test. Thus, though it is still used, the Rorschach test is
generally considered to be an unreliable method for
psychological assessment and diagnosis.

personality assessment, the measurement of personal

characteristics. Assessment is an end result of gathering
information intended to advance psychological theory and
research and to increase the probability that wise decisions will
be made in applied settings (e.g., in selecting the most promising
people from a group of job applicants). The approach taken by
the specialist in personality assessment is based on the
assumption that much of the observable variability in behaviour
from one person to another results from differences in the extent
to which individuals possess particular underlying personal
characteristics (traits). The assessment specialist seeks to define
these traits, to measure them objectively, and to relate them to
socially significant aspects of behaviour.

A distinctive feature of the scientific approach

to personality measurement is the effort, wherever possible, to
describe human characteristics in quantitative terms. How much
of a trait manifests itself in an individual? How many traits are
present? Quantitative personality measurement is especially
useful in comparing groups of people as well as individuals. Do
groups of people from different cultural and economic
backgrounds differ when considered in the light of their
particular personality attributes or traits? How large are the
group differences?

Overt behaviour is a reflection of interactions among a wide

range of underlying factors, including the bodily state of the
individual and the effects of that person’s past personal
experiences. Hence, a narrowly focused approach is inadequate
to do justice to the complex human behaviour that occurs under
the constantly changing set of challenges, pleasures, demands,
and stresses of everyday life. The sophisticated measurement of
human personality inescapably depends on the use of a variety of
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concepts to provide trait definitions and entails the application of
various methods of observation and evaluation. Personality
theorists and researchers seek to define and to understand
the diversity of human traits, the many ways people have
of thinking and perceiving and learning and emoting. Such
nonmaterial human dimensions, types, and attributes
are constructs—in this case, inferences drawn from observed
behaviour. Widely studied personality constructs include anxiety,
hostility, emotionality, motivation, and introversion-extroversion.
Anxiety, for example, is a concept, or construct, inferred in
people from what they say, their facial expressions, and their
body movements.

Personality is interactional in two senses. As indicated above,

personal characteristics can be thought of as products of
interactions among underlying psychological factors; for
example, an individual may experience tension because he or she
is both shy and desirous of social success. These products, in
turn, interact with the types of situations people confront in their
daily lives. A person who is anxious about being evaluated might
show debilitated performance in evaluative situations (for
example, taking tests), but function well in other situations in
which an evaluative emphasis is not present. Personality makeup
can be either an asset or a liability depending on the situation.
For example, some people approach evaluative situations with
fear and foreboding, while others seem to be motivated in a
desirable direction by competitive pressures associated with
performance.
Measuring constructs

Efforts to measure personality constructs stem from a variety of

sources. Frequently they grow out of theories of personality;
anxiety and repression (the forgetting of unpleasant
experiences), for example, are among the central concepts of the
theory of psychoanalysis. It is understandable that efforts would
be made to quantify one’s degree of anxiety, for example, and to
use the score thus obtained in the assessment of and in the
prediction of future behaviour. Among the major issues in the
study of personality measurement is the question of which of the
many personality constructs that have been quantified are basic
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or fundamental and which can be expected to involve wasted
effort in their measurement because they represent poorly
defined combinations of more elemental constructs; which
measurement techniques are most effective and convenient for
the purpose of assessment; and whether it is better to interview
people in measuring personality, or to ask them to say, for
example, what an inkblot or a cloud in the sky reminds them of.

Efforts to measure any given personality construct can fail as a

result of inadequacies in formulating or defining the trait to be
measured and weaknesses in the assessment methods employed.
An investigator might desire to specify quantitatively the degree
to which individuals are submissive in social and competitive
situations. His effectiveness will depend on the particular theory
of submissiveness he brings to bear on the problem; on the
actual procedures he selects or devises to measure
submissiveness; and on the adequacy of the research he
performs to demonstrate the usefulness of the measure. Each of
these tasks must be considered carefully in evaluating efforts to
measure personality attributes.

The methods used in personality description and measurement

fall into several categories that differ with regard to the type of
information gathered and the methods by which it is obtained.
While all should rely on data that come from direct observations
of human behaviour if they are to have at least the semblance of
scientific value, all may vary with regard to underlying
assumptions, validity, and reliability (consistency, in this case).

Assessment methods
Personality tests provide measures of such characteristics as
feelings and emotional states, preoccupations, motivations,
attitudes, and approaches to interpersonal relations. There is
a diversity of approaches to personality assessment, and
controversy surrounds many aspects of the widely used methods
and techniques. These include such assessments as
the interview, rating scales, self-reports, personality inventories,
projective techniques, and behavioral observation.
The interview

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In an interview the individual under assessment must be given
considerable latitude in “telling his story.” Interviews have both
verbal and nonverbal (e.g., gestural) components. The aim of the
interview is to gather information, and the adequacy of the data
gathered depends in large part on the questions asked by the
interviewer. In an employment interview the focus of the
interviewer is generally on the job candidate’s work experiences,
general and specific attitudes, and occupational goals. In a
diagnostic medical or psychiatric interview considerable
attention would be paid to the patient’s physical health and to
any symptoms of behavioral disorder that may have occurred
over the years.

Two broad types of interview may be delineated. In the interview

designed for use in research, face-to-face contact between an
interviewer and interviewee is directed toward eliciting
information that may be relevant to particular practical
applications under general study or to those personality theories
(or hypotheses) being investigated. Another type, the clinical
interview, is focused on assessing the status of a particular
individual (e.g., a psychiatric patient); such an interview is
action-oriented (i.e., it may indicate appropriate treatment). Both
research and clinical interviews frequently may be conducted to
obtain an individual’s life history and biographical information
(e.g., identifying facts, family relationships), but they differ in the
uses to which the information is put.

