CHAPTER 5

The History of
Personality Testing
Introduction
This chapter provides background on personality testing to
give you a sense of how personality tests have developed
over the years and how we can think about how to assess
an investor’s personality traits.
OBJECTIVES

1. Provide an overview of the historical development of personality

testing,

2. Classify personality tests into distinct categories, including self-

report inventories, projective tests, behavioral assessments, and other
relevant types.

3. Discuss the nature of personality assessment

4. Discuss the projective and objective tests.

Types of Personality Test
There are two basic kinds of personality tests:
Objective test is usually a pencil and paper questionnaire. Answers to each item
are either true/false or multiple choice. These test are considered highly
structured because of the limited amount of freedom the subject has in terms of
his available responses to the test questions. Objective test are scored in a
straightforward manner.
Projective test present people with arbitrary, open-ended test items. Not only are
the items of this kind of test arbitrary, but also the tests themselves are
unstructured by design. This allows subject to “project” themselves onto the
“blank screens” that are the test item themselves, the scoring of the test is
consequently very difficult to do in an objective manner because it is often up to
the interpretation of one particular psychologist.
Woodsworth Personal
Data Sheet
The historical precursor to all personality tests.
R. S Woodsworth devised the instrument during World War 1 in
order to screen for individuals who were likely to be
susceptible to shellshock. Here are two sample items that
showed much differentiation between those susceptible to
shell shock and those who were not: Do you feel sad or low-
spirited most of the time? Are you ever bothered with the
feeling that people are reading your thoughts?
Edwards Personality
Inventory
is a deductive, theory-based approach and make use of factor
analysis. It is a pretty simple test. For example, an item
measuring sensitivity is: “Am I sensitive and easily hurt by
others?” All together there were 2,824 items, which were sorted
by factor-analytic methods into 216 categories thought to
represent various personality test. Further factor analysis
reduced the number of categories to 18 traits that seem to “
enable the assessment of examinees’ interpersonal-relations
skills, personality traits, interests, and values.
MyersBriggs Type
Indicator
The idea for this test came from Carl Jung’s theory of
personality types, which we discussed in Chapter 4. The MBTI
measures personality along four bipolar scales: introversion-
extroversion, sensing-intuition, thinking-feeling, and judging-
perceiving.
According to Allen, “The essence of the theory is that much
seemingly random variation in the behavior is actually quite
orderly and consistent, being due to basic differences in the
ways individuals prefer to use their perception and judgement.”
MyersBriggs Type
Indicator
First dimension is responsible for apprehension of external stimuli
and is governed by two sets of opposites that are together known
as the four functions: thinking (T)-feeling (F), and sensing (S)-
intuiting (N).
Second dimension consists of two attitudes, extraversion (E) and
Introversion (I). The MBTI added another set of opposites to Jung’s
four: They are judging (J) and perceiving (P).
The MBTI instrument was developed in the 1940s by Isabel Briggs
Myers and original research was dong in the 1940s and 50s.
The 16 MBTI Types
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
Han Eysenck’s questionnaire measured personality traits along three dimensions: E
(introversion-extraversion), N ( neuroticism), and P ( psychoticism ) .
The EPQ developed out of two priors instruments: The Maudsley Medical
Questionnaire (MMQ) and the Maudsley Personality Inventory (MPI).
The MMQ introduced the concept of neuroticism, and the MPI included a
measurement of introversion-extraversion. Eysenck added items to test for
psychoticism around the year 1952.

The following chart lists the characteristics that are associated with the scores:
E Scores:
Subjects with a high E score tend to be more sociable, popular, easy going, talkative,
impulsive, risk-taking, and unreliable.
Subjects with a low E score tend to be more introspective, quiet, distant (except to
close friends), serious, organized and reliable.
E score tend to be higher for men, to decrease with age, and to be uncorrelated with
socioeconomic class.
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire
N Scores:
Subjects with high N score tend to be moody, restless, touchy, emotionally, over-
reactive, and anxious.
Low N score are calm, carefree, even tempered, and reliable.
N score tend to decrease with age and be higher for women and for people of
lower socioeconomic class.

