Personality

The Psychometric View

Paul Kline

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134878048
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría en psicología

Although the psychometric view of personality is well established, it is little dealt with in most textbooks. Personality: the Psychometric View describes clearly the methods and findings of the psychometric testing of personality. Leading author Paul Kline discusses the theory of personality testing and the main types of personality test, as well as their practical application to occupational, educational and clinical psychology.
Personality: the Psychometric View is the only text on the psychometric view of personality which is written with enough clarity to be suited to students. It will be valuable to all students of psychology, as well as postgraduates designing tests, and those in education and the social sciences.

Chapter 1

The meaning of personality

The term personality has many meanings in psychology. Indeed it has been claimed by Hall and Lindzey (1957) that there are as many definitions as there are theorists. This is a serious matter for the scientific and systematic study of personality since, clearly, definitions of terms affect the content and method of what is studied. For example, the subject matter of papers in psychoanalysis, especially modern research, bears almost no relationship to that of situationalists such as Mischel (1968, 1977) or social learning theorists, typified by Bandura (Bandura and Walters, 1963). In this first chapter, therefore, it will be necessary to see to what extent there is common ground within these different approaches to personality and to delineate the trait account which underlies the psychometric view.

Different theories of personality

It is not possible, or necessary, to describe in detail all personality theories. Here I shall set out the main points of some of the most influential theories and show how these theories have within them different definitions and concepts. All this means, of course, is that unless considerable common ground can be found, any research devoted to one theory will seem useless from the viewpoint of another. That is why it is essential to clarify definitions and concepts.

Psychoanalytic theories

Classical psychoanalysis, as typified by Freud (1939), Jungian theory (Jung, 1940), more modern American psychoanalysis (Fromm, 1965) or the recent French version (Lacan, 1966), has the unconscious, although differently described, as a key concept. Psychoanalytic studies of personality must, difficult as this is, take this into account. This profoundly affects method. Freudians stress the importance of defence mechanisms, such as repression and reaction formation, the Oedipus and castration complex, and the drives of sexuality and aggression. Child development is an important aspect of the theory, especially psychosexual development, and underlying everything is a closed energy model, instantiated in a mind conceptualised as id, ego and superego, forces in fine equilibrium.

Jung’s theories also embrace the closed energy model although the descriptions of the mind are different and the aim of therapy and life (analytic psychology is nothing if not bold) is not ego control but individuation, a blend of persona and the wisdom of the collective unconscious, attractive but certainly not attained by Jung and probably unattainable.

For Jung and Freud, personality is seen as resulting from the equilibrium of the mind which is conceptualised even in two such essentially similar theories in concepts which are markedly different. For example, to study the collective unconscious would throw little light on the Oedipus complex. Clearly these concepts and definitions of personality demand quite separate research.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that psychoanalytic theories in general demand a way of looking at the problems of personality which to their adherents seem so natural as to be unnoticed. Thus the mind is seen in terms of depth (the theories are sometimes called depth psychologies). Generally the more deeply seated phenomena are the more important; everything is caused; childhood experiences and fantasies are crucially influential, and self-knowledge, on account of the unconscious, is impossible without analysis, except for the master. Such a psychoanalytic view of personality profoundly affects what appears to be important in the field and thus the research and scholarship which might be undertaken.

This view of personality is in stark contrast to that of Bandura and Walters (1963) whose social learning theory is essentially, as the name suggests, a special application to personality of operant learning theory, as propounded by Skinner (e.g. Skinner, 1953). For these behaviour is the important component of personality. Mental events because they are not public are not worthy of scientific study and, of course, they are not amenable to it. Phobias, for example, are regarded in this theory as learned maladaptive responses. Personality is a set of learned behaviours. This is different indeed from the psychoanalytic conception, of whatever school, of a phobia as arising from deeply buried unconscious conflicts.

The research undertaken by social learning theorists into personality will be concerned with establishing the patterns and conditions of reinforcement which are salient for personality development and change. These will be entirely different from psychoanalytically based research. What is defined as personality by these two approaches has little in common, although both see parents as important influences on personality.

One aspect of social learning theory which separates it entirely from earlier psychoanalytic ideas must be mentioned briefly here although it will be dealt with in detail later in this chapter. This concerns the scientific method. Most modern personality theories attempt to be scientific in the Popperian sense (Popper, 1959). This means that they are set out such that they may be falsified. This demand, as shall be seen, has undoubtedly affected the development of these theories and this is particularly true of the psychometric approach.

Mischel (1968) originated what has been called situationalism, because he argues that personality traits, far from accounting for personality, are variables of relatively little importance because behaviour is far more determined by the situation in which individuals find themselves. For this reason, it is asserted, the correlations between personality traits and external criteria are usually small. For example, a person may well appear extraverted at a party or football match but will appear introverted, if observed at a funeral or in a large library.

I shall not say more here about situationalism because its influence has affected the modern psychometric account of personality, at least in principle. However, there is no doubt that research driven by situationalism is very different from that emerging from trait psychology.

Situationalism, because it attacked trait psychology and the psychometric approach, is a useful entrance to the subject matter of this book, the psychometric view of personality. However, before I turn to this it is instructive to mention briefly yet another attempt to deny the importance of personality traits. This is attribution theory which has been well summarised by Eiser (1980). Essentially this asserts that traits are in the eyes of the beholder. Traits are attributed to individuals as explanations of their behaviour. They result from the cognitive processes of observers which have to be studied rather than the actual behaviour of those who are observed. The weakness of this position is that it denies the possibility that traits are influential in determining behaviour. Logically both positions could be true. Nevertheless, it illustrates the point, perhaps with even greater clarity than could be done with the other theories, that definitions of personality are intertwined with theoretical viewpoints.