Although it is not feasible to quantify all of the events occurring

in an interview, personality researchers have devised ways of
categorizing many aspects of the content of what a person has
said. In this approach, called content analysis, the particular
categories used depend upon the researchers’ interests and
ingenuity, but the method of content analysis is quite general
and involves the construction of a system of categories that, it is
hoped, can be used reliably by an analyst or scorer. The
categories may be straightforward (e.g., the number of words
uttered by the interviewee during designated time periods), or
they may rest on inferences (e.g., the degree of personal
unhappiness the interviewee appears to express). The value of
content analysis is that it provides the possibility of using
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frequencies of uttered response to describe verbal behaviour and
defines behavioral variables for more-or-less precise study in
experimental research. Content analysis has been used, for
example, to gauge changes in attitude as they occur within a
person with the passage of time. Changes in the frequency of
hostile reference a neurotic makes toward his parents during a
sequence of psychotherapeutic interviews, for example, may be
detected and assessed, as may the changing self-evaluations of
psychiatric hospital inmates in relation to the length of their
hospitalization.

Sources of erroneous conclusions that may be drawn from face-

to-face encounters stem from the complexity of the interview
situation, the attitudes, fears, and expectations of the
interviewee, and the interviewer’s manner and training.
Research has been conducted to identify, control, and, if
possible, eliminate these sources of interview invalidity and
unreliability. By conducting more than one interview with the
same interviewee and by using more than one interviewer to
evaluate the subject’s behaviour, light can be shed on the
reliability of the information derived and may reveal differences
in influence among individual interviewers. Standardization of
interview format tends to increase the reliability of the
information gathered; for example, all interviewers may use the
same set of questions. Such standardization, however, may
restrict the scope of information elicited, and even a perfectly
reliable (consistent) interview technique can lead to incorrect
inferences.
Rating scales

The rating scale is one of the oldest and most versatile of

assessment techniques. Rating scales present users with an item
and ask them to select from a number of choices. The rating
scale is similar in some respects to a multiple choice test, but its
options represent degrees of a particular characteristic.

Rating scales are used by observers and also by individuals for

self-reporting (see below Self-report tests). They permit
convenient characterization of other people and their behaviour.
Some observations do not lend themselves to quantification as
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readily as do simple counts of motor behaviour (such as the
number of times a worker leaves his lathe to go to the restroom).
It is difficult, for example, to quantify how charming an office
receptionist is. In such cases, one may fall back on relatively
subjective judgments, inferences, and relatively imprecise
estimates, as in deciding how disrespectful a child is. The rating
scale is one approach to securing such judgments. Rating scales
present an observer with scalar dimensions along which those
who are observed are to be placed. A teacher, for example, might
be asked to rate students on the degree to which the behaviour
of each reflects leadership capacity, shyness, or creativity. Peers
might rate each other along dimensions such as friendliness,
trustworthiness, and social skills. Several standardized, printed
rating scales are available for describing the behaviour of
psychiatric hospital patients. Relatively objective rating scales
have also been devised for use with other groups.

A number of requirements should be met to maximize the

usefulness of rating scales. One is that they be reliable: the
ratings of the same person by different observers should be
consistent. Other requirements are reduction of sources of
inaccuracy in personality measurement; the so-called halo
effect results in an observer’s rating someone favourably on a
specific characteristic because the observer has a generally
favourable reaction to the person being rated. One’s tendency to
say only nice things about others or one’s proneness to think of
all people as average (to use the midrange of scales) represents
other methodological problems that arise when rating scales are
used.
Self-report tests

The success that attended the use of convenient intelligence

tests in providing reliable, quantitative (numerical) indexes of
individual ability has stimulated interest in the possibility of
devising similar tests for measuring personality. Procedures now
available vary in the degree to which they achieve score
reliability and convenience. These desirable attributes can be
partly achieved by restricting in designated ways the kinds of
responses a subject is free to make. Self-report instruments
follow this strategy. For example, a test that restricts the subject
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to true-false answers is likely to be convenient to give and easy
to score. So-called personality inventories (see below) tend to
have these characteristics, in that they are relatively restrictive,
can be scored objectively, and are convenient to administer.
Other techniques (such as inkblot tests) for evaluating
personality possess these characteristics to a lesser degree.

Self-report personality tests are used in clinical settings in

making diagnoses, in deciding whether treatment is required,
and in planning the treatment to be used. A second major use is
as an aid in selecting employees, and a third is in psychological
research. An example of the latter case would be where scores
on a measure of test anxiety—that is, the feeling of tenseness
and worry that people experience before an exam—might be
used to divide people into groups according to how upset they
get while taking exams. Researchers have investigated whether
the more test-anxious students behave differently than the less
anxious ones in an experimental situation.
Personality inventories

Among the most common of self-report tests are personality

inventories. Their origins lie in the early history of
personality measurement, when most tests were constructed on
the basis of so-called face validity; that is, they simply appeared
to be valid. Items were included simply because, in the fallible
judgment of the person who constructed or devised the test, they
were indicative of certain personality attributes. In other words,
face validity need not be defined by careful, quantitative study;
rather, it typically reflects one’s more-or-less imprecise, possibly
erroneous, impressions. Personal judgment, even that of an
expert, is no guarantee that a particular collection of test items
will prove to be reliable and meaningful in actual practice.

A widely used early self-report inventory, the so-

called Woodworth Personal Data Sheet, was developed
during World War I to detect soldiers who were emotionally unfit
for combat. Among its ostensibly face-valid items were these:
Does the sight of blood make you sick or dizzy? Are you happy
most of the time? Do you sometimes wish you had never been
born? Recruits who answered these kinds of questions in a way
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that could be taken to mean that they suffered psychiatric
disturbance were detained for further questioning and
evaluation. Clearly, however, symptoms revealed by such
answers are exhibited by many people who are relatively free of
emotional disorder.

