Personality Assessment

This is really interesting. There are sort of two schools of thoughts:

people have clear, well-defined goals and are actively striving to achieve them (McGregor, McAdams, & Little, 2006) $\to$ humanistically oriented models

• ask them directly about themselves and their goals

people lack insight into their feelings and motives, such that their behavior is influenced by processes that operate outside of their awareness $\to$ psychodynamically oriented theories

• Given that people are unaware of these processes, it does not make sense to ask directly about them.

Categorizations

1. Objective Personality Tests
   1. Self-report measures
   2. Informant ratings
2. Projective Tests
3. Implicit Tests
4. Behavior and Performance measures

Which test is best?

No single method of assessing personality is perfect or infallible; each of the major methods has both strengths and limitations. By using a diversity of approaches, researchers can overcome the limitations of any single method and develop a more complete and integrative view of personality.