Chapter Outline

• Psychology’s Emphasis on Method

• Personality Data: Four Kinds of Clues
 S-Data
 I-Data
 L-Data
 B-Data
 Mixed Types of Data
• Personality Assessment
Psychology’s Emphasis on Method
Psychologists do not provide firm answers to questions about
the mind and behavior very often.
• At times, psychologists can seem more interested in the
research process than in the answers their research is
supposed to be seeking.
• Psychologists are sensitive to and sometimes even self-
conscious about
• research methodology
• the way they use statistics
• procedures they use to draw inferences from data
Scientific Education and Technical Training
Research emphasizes creative thinking over memorizing
because it entails seeking new knowledge, not cataloging
facts already known

Technical training teaches how to use what is already

known; scientific training teaches how to explore the
unknown
• Medical education is technical
• Psychologists are trained with the scientific approach
Personality Data (1)
Applies to all parts of the psychological triad (thoughts, feelings,
behaviors)
• Use personality clues: the observable aspects of personality,
such as behaviors, test scores, or responses to lab procedures;
use as many as possible
• Funder’s Second Law
• There are no perfect indicators of personality; there are
only clues, and clues are always ambiguous
• Funder’s Third Law
• Something beats nothing, two times out of three
Personality Data (2)
S-Data: Just Ask

S-data: A person’s evaluation of their own personality

• Self-ratings often match descriptions from others; the best

expert about a person’s personality is often the person
him/herself
• Questionnaires or surveys can have rating scales or open-
ended response options

• Face validity: the degree to which an assessment instrument

appears to measure what it is intended to measure
Advantages of S-Data (1)
1. Large amount of information
• You are always with yourself
2. Access to thoughts, feelings, and intention
• You know your own fantasies, hopes, dreams, fears, and
intentions
3. Definitional truth
• The data are true by definition
• You know your own fantasies, hopes, dreams, fears, and
intentions
Advantages of S-Data (2)
4. Causal Force
• Self-efficacy: What you think you are capable of and the
kind of person you think you are
• Self-verification: People work to convince others to treat
them in a manner that confirms their self-conceptions
5. Simple and easy
• Cost-effective
Disadvantages of S-Data
1. Bias
• People have distorted images of themselves
• People may not want to admit certain things about
themselves
2. Error
• Fish-and-water effect: People do not notice their most
obvious characteristics because they are always that way.
3. Too simple and easy
• S-data are so cheap and easy that they are probably
overused
S-Data: Just Ask
ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES OF THE MAIN SOURCES OF
Table 2.1 DATA FOR PERSONALITY
Advantages Disadvantages
S-Data: Self-Reports 1. Large amount of information 1. Bias

2. Access to thoughts, feelings, and intentions 2. Error

3. Some S-data are true by definition (e.g., self-esteem) 3. Too simple and too easy
4. Causal force
5. Simple and easy
I-Data: Informants’ Reports 1. Large amount of information 1. Limited behavioral information
2. Real-world basis 2. Lack of access to private experience
3. Common sense and context 3. Error

4. Some I-data are true by definition (e.g., likeability) 4. Bias

5. Causal force
L-Data: Life Outcomes 1. Objective and verifiable 1. Multidetermination
2. Possible lack of psychological
2. Intrinsic importance relevance
3. Psychological relevance
B-Data: Behavioral
Observations 1. Wide range of contexts (both real and contrived) 1. Difficult and expensive
2. Appearance of objectivity 2. Uncertain interpretation
I-Data: Find Somebody Who Knows
I-data: Judgments by informants

• Acquaintances, coworkers, clinical psychologists

• No training or expertise needed
• May be more accurate than self-judgments for
extremely desirable or undesirable traits
• Used frequently in daily life
Advantages of I-Data (1)
1. A large amount of information
• Many behaviors in many situations
• Judgments from multiple informants are
possible