Rather than testing general knowledge or specific skills,

personality inventories ask people questions about themselves.
These questions may take a variety of forms. When taking such a
test, the subject might have to decide whether each of a series of
statements is accurate as a self-description or respond to a series
of true-false questions about personal beliefs.

Several inventories require that each of a series of statements be

placed on a rating scale in terms of the frequency or adequacy
with which the statements are judged by the individual to reflect
his tendencies and attitudes. Regardless of the way in which the
subject responds, most inventories yield several scores, each
intended to identify a distinctive aspect of personality.

One of these, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality

Inventory (MMPI), is probably the personality inventory in widest
use in the English-speaking world. Also available in other
languages, it consists in one version of 550 items (e.g., “I like tall
women”) to which subjects are to respond “true,” “false,” or
“cannot say.” Work on this inventory began in the 1930s, when
its construction was motivated by the need for a practical,
economical means of describing and predicting the behaviour of
psychiatric patients. In its development efforts were made to
achieve convenience in administration and scoring and to
overcome many of the known defects of earlier personality
inventories. Varied types of items were included
and emphasis was placed on making these printed statements
(presented either on small cards or in a booklet) intelligible even
to persons with limited reading ability.

Most earlier inventories lacked subtlety; many people were able

to fake or bias their answers since the items presented were
easily seen to reflect gross disturbances; indeed, in many of
these inventories maladaptive tendencies would be reflected in

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either all true or all false answers. Perhaps the most significant
methodological advance to be found in the MMPI was the
attempt on the part of its developers to measure tendencies to
respond, rather than actual behaviour, and to rely but little on
assumptions of face validity. The true-false item “I hear strange
voices all the time” has face validity for most people in that to
answer “true” to it seems to provide a strong indication of
abnormal hallucinatory experiences. But some psychiatric
patients who “hear strange voices” can still appreciate the
socially undesirable implications of a “true” answer and may
therefore try to conceal their abnormality by answering “false.” A
major difficulty in placing great reliance on face validity in test
construction is that the subject may be as aware of the
significance of certain responses as is the test constructor and
thus may be able to mislead the tester. Nevertheless, the person
who hears strange voices and yet answers the item “false”
clearly is responding to something—the answer still is a
reflection of personality, even though it may not be the aspect of
personality to which the item seems to refer; thus, careful study
of responses beyond their mere face validity often proves to be
profitable.

Much study has been given to the ways in which response

sets and test-taking attitudes influence behaviour on the MMPI
and other personality measures. The response set
called acquiescence, for example, refers to one’s tendency to
respond with “true” or “yes” answers to questionnaire items
regardless of what the item content is. It is conceivable that two
people might be quite similar in all respects except for their
tendency toward acquiescence. This difference in response set
can lead to misleadingly different scores on personality tests.
One person might be a “yea-sayer” (someone who tends to
answer true to test items); another might be a “nay-sayer”; a
third individual might not have a pronounced acquiescence
tendency in either direction.

Acquiescence is not the only response set; there are other test-
taking attitudes that are capable of influencing personality
profiles. One of these, already suggested by the example of the
person who hears strange voices, is social desirability. A person
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who has convulsions might say “false” to the item “I have
convulsions” because he believes that others will think less of
him if they know he has convulsions. The intrusive potentially
deceiving effects of the subjects’ response sets and test-taking
attitudes on scores derived from personality measures can
sometimes be circumvented by varying the content and wording
of test items. Nevertheless, users of questionnaires have not yet
completely solved problems of bias such as those arising from
response sets. Indeed, many of these problems first received
widespread attention in research on the MMPI, and research on
this and similar inventories has significantly advanced
understanding of the whole discipline of personality testing.
Attributes of the MMPI
The MMPI as originally published consists of nine clinical scales
(or sets of items), each scale having been found in practice to
discriminate a particular clinical group, such as people suffering
from schizophrenia, depression, or paranoia (see mental
disorder). Each of these scales (or others produced later) was
developed by determining patterns of response to the inventory
that were observed to be distinctive of groups of individuals who
had been psychiatrically classified by other means (e.g., by long-
term observation). The responses of apparently normal subjects
were compared with those of hospital patients with a particular
psychiatric diagnosis—for example, with symptoms of
schizophrenia. Items to which the greatest percentage of
“normals” gave answers that differed from those more typically
given by patients came to constitute each clinical scale.

In addition to the nine clinical scales and many specially

developed scales, there are four so-called control scales on the
inventory. One of these is simply the number of items placed by
the subject in the “cannot say” category. The L (or lie) scale
was devised to measure the tendency of the test taker to
attribute socially desirable attributes to himself. In response to “I
get angry sometimes” he should tend to mark false; extreme L
scorers in the other direction appear to be too good, too virtuous.
Another so-called F scale was included to provide a reflection of
the subjects’ carelessness and confusion in taking the inventory
(e.g., “Everything tastes the same” tends to be answered true by

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careless or confused people). More subtle than either the L or F
scales is what is called the K scale. Its construction was based on
the observation that some persons tend to exaggerate their
symptoms because of excessive openness and frankness and may
obtain high scores on the clinical scales; others may exhibit
unusually low scores because of defensiveness. On the K-scale
item “I think nearly anyone would tell a lie to keep out of
trouble,” the defensive person is apt to answer false, giving the
same response to “I certainly feel useless at times.” The K scale
was designed to reduce these biasing factors; by weighting
clinical-scale scores with K scores, the distorting effect of test-
taking defensiveness may be reduced.