In considering whether or not to add P to the EPQ, Eysenck considered whether

there was a clear-cut difference between psychotic people and normal
(nonpsychotic) people. He came to the conclusion that most people have at least a
small psychotic tendency.
P Scores:
Subjects with high P score are solitary, uncooperative, hostile, cruel, socially
withdrawn, delusional, and creative.
P scores tend to be higher for men, lower for middle-class individuals, and to
decrease with age.
Eysenck Personality Questionnaire

Eysenck found that this schema meshed well with Jung’s personality
typology as well as the typology of the ancient thinkers Hippocrates
and Galen. For example, combining the two type dimension E and N
resulted in the four temperaments hypothesized by Hippocrates :
sanguine, choleric, melancholic, and phlegmatic. “ Thus, the
(emotionally) stable extravert is sanguine, the unstable extravert is
melancholic, and the stable introvert is phlegmatic.
 This test was originally developed in the
1930s by Starke R. Hathaway and J.C.
Minnesota McKinley in order to diagnose mental
disorders.

Multiphasic The test is formulated to accurately assess

Personality what people think is going on in their lives .

Accordingly subjects are asked to respond
such true or false items as “ I believe I am
Inventory being plotted against” and “I am sure I am
being talked about”. Over the years the
MMPI began to reflect a lifestyle that was
rapidly disappearing.
 The final outcome of Raymond Cattell’s factor
analysis of personality traits was his 16
Personality Factor test. He began with a 4,500-
word list of all traits applying to human

Cattell’s personality.
Cattell and his colleague Odbert reduced the list

16PF to 160 synonym groups called “surface clusters”.

Then the surface clusters were reduced to 171
“trait elements” by again eliminating synonyms.
The 171 elements were intercorrelated into 36
clusters. These clusters were called “surface
traits”. Ten more surface traits were added and
then the 46 traits were used to isolate Cattell’s 16
primary factors.
This still used widely in business and education.
Table 5.1 Cattell’s 16 Primary Factor Descriptions
Table 5.2 Five Global Factor Descriptions
The Five-Factor Model and the Revised NEO Personality
Inventory
The most recent five-factor model comes from psychologists Robert McCrae and Paul Costa.
They are also the authors of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory. This inventory measures
personality traits along five dimensions: Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to experience,
Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness ( Table 5.3)
Table 5.3 Five Dimensions of Measuring Personality
Traits.
Factor Low scorer Factor Measures...... High Scorer
Characteristic Characteristics
adjustments versus emotional instability.
(N) Neuroticism Worrying, nervous, emotional, Identifies individuals prone to psychological Calm, relaxed, unemotional,
insecure. distress, unrealistics ideas, and hearty, self satisfied
maladaptive coping mechanisms.

Sociable, active, talkative, the quantity and intensity of Reserved, sober, unexuberant,
(E) Extraversion
person-oriented, optimistic, interpersonal interaction, activity level, aloof, task-oriented, quiet.
fun-loving, need for stimulation, and capacity for
joy.

amount of proactive-seeking, and Conventional, down-to-

(O) Openness to Curious, broad interests,
appreciation of experience for its own earth, narrow interests,
experience creative, original.
sake , toleration for and exploration of unartistic, unanalytical.
the unfamiliar.
Table 5.3 Five Dimensions of Measuring Personality
Traits.
Factor Low scorer Factor Measures...... High Scorer
Characteristic Characteristics

(A) Agreeableness Soft-hearted, good-natured, the quality of one’s interpersonal Cynical, rude, suspicious,
trusting, helpful, gullible, orientation along a continuum from uncooperative, ruthless,
straightforward. compassion to antagonism in thoughts, irritable, and manipulative.
feelings and actions.

the individual’s degree of organization Aimless, unreliable, lazy,

Organized, reliable, hard- persistence, and motivation and goal- careless, negligent, weak-
(C) Conscientiousness
working, punctual, neat, and directed behavior. Contrasts willed.
persevering. dependable, fastidious people with
those who are lackadaisical.
McCrae and Costa make four philosophical assumptions about human nature.

1. First, they think that there is a certain lawfulness in human behavior such that it is possible
to come to know and detect its regularities.

2. Second, they posit that humans as a species are capable of delivering an objective report of
their own as well as others’ behavior. This is important as their research often uses self-reports
and the observations that one spouse makes of another.

3. Third, they allow that the scales of the five factors can vary widely to accommodate those of
us who do not fall within the average ranges.

4. Lastly, they reject the determinism that is present in most of the theories we have discussed.
Summary
The purpose of this chapter was to
introduce the concept of personality
testing so that the readers can begin
to think about themselves and their
clients in terms of an investor
personality type.
Thank You !
For your attention!

GROUP 5
Cortes, Kristee Mae
Dahil, Angeline M.
Damayo, Julie Mae