2. Real-world basis
• Not from contrived tests or constructed and
controlled environments
• More likely to be relevant to important
outcomes
Advantages of I-Data (2)
3. Common sense
• Takes context into account
4. Definitional truth
• Some aspects of personality are based on what others
think
5. Causal force
• Reputation affects opportunities and expectancies
• Expectancy effects or behavioral confirmation
Disadvantages of I-Data
1. Limited behavioral information
• Acquaintances often see each other in only one context
2. Lack of access to private experience
• People do not share all their private thoughts and feelings
3. Error
• More likely to remember behaviors that are extreme,
unusual, or emotionally arousing
4. Bias
• Letter of recommendation effect
• The person could be racist, sexist, etc.
L-Data: The Residue of Personality (1)

L-data: verifiable, concrete, real-life facts that may hold

psychological significance
• Can be obtained from archival records
• School records, bank statements, medical files, and, of
course, the internet
Can be thought of as the results, or “residue,” of personality
• Your behavior also leaves traces of where you have been
and what you have done
 L-Data: The Residue of Personality (2)

What Your Personal Space Says About You These pictures are of actual dorm
rooms at the University of Texas around the year 2000 and were part of the study by
Gosling et al. (2002) cited in the text. One of the rooms belonged to someone high in
the trait of “conscientiousness,” whereas the other belonged to someone low in this
Advantages and Disadvantages of L-Data
Advantages
1. Objective and verifiable
• E.g., income, marital status, health, and the number of online
followers
2. Intrinsic importance
• Goal of every applied psychologist is to predict, and even have a
positive effect on, real-life consequences
3. Psychological relevance
• Some people have traits that promote career success
Disadvantage
4. Multidetermination
• L-data can be influenced by much more than personality
B-Data: See What the Person Does (1)
Natural B-Data: gathered by observing a person, or by having a
person record themselves

Diary and experience-sampling: the person observes themself rather

than having a psychologist or trained observer do so.
• EAR: electronically activated recorder
• Wearable cameras
• Ambulatory assessment: using computer-assisted methods to
assess behavior, thoughts, and feelings during normal daily
activities
Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and other platforms
 B-Data: See What the Person Does (2)

Gathering Natural B-Data The person on the right is wearing an electronically

activated recorder (EAR) device that samples conversations throughout the day.
B-Data: See What the Person Does (3)
Laboratory B-Data: Observing behavior in the laboratory
Observations come in two varieties:

Behavioral Experiments
• Make a situation happen and record behavior
• Examine reactions to situations
• Represent real-life contexts that are difficult to observe directly

Physiological measures: Give us information on biological

“behavior”
 B-Data: See What the Person Does (4)

Gathering Laboratory B-Data This psychological laboratory at Purnea

University in India is equipped for collecting B-Data including several measures of
performance.
Advantages of B-Data
Advantages:
1. Range of contexts
• Researchers can construct situations
2. Appearance of objectivity
• Less distortion and exaggeration
• However, subjective judgments must still be made
Disadvantages of B-Data
Disadvantages:
• Difficult and expensive
• Experience-sampling methods require major efforts
to recruit, instruct, and motivate research
participants, and may also need special equipment
• Uncertain interpretation
• Behaviors may not mean what we assume they do
Mixed Types of Data
Data do not always fit into only one category
• There is a wide range of possible types of data that are
relevant to personality

• Behavioroid
• Participants report what they think they would do
• A mix of S- and B-Data
S-Data and B-Data Personality Tests
Most personality tests provide S-data
• Other personality tests yield B-Data
• What does it mean when someone says, “I prefer a
shower to a bath” on a questionnaire?
Is intelligence a personality trait?
• Tests of intelligence, or IQ tests, also yield B-Data
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (1)
Projective tests: The person may or may not be aware of the
inner processes

Reponses to a certain inkblot may reveal:

• Someone who is preoccupied with morbidity
• Someone who is obsessive or overly analytical
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (2)
• Rorschach inkblot test
• Thoughts revealed by the inkblots are not always deep,
hidden, or mysterious

• Draw-A-Person test
• Interpreted based on what kind of person is drawn,
exaggerated or omitted body parts, etc.

• Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• Tell stories about drawings of people and ambiguous
events; used to assess motivational states
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (3)
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (4)
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (5)
• Analysis of content of stories, letters, and speeches
• Mostly used by clinical psychologists
• Provide B-Data
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (6)
Disadvantages
• Validity evidence is scarce
• Expensive and time-consuming
• A psychologist cannot be sure about what they
mean
• Other, less expensive tests work as well or better
• Sometimes used inappropriately
Personality Tests: Projective Tests (7)
Advantages
• Good for breaking the ice
• Some skilled clinicians may be able to use them to get
information not captured by controlled research.
Personality Tests: Objective Tests
Objective tests: Questions seem more objective and less
open to interpretation

• California Psychological Inventory (CPI)

• Commonality scale
• Not very useful for personality measurement

If everybody read and interpreted an item in exactly the

same way, the item would not be very useful for the
assessment of individual differences
Methods of Objective Test Construction: Rational (1)
Rational method: Write items that seem directly, obviously, and
rationally related to what is to be measured

• Based on theory, but sometimes less systematic

• Woodworth Personality Data Sheet in WWI
• Provides S-data

Four conditions for validity

1. Items mean the same thing to the test taker and creator
2. Capability for accurate self-assessment
3. Willingness to make an accurate and undistorted report
4. Items must be valid indicators of what is being measured
Methods of Objective Test Construction: Rational (2)
Most rationally constructed tests do not meet all four
conditions
• Continue to be the most common form of
psychological measurement

Face validity: Rational tests seek to measure exactly what

they seem to be measuring, on their “face”
Methods of Objective Test Construction: Factor Analytic (1)
Factor analysis: a statistical technique that identifies groups of
things that seem to have something in common

• Steps for using this method

• Generate a long list of objective items
• Administer these items to a large number of people
• Analyze with a factor analysis
• Consider what the items that group together have in
common and name the factor
 Methods of Objective Test Construction: Factor Analytic (2)

Questionnaire Items That Measure the Same Factor If these three items are correlated with each ot
, people who answer True to the first item tend to answer True to the second one and False to the
they might all “load on” (or measure) a common psychological factor.
Methods of Objective Test Construction: Empirical
• Empirical method: Identify items based on how people in
preidentified groups respond
• Gather many items
• Use a sample of people already divided into groups
• Administer test
• Compare the answers of the different groups
• Cross-validation: Determine whether the test can predict
behavior, diagnosis, or category membership in a new
sample
Methods of Objective Test Construction: Mixed
A combination of methods
• Generate items with rational method, analyze
responses with factor analysis, and correlate factors
with independent criteria.
• Any personality scale must show that it can predict
what people do, how they are seen by others, and
how they fare in life
Clicker Question 1
A statistical technique that identifies groups of things
that seem to have something in common is called
a) factor analysis
b) rational analysis
c) projective testing
d) the empirical method
Clicker Question 1: Answer
A statistical technique that identifies groups of things
that seem to have something in common is called
a) factor analysis (correct answer)
b) rational analysis
c) projective testing
d) the empirical method
Clicker Question 2
If you are interested in what a person does, rather than
what a person says about himself, then you are collecting
a) S-data.
b) L-data.
c) B-Data.
d) I-data.
Clicker Question 2: Answer
If you are interested in what a person does, rather than
what a person says about himself, then you are collecting
a) S-data.
b) L-data.
c) B-Data. (correct answer)
d) I-data.
Clicker Question 3
What does it mean to say that S-data have causal force?
a) S-data cause personality.
b) What people think about themselves influences
how they behave.
c) How people behave is caused by what others think
of them.
d) People’s environments cause their self-perceptions.
Clicker Question 3: Answer
What does it mean to say that S-data have causal force?
a) S-data cause personality.
b) What people think about themselves influences
how they behave. (correct answer)
c) How people behave is caused by what others think
of them.
d) People’s environments cause their self-perceptions.