In general, it has been found that the greater the number and
magnitude of one’s unusually high scores on the MMPI, the more
likely it is that one is in need of psychiatric attention. Most
professionals who use the device refuse to make assumptions
about the factualness of the subject’s answers and about his
personal interpretations of the meanings of the items. Their
approach does not depend heavily on
theoretical predilections and hypotheses. For this reason the
inventory has proved particularly popular with those who have
strong doubts about the eventual validity that many theoretical
formulations will show in connection
with personality measurement after they have been tested
through painstaking research. The MMPI also appeals to those
who demand firm experimental evidence that any
personality assessment method can make
valid discriminations among individuals.

In recent years there has been growing interest in actuarial

personality description—that is, in personality description based
on traits shared in common by groups of people. Actuarial
description studies yield rules by which persons may be
classified according to their personal attributes as revealed by
their behaviour (on tests, for example). Computer programs are
now available for diagnosing such disorders as hysteria,
schizophrenia, and paranoia on the basis of typical group profiles
of MMPI responses. Computerized methods for integrating large
amounts of personal data are not limited to this inventory and
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are applicable to other inventories, personality tests (e.g.,
inkblots), and life-history information. Computerized
classification of MMPI profiles, however, has been explored most
intensively.
Comparison of the MMPI and CPI

The MMPI has been considered in some detail here because of

its wide usage and because it illustrates a number of important
problems confronting those who attempt to assess personality
characteristics. Many other omnibus personality inventories are
also used in applied settings and in research. The California
Psychological Inventory (CPI), for example, is keyed for several
personality variables that include sociability, self-control,
flexibility, and tolerance. Unlike the MMPI, it was developed
specifically for use with “normal” groups of people. Whereas the
judgments of experts (usually psychiatric workers) were used in
categorizing subjects given the MMPI during the early item-
writing phase of its development, nominations by peers (such as
respondents or friends) of the subjects were relied upon in work
with the CPI. Its technical development has been evaluated by
test authorities to be of high order, in part because its
developers profited from lessons learned in the construction and
use of the MMPI. It also provides measures of response sets and
has been subjected to considerable research study.

From time to time, most personality inventories are revised for a

variety of reasons, including the need to take account of cultural
and social changes and to improve them. For example, a revision
of the CPI was published in 1987. In the revision, the inventory
itself was modified to improve clarity, update content, and delete
items that might be objectionable to some respondents. Because
the item pool remained largely unchanged, data from the original
samples were used in computing norms and in evaluating
reliability and validity for new scales and new composite scores.
The descriptions of high and low scorers on each scale have been
refined and sharpened, and correlations of scale scores with
other personality tests have been reported.
Other self-report techniques

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Beyond personality inventories, there are other self-report
approaches to personality measurement available for research
and applied purposes. Mention was made earlier of the use of
rating scales. The rating-scale technique permits quantification
of an individual’s reactions to himself, to others, and, in fact, to
any object or concept in terms of a standard set of semantic
(word) polarities such as “hot-cold” or “good-bad.” It is a general
method for assessing the meanings of these semantic concepts to
individuals.

Another method of self-report called the Q-sort is devised for

problems similar to those for which rating scales are used. In a
Q-sort a person is given a set of sentences, phrases, or words
(usually presented individually on cards) and is asked to use
them to describe himself (as he thinks he is or as he would like to
be) or someone else. This description is carried out by having the
subject sort the items on the cards in terms of their degree of
relevance so that they can be distributed along what amounts to
a rating scale. Examples of descriptive items that might be
included in a Q-sort are “worries a lot,” “works hard,” and “is
cheerful.”

Typical paper-and-pencil instruments such as personality

inventories involve verbal stimuli (words) intended to call forth
designated types of responses from the individual. There are
clearly stated ground rules under which he makes his responses.
Paper-and-pencil devices are relatively easy and economical to
administer and can be scored accurately and reliably by
relatively inexperienced clerical workers. They are generally
regarded by professional personality evaluators as especially
valuable assessment tools in screening large numbers of people,
as in military or industrial personnel selection. Assessment
specialists do not assume that self-reports are accurate
indicators of personality traits. They are accepted, rather, as
samples of behaviour for which validity in predicting one’s
everyday activities or traits must be established empirically (i.e.,
by direct observation or experiment). Paper-and-pencil
techniques have moved from their early stage of assumed (face)
validity to more advanced notions in which improvements

18
in conceptualization and methodology are clearly recognized as
basic to the determination of empirical validity.
Projective techniques
One group of assessment specialists believes that the more
freedom people have in picking their responses, the more
meaningful the description and classification that can be
obtained. Because personality inventories do not permit much
freedom of choice, some researchers and clinicians prefer to
use projective techniques, in which a person is
shown ambiguous stimuli (such as shapes or pictures) and asked
to interpret them in some way. (Such stimuli allow relative
freedom in projecting one’s own interests and feelings into them,
reacting in any way that seems appropriate.) Projective
techniques are believed to be sensitive to unconscious
dimensions of personality. Defense mechanisms, latent impulses,
and anxieties have all been inferred from data gathered in
projective situations.

Personality inventories and projective techniques do have some

elements in common; inkblots, for example, are ambiguous, but
so also are many of the statements on inventories such as the
MMPI. These techniques differ in that the subject is given
substantially free rein in responding to projective stimuli rather
than merely answering true or false, for example. Another
similarity between projective and questionnaire or inventory
approaches is that all involve the use of relatively standardized
testing situations.

