534 CHAPTER 13
IPIP Neo Personality I nventory. NOTE: This is not a brief experiment; allow enough
time to answer 122 items. Simulate the Experiment, IPIP Neo Personality Inventory
Another inventory in common use is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which is
based on the ideas of Carl Jung and looks at four personality dimensions: the sensing/intu-
ition (S/N) dimension, the thinking/feeling (T/F) dimension, the introversion/extraversion (I/E)
dimension, and the perceiving/judging (P/J) dimension. These four dimensions can differ for
each individual, resulting in 16 (4 * 4) possible personality types: ISTJ, ISTP, ISFP, ISFJ, and
so on (Briggs & Myers, 1998). The Myers-Briggs is often used to assess personality to help
people know the kinds of careers for which they may best be suited. However, despite the
widespread use of the MBTI in business and vocational counseling, it has some significant
limitations. The assessment has been questioned for both its validity and its reliability, and it
has been suggested that more robust assessments be used, especially in employee selection
and assignment situations (Pittenger, 2005). to Learning Objective 7.8
Other common personality tests include the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
(Eysenck & Eysenck, 1993), the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (Keirsey, 1998), and the
California Psychological Inventory (Gough, 1995).
EVALUATING BEHAVIORAL ASSESSMENTS, INTERVIEWS, AND PERSONALITY INVENTORIES
We have discussed a variety of structured assessment techniques aimed at providing
objective responses and data. Each of these has advantages and disadvantages. For
example, the same problems that exist with self-report data (such as surveys) exist with
interviews. Clients can lie, distort the truth, misremember, or give what they think is a
socially acceptable answer instead of true information. Interviewers themselves can be
biased, interpreting what the client says in light of their own belief systems or preju-
dices. Freud certainly did this when he refused to believe that his patients had actually
been sexually molested as children, preferring to interpret that information as a fantasy
instead of reality (Russell, 1986).
Another problem with interviews is something called the halo effect, which is a ten-
dency to form a favorable or unfavorable impression of someone at the first meeting, so
that all of a person’s comments and behavior after that first impression will be interpreted
to agree with the impression—positively or negatively. The halo effect can happen in any
social situation, including interviews between a psychological professional and a client.
First impressions really do count, and people who make a good first impression because
of clothing, personal appearance, or some other irrelevant* characteristic will seem to have
a “halo” hanging over their heads—they can do no wrong after that (Lance et al., 1994;
Thorndike, 1920). (Sometimes the negative impression is called the “horn effect.”)
Problems with behavioral assessments can include the observer effect (when a per-
son’s behavior is affected by being watched) and observer bias, which can be controlled
by having multiple observers and correlating their observations with each other.
to Learning Objective 1.6. As with any kind of observational method, there is no control
over the external environment. A person observing a client for a particular behavior may
not see that behavior occur within the observation time—much as some car problems
never seem to show up when the mechanic is examining the car.
The advantage of personality inventories over interviews and projective tests (dis-
cussed in the next section) is that inventories are standardized (i.e., everyone gets exactly
the same questions and the answers are scored in exactly the same way). In fact, responses
to inventories are often scored on a computer. Observer bias and bias of interpretation are
typically not possible. Across different scoring programs, though, there may be some vari-
ability in the diagnostic suggestions provided by the computerized scoring (Pant et al.,
2014). In general, the validity and reliability of personality inventories are generally rec-
ognized as being greatly superior to those of projective tests (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997;
Lilienfeld et al., 2000; Wood et al., 2010).halo effect
tendency of an interviewer to allow
positive characteristics of a client
to influence the assessments of the
client’s behavior and statements. *irrelevant: not applying to the case or example at hand.