While projective techniques are often lumped together as one

general methodology, in actual practice there are several
approaches to assessment from a projective point of view.
Although projective techniques share the common characteristic
that they permit the subject wide latitude in responding, they
still may be distinguished broadly as follows: (1) associative
techniques, in which the subject is asked to react to words, to
inkblots, or to other stimuli with the first associated thoughts
that come to mind; (2) construction techniques, in which the
subject is asked to create something—for example, make up a
story or draw a self-portrait; (3) completion techniques, in which

19
the subject is asked to finish a partially developed stimulus, such
as adding the last words to an incomplete sentence; (4) choice or
ordering techniques, in which the subject is asked to choose from
among or to give some orderly sequence to stimuli—for example,
to choose from or arrange a set of pictures or inkblots; (5)
expressive techniques, in which the subject is asked to use free
expression in some manner, such as in finger painting.

Hidden personality defense mechanisms, latent emotional

impulses, and inner anxieties all have been attributed to test
takers by making theoretical inferences from data gathered as
they responded in projective situations. While projective stimuli
are ambiguous, they are usually administered under fairly
standardized conditions. Quantitative (numerical) measures can
be derived from subjects’ responses to them. These include the
number of responses one makes to a series of inkblots and the
number of responses to the blots in which the subject perceives
what seem to him to be moving animals.
The Rorschach Inkblot Test

The Rorschach inkblots were developed by a Swiss

psychiatrist, Hermann Rorschach, in an effort to reduce the time
required in psychiatric diagnosis. His test consists of 10 cards,
half of which are in colour and half in black and white. The test is
administered by showing the subject the 10 blots one at a time;
the subject’s task is to describe what he sees in the blots or what
they remind him of. The subject is usually told that the inkblots
are not a test of the kind he took in school and that there are no
right or wrong answers.

Rorschach’s work was stimulated by his interest in the

relationship between perception and personality. He held that a
person’s perceptual responses to inkblots could serve as clues to
basic personality tendencies. Despite Rorschach’s original claims
for the validity of his test, subsequent negative research findings
have led many users of projective techniques to become dubious
about the role assigned the inkblots in delineating relationships
between perception and personality. In recent years, emphasis
has tended to shift to the analysis of nuances of the subject’s
social behaviour during the test and to the content of his verbal
20
responses to the examiner—whether, for example, he seeks to
obtain the assistance of the examiner in “solving” the inkblots
presented to him, sees “angry lions” or “meek lambs” in the
inkblots, or is apologetic or combative about his responses.

Over the years, considerable research has been carried out on

Rorschach’s inkblots; important statistical problems in analyzing
data gathered with projective techniques have been identified,
and researchers have continued in their largely unsuccessful
efforts to overcome them. There is a vast experimental literature
to suggest that the Rorschach technique lacks empirical validity.
Recently, researchers have sought to put the Rorschach on a
sounder psychometric (mental testing) basis.
New comprehensive scoring systems have been developed, and
there have been improvements in standardization and norms.
These developments have injected new life into the Rorschach as
a psychometric instrument.

A similar method, the Holtzman Inkblot Test, has been developed

in an effort to eliminate some of the statistical problems that
beset the Rorschach test. It involves the administration of a
series of 45 inkblots, the subject being permitted to make only
one response per card. The Holtzman has the desirable feature
that it provides an alternate series of 45 additional cards for use
in retesting the same person.

Research with the Rorschach and Holtzman has proceeded in a

number of directions; many studies have compared psychiatric
patients and other groups of special interest (delinquents,
underachieving students) with ostensibly normal people. Some
investigators have sought to derive indexes or predictions of
future behaviour from responses to inkblots and have checked,
for example, to see if anxiety and hostility (as inferred from
content analyses of verbal responses) are related to favourable
or unfavourable response to psychotherapy. A sizable area of
exploration concerns the effects of special conditions (e.g.,
experimentally induced anxiety or hostility) on the inkblot
perceptions reported by the subject and the content of his
speech.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
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There are other personality assessment devices, which, like the
Rorschach, are based on the idea that an individual will project
something of himself into his description of an ambiguous
stimulus.

The TAT, for example, presents the subject with pictures of

persons engaged in a variety of activities (e.g., someone with a
violin). While the pictures leave much to one’s imagination, they
are more highly specific, organized visual stimuli than are
inkblots. The test consists of 30 black and white pictures and one
blank card (to test imagination under very limited stimulation).
The cards are presented to the subject one at a time, and he is
asked to make up a story that describes each picture and that
indicates the events that led to the scene and the events that will
grow out of it. He is also asked to describe the thoughts and
feelings of the persons in his story.

Although some content-analysis scoring systems have been

developed for the TAT, attempts to score it in a standardized
quantitative fashion tend to be limited to research and have been
fewer than has been the case for the Rorschach. This is
especially the state of affairs in applied settings in which the test
is often used as a basis for conducting a kind of clinical
interview; the pictures are used to elicit a sample of verbal
behaviour on the basis of which inferences are drawn by the
clinician.

In one popular approach, interpretation of a TAT story usually

begins with an effort to determine who is the hero (i.e., to
identify the character with whom the subject seems to have
identified himself). The content of the stories is often analyzed in
terms of a so-called need-press system. Needs are defined as the
internal motivations of the hero. Press refers to environmental
forces that may facilitate or interfere with the satisfaction of
needs (e.g., in the story the hero may be physically attacked,
frustrated by poverty, or suffer the effects of rumours being
spread about him). In assessing the importance or strength of a
particular inferred need or press for the individual who takes the
test, special attention is given to signs of its pervasiveness and
consistency in different stories. Analysis of the test may depend
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considerably on the subjective, personal characteristics of the
evaluator, who usually seeks to interpret the subjects’ behaviour
in the testing situation; the characteristics of his utterances; the
emotional tone of the stories; the kinds of fantasies he offers; the
outcomes of the stories; and the conscious and unconscious
needs speculatively inferred from the stories.
Word-association techniques

The list of projective approaches to personality assessment is

long, one of the most venerable being the so-called word-
association test. Jung used associations to groups of related
words as a basis for inferring personality traits (e.g., the
inferiority “complex”). Administering a word-association test is
relatively uncomplicated; a list of words is presented one at a
time to the subject who is asked to respond with the first word or
idea that comes to mind. Many of the stimulus words may appear
to be emotionally neutral (e.g., building, first, tree); of special
interest are words that tend to elicit personalized reactions (e.g.,
mother, hit, love). The amount of time the subject takes before
beginning each response and the response itself are used in
efforts to analyze a word association test. The idiosyncratic, or
unusual, nature of one’s word-association responses may be
gauged by comparing them to standard published tables of the
specific associations given by large groups of other people.
Sentence-completion techniques

The sentence-comple-tion technique may be considered a logical

extension of word-association methods. In administering a
sentence-completion test, the evaluator presents the subject with
a series of partial sentences that he is asked to finish in his own
words (e.g., “I feel upset when . . . ”; “What burns me up is . . . ”).
Users of sentence-completion methods in assessing personality
typically analyze them in terms of what they judge to be
recurring attitudes, conflicts, and motives reflected in them.
Such analyses, like those of TAT, contain a subjective element.
Behavioral assessment
Objective observation of a subject’s behaviour is a technique that
falls in the category of behavioral assessment. A variety
of assessments could be considered, for example, in the case of a

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seven-year-old boy who, according to his teacher, is doing poorly
in his schoolwork and, according to his parents, is difficult to
manage at home and does not get along with other children. The
following types of assessment might be considered: (1) a
measure of the boy’s general intelligence, which might help
explain his poor schoolwork; (2) an interview with him to provide
insights into his view of his problem; (3) personality tests, which
might reveal trends that are related to his inadequate social
relationships; (4) observations of his activities and response
patterns in school; (5) observations of his behaviour in a specially
created situation, such as a playroom with many interesting toys
and games; (6) an interview with his parents, since the boy’s
poor behaviour in school may by symptomatic of problems at
home; and (7) direct observation of his behaviour at home.

Making all of these assessments would be a major undertaking.

Because of the variety of data that are potentially available, the
assessor must decide which types of information are
most feasible and desirable under a given set of circumstances.
In most cases, the clinician is interested in both subjective and
objective information. Subjective information includes what
clients think about, the emotions they experience, and their
worries and preoccupations. Interviews, personality inventories,
and projective techniques provide indications of subjective
experience, although considerable clinical judgment is needed to
infer what is going on within the client from test responses.
Objective information includes the person’s observable behaviour
and usually does not require the assessor to draw
complex inferences about such topics as attitudes toward
parents, unconscious wishes, and deep-seated conflicts. Such
objective information is measured by behavioral assessment. It is
often used to identify behavioral problems, which are then
treated in some appropriate way. Behavioral observations are
used to get information that cannot be obtained by other means.
Examples of such observations include the frequency of a
particular type of response, such as physical attacks on others or
observations by ward attendants of certain behaviours of
psychiatric patients. In either case, observational data must meet

24
the same standards of reliability as data obtained by more formal
measures.

The value of behavioral assessment depends on the behaviours

selected for observation. For example, if the goal of assessment
is to detect a tendency toward depression, the responses
recorded should be those that are relevant to that tendency, such
as degrees of smiling, motor activity, and talking.

A type of behavioral assessment called baseline observations is

becoming increasingly popular. These are recordings of response
frequencies in particular situations before any treatment or
intervention has been made. They can be used in several ways.
Observations might be made simply to describe a person’s
response repertoire at a given time. For example, the number of
aggressive responses made by children of different ages might
be recorded. Such observations also provide a baseline for
judging the effectiveness of behaviour modification techniques. A
similar set of observations, made after behaviour modification
procedures have been used, could be compared with the
baseline measurement as a way of determining how well the
therapy worked.

Behavioral observations can be treated in different ways. One of

these is to keep track of the frequency with which people make
designated responses during a given period of time (e.g., the
number of times a psychiatric patient makes his own bed or the
number of times a child asks for help in a novel situation).
Another approach involves asking raters to support their
judgments of others by citing specific behaviour (critical
incidents); a shop foreman, for example, may rate a worker as
depressed by citing incidents when the worker burst into tears.
Critical incidents not only add validity to ordinary ratings, but
they also suggest behavioral details that might be promising
predictors of success on the job, response to psychiatric
treatment, or level of academic achievement.

Behavioral observations are widely made in interviews and in a

variety of workaday settings. Employers, supervisors, and
teachers—either formally or informally—make use of behavioral

25
observations in making decisions about people for whom they
have responsibility. Unfortunately the subject may know he is
being studied or evaluated and, therefore, may behave atypically
(e.g., by working harder than usual or by growing tense). The
observer may be a source of error by being biased in favour of or
against the subject. Disinterested observers clearly are to be
preferred (other things being equal) for research and clinical
purposes. The greater the care taken to control such
contributions to error, the greater the likelihood that
observations will prove to be reliable.
Cognitive assessment

The types of thoughts experienced by individuals are reflective of

their personalities. Just as it is important to know what people do
and how their behaviour affects others, it is also necessary to
assess the thoughts that may lie behind the
behaviour. Cognitive assessment provides information about
thoughts that precede, accompany, and follow maladaptive
behaviour. It also provides information about the effects of
procedures that are intended to modify both how subjects think
about a problem and how they behave.

Cognitive assessment can be carried out in a variety of ways. For

example, questionnaires have been developed to sample people’s
thoughts after an upsetting event. Beepers (electronic pagers)
have been used to signal subjects to record their thoughts at
certain times of the day. There are also questionnaires to assess
the directions people give themselves while working on a task
and their theories about why things happen as they do.

The assessment of thoughts and ideas is a relatively new

development. It has received impetus from the growing evidence
that thought processes and the content of thoughts are related to
emotions and behaviour. Cognitive assessment provides
information about adaptive and maladaptive aspects of people’s
thoughts and the role their thoughts play in the processes of
planning, making decisions, and interpreting reality.
Bodily assessment

26
Bodily responses may reveal a person’s feelings and motivations,
and clinicians pay particular attention to these nonverbal
messages. Bodily functions may also reflect motivations and
concerns, and some clinicians also pay attention to these.
Sophisticated devices have been developed to measure such
physiological changes as pupil dilation, blood pressure, and
electrical skin responses under specific conditions. These
changes are related to periodic ratings of mood and to other
physiological states that provide measures of stability and
change within the individual. Technological advances are making
it possible to monitor an individual’s physiological state on a
continuous basis. Sweat, heartbeat, blood volume, substances in
the bloodstream, and blood pressure can all be recorded and
correlated with the presence or absence of certain psychological
conditions such as stress.
Personal facts

One type of information that is sometimes overlooked because of

its very simplicity consists of the subject’s life history and
present status. Much of this information may be gathered
through direct interviews with a subject or with an informant
through questionnaires and through searches of records and
archives. The information might also be gathered by examining
the subject’s personal documents (e.g., letters, autobiographies)
and medical, educational, or psychiatric case histories. The
information might concern the individual’s social and
occupational history, his cultural background, his present
economic status, and his past and present physical
characteristics. Life-history data can provide clues to
the precursors and correlates of present behaviour. This
information may help the investigator avoid needlessly
speculative or complex hypotheses about the causation of
personality traits when simple explanations might be superior.
Failure on the part of a personality evaluator to be aware of the
fact that someone had spent two years during World War II in
a concentration camp could result in misleading inferences and
conjectures about the subject’s present behaviour.

27
Reliability and validity of assessment methods
Assessment, whether it is carried out with interviews, behavioral
observations, physiological measures, or tests, is intended to
permit the evaluator to make meaningful, valid, and reliable
statements about individuals. What makes John Doe tick? What
makes Mary Doe the unique individual that she is? Whether
these questions can be answered depends upon the reliability
and validity of the assessment methods used. The fact that a test
is intended to measure a particular attribute is in no way a
guarantee that it really accomplishes this goal. Assessment
techniques must themselves be assessed.
Evaluation techniques

Personality instruments measure samples of behaviour. Their

evaluation involves primarily the determination of reliability and
validity. Reliability often refers to consistency of scores obtained
by the same persons when retested. Validity provides a check on
how well the test fulfills its function. The determination of
validity usually requires independent, external criteria of
whatever the test is designed to measure. An objective of
research in personality measurement is to delineate the
conditions under which the methods do or do not make
trustworthy descriptive and predictive contributions. One
approach to this problem is to compare groups of people known
through careful observation to differ in a particular way. It is
helpful to consider, for example, whether the MMPI or TAT
discriminates significantly between those who show progress in
psychotherapy and those who do not, whether they distinguish
between law violators of record and apparent nonviolators.
Experimental investigations that systematically vary the
conditions under which subjects perform also make
contributions.

Although much progress has been made in efforts to measure

personality, all available instruments and methods have defects
and limitations that must be borne in mind when using them;
responses to tests or interview questions, for example, often are
easily controlled or manipulated by the subject and thus are
readily “fakeable.” Some tests, while useful as group screening

28
devices, exhibit only limited predictive value in individual cases,
yielding frequent (sometimes tragic) errors. These caveats are
especially poignant when significant decisions about people are
made on the basis of their personality measures.
Institutionalization or discharge, and hiring or firing, are weighty
personal matters and can wreak great injustice when based on
faulty assessment. In addition, many personality assessment
techniques require the probing of private areas of the
individual’s thought and action. Those who seek to measure
personality for descriptive and predictive reasons must concern
themselves with the ethical and legal implications of their work.

A major methodological stumbling block in the way of

establishing the validity of any method of personality
measurement is that there always is an element of subjective
judgment in selecting or formulating criteria against which
measures may be validated. This is not so serious a problem
when popular, socially valued, fairly obvious criteria are
available that permit ready comparisons between such groups as
convicted criminals and ostensible noncriminals, or psychiatric
hospital patients and noninstitutionalized individuals. Many
personality characteristics, however, cannot be validated in such
directly observable ways (e.g., inner, private experiences such as
anxiety or depression). When such
straightforward empirical validation of an untested measure
hopefully designed to measure any personality attribute is not
possible, efforts at establishing a less impressive kind of validity
(so-called construct validity) may be pursued. A construct is a
theoretical statement concerning some underlying, unobservable
aspect of an individual’s characteristics or of his internal state.
(“Intelligence,” for example, is a construct; one cannot hold “it”
in one’s hand, or weigh “it,” or put “it” in a bag, or even look at
“it.”) Constructs thus refer to private events inferred or imagined
to contribute to the shaping of specific public events (observed
behaviour). The explanatory value of any construct has been
considered by some theorists to represent its validity. Construct
validity, therefore, refers to evidence that endorses the
usefulness of a theoretical conception of personality. A test
designed to measure an unobservable construct (such as

29
“intelligence” or “need to achieve”) is said to accrue construct
validity if it usefully predicts the kinds of empirical criteria one
would expect it to—e.g., achievement in academic subjects.

The degree to which a measure of personality is empirically

related to or predictive of any aspect of behaviour observed
independently of that measure contributes to its validity in
general. A most desirable step in establishing the usefulness of a
measure is called cross-validation. The mere fact that one
research study yields positive evidence of validity is no
guarantee that the measure will work as well the next time;
indeed, often it does not. It is thus important to conduct
additional, cross-validation studies to establish the stability of
the results obtained in the first investigation. Failure to cross-
validate is viewed by most testing authorities as a serious
omission in the validation process. Evidence for the validity of a
full test should not be sought from the same sample of people
that was used for the initial selection of individual test items.
Clearly this will tend to exaggerate the effect of traits that are
unique to that particular sample of people and can lead to
spuriously high (unrealistic) estimates of validity that will not be
borne out when other people are studied. Cross-validation
studies permit assessment of the amount of “shrinkage” in
empirical effectiveness when a new sample of subjects is
employed. When evidence of validity holds up under cross-
validation, confidence in the general usefulness of test norms
and research findings is enhanced. Establishment of reliability,
validity, and cross-validation are major steps in determining the
usefulness of any psychological test (including personality
measures).
Clinical versus statistical prediction

Another measure of assessment research has to do with the role

of the assessor himself as an evaluator and predictor of the
behaviour of others. In most applied settings he subjectively
(even intuitively) weighs, evaluates, and interprets the various
assessment data that are available. How successful he is in
carrying out his interpretive task is critical, as is knowledge of
the kinds of conditions under which he is effective in processing
such diverse data as impressions gathered in an interview, test
30
scores, and life-history data. The typical clinician usually does
not use a statistical formula that weighs and combines test
scores and other data at his disposal. Rather, he integrates the
data using impressions and hunches based on his past clinical
experience and on his understanding of psychological theory and
research. The result of this interpretive process usually includes
some form of personality description of the person under study
and specific predictions or advice for that person.

The degree of success an assessor has when he responds to the

diverse information that may be available about a particular
person is the subject of research that has been carried out on the
issue of clinical versus statistical prediction. It is reasonable to
ask whether a clinician will do as good a job in predicting
behaviour as does a statistical formula or “cookbook”—i.e., a
manual that provides the empirical, statistically predictive
aspects of test responses or scores based on the study of large
numbers of people.

An example would be a book or table of typical intelligence

test norms (typical scores) used to predict how well children
perform in school. Another book might offer specific
personality diagnoses (e.g., neurotic or psychotic) based on
scores such as those yielded by the different scales of the MMPI.
Many issues must be settled before the deceptively simple
question of clinical versus statistical prediction can be answered
definitively.

When statistical prediction formulas (well-supported by

research) are available for combining clinical information,
however, experimental evidence clearly indicates that they will
be more valid and less time-consuming than will a clinician (who
may be subject to human error in trying to simultaneously
consider and weigh all of the factors in a given case). The
clinician’s chief contributions to diagnosis and prediction are in
situations for which satisfactory formulas and quantified
information (e.g., test scores) are not available. A clinician’s
work is especially important when evaluations are required for
rare and idiosyncratic personality characteristics that have
escaped rigorous, systematic empirical study. The greatest
31
confidence results when both statistical and subjective clinical
methods simultaneously converge (agree) in the solution of
specific clinical problems.

Non-projective techniques:

Non projective techniques are subjective test in which

individuals responds on different questions. It is also called as
paper and pencil technique.

Rating scale:

A rating scale is a set of categories designed to extract

information about a quantitative attribute in social science.
Common examples are Likert scales and scales of 1-10 for which
a person chooses a number that is supposed to reflect the
perceived quality of a product.

The rating may be self - rating or rating of a particular trait in

others. Sometimes rating may also be done by a team of judges,
rating scale is usually 3 points, 5 points, or 7 points. For
example: A scale may have responses as Agree, disagree,
strongly agree, strongly disagree and neutral.

Interview method:

The interview method is a one-on-one conversation. Interview

research is a purposeful conversation and is inexperienced in
design. Gathers detailed personal information from individuals
using verbal questions in one-on-one conversations.

Questionnaire or personality inventory:

32
The questionnaire is a research toolthat contains many questions
for the purpose of collecting

information from the respondents. It is also called as self report

inventory. In the self-report

inventory, psychologists often ask direct questions about

personal interests,values, traits,

behaviors, and personality traits.

M.M.P.I (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory )

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is one

of the most used personality tests in mental health. This
experience is used by trained professionals who help identify
personality structures and psychopathology.
M.M.P.I is the most popular of all the personality inventories, it
consists of 550 statement the subject has to classify the
statements into three categories. True, false or cannot say,
questions may be for example it makes me nervous to have to
wait. MMPPI is the most popular of all personality lists, it
contains 550 statements in which the participants has to
categorize statements into three categories. True, false or not.

Eyseniks personality inventory (E.P.I)

E.P.I has 51 questions Each question has two answers. The

subject has to read every question and mark it by identifying one
33
of the answers. In psychology, Eysenck Personality
Questionnaire is a questionnaire to assess the personality traits
of a person; this is not the same questionnaire as the Eysenck
Personality Inventory or EPI which was an earlier instrument
also produced by Hans Eysenck.

Advantages of non-projective techniques:

Non-projective techniques also have a number of advantages,

including:

1. Can be conducted online or offline easily

2. Easy to set a time limit, and also give ample time to try

3. Can include a large number of questions that test for multiple

concepts

4. Easy to evaluate and present scores

5. A large number of students can be accommodated to try the

test at one time

6. It is completely unbiased

Disadvantages of non-projective

Following are the disadvantages of the non-projective test:

1. It cannot check in-depth knowledge of a candidate

34
2. The tests do not evaluate the candidate's language or writing
skills

3. Scope of guesswork leads to average candidates getting

shortlisted for the interview round

References
How a Projective Test Is Used to Measure Personality

A person's responses are thought to reflect unconscious feelings

By
Kendra Cherry, MSEd
Kendra Cherry, MSEd
Kendra Cherry, MS, is a psychosocial rehabilitation specialist,
psychology educator, and author of the "Everything Psychology
Book."
Learn about oureditorial process
Updated on April 04, 2023
Reviewed by
David Susman, PhD

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