Conclusions from descriptions of personality theories

I have described the essentials of a number of personality theories to demonstrate that the definitions and concepts of personality are dependent on particular theories and viewpoints. Furthermore, theories of personality affect the kind of research and the methods of investigation which are used so that there may be little in common between the results of different approaches to personality. It would be surprising, therefore, if any one theory were all embracing, although psychoanalytic theories do make such claims. Clearly, however, given these problems it would be advantageous if a particular approach to the study of personality could cover much of the ground.

Trait theory of personality

As Kreitler and Kreitler (1990) point out, the everyday conception of personality is in terms of traits. Traits are conceptualised as stable tendencies or characteristics of individuals. Since it is obvious that people differ in terms of traits, it is natural that the psychometric view of personality should be a trait theory, for psychometrics is the study of individual differences. The psychometric view of personality, therefore, arises from the study of individual differences in personality traits.

Personality traits are used, in trait theories, to answer two fundamental questions, those concerning the determinants of behaviour and the structure of personality – how traits are related. Thus to a trait theorist personality is the sum of an individual’s traits and these traits explain that person’s behaviour. The research questions, therefore, in trait psychology involve the number and nature of personality traits and their relations to behaviour.

The psychometric view of personality, or what might be called the psychometric model of personality, constitutes the answers to these two questions which have been obtained from the psychometric study of personality. It is these answers and the methods from which they were derived which form the core of the present book.

It should not be thought that the psychometric view of personality and the trait view are identical. This is not the case because it is possible to develop a trait view without psychometrics, or only partly based on psychometrics, as was done, for example, by Murray (1938). McDougall (1932), indeed, expounded an important and influential trait theory without tests of any kind. However, as shall be argued throughout this book, the psychometric view of personality can offer a greatly improved version of the trait model, because it is based upon sound measurement.

The psychometric model of personality

Definition of personality

In the psychometric model, personality is defined as the sum of an individual’s traits which determine all behaviour. Thus, as shall be seen later in this book, it is possible to write specification equations for a variety of behaviours in terms of traits. In some cases good predictions can be made from them. Before explicating this model in the remainder of this book, it is necessary to point out some of its advantages compared with other models or views of personality.

The psychometric model and scientific method

Throughout this book it is assumed that the best method to obtain valuable knowledge about human personality is through the scientific method. This is not an article of faith but is derived from the fact that in the natural sciences the application of the scientific method has led to an enormous increase in understanding. However, the subject matter of psychology differs so considerably from that of the natural sciences that it is arguable that the scientific method is not well suited to it. Indeed I have demonstrated (Kline, 1988) that in many branches of psychology the scientific method, at least as conceived by its practitioners, manifestly fails. However, in the field of personality, the scientific method, as represented by psychometrics, seems able to make some progress.

Essence of the scientific method

As was discussed earlier in this chapter, a critical aspect of the method lies in the formulation of refutable hypotheses. In practice this has demanded that research in the field of psychology has certain characteristics which are set out below.

— All variables should be quantified. Of course quantification can take various forms and the higher the precision the better.

— Samples should be large and representative. On account of the heterogeneity of human beings and their enormous numbers sampling is essential in all experimental work. Clearly samples must be adequate if conclusions beyond the experimental results are to be drawn.

— Statistical analyses should be carried out. It is essential that statistical analyses be carried out to show to what extent the results could have arisen by sampling error. This is the problem which arises from most clinical studies. However, as will be fully discussed in the relevant sections of this book, many statistical analyses reported in the research literature are so poor as to be misleading. The reverse of this error is also often found, as has been shown by Kline (1988). Here researchers are so determined to produce sound statistical work that they choose problems easy to analyse but of a profound triviality.

— Research designs should be such as to allow proper conclusions to be drawn. This aspect of the scientific method is closely related to the statistical analysis discussed above. However, in many studies of psychotherapy, for example, no control groups who receive a placebo treatment are used. This makes evaluation impossible.

— Hypotheses should be drawn up such that they may be refuted. This is the critical aspect of the scientific method. However, only by ensuring that the four points above are properly executed is it truly possible to refute hypotheses.

Nevertheless, despite its apparent simplicity, a few comments should be made about the principle of refutability. First it means that no scientific knowledge is fixed but is always held true until it is refuted. Furthermore, it should be pointed out that hypotheses cannot be proven, only refuted. An obvious example of this can be seen with the hypothesis that all swans are white. This hypothesis can never be proven no matter how many white swans are observed. It may be held until refuted by observing a black specimen. It should further be noted that a hypothesis need only be logically refutable to be scientific. Thus before the development of space rockets it was quite scientific to hypothesise that the moon consisted of cheese or any other substance since this was, in principle, testable.

Finally there is another, perhaps more fundamental, difficulty associated with the notion of refutability. This concerns its meaning. As Gruenbaum (1984) has argued, careful analysis indicates that the only meaning which can be attached to the claim that some hypothesis is not refutable is that the individual making that claim cannot think how it might be refuted. Nevertheless, despite this problem, as an effective, practical approach to carrying out scientific research the Popperian notion of science as depending upon the formulation of refutable hypotheses is highly valuable.

From this analysis of the scientific model it can be argued that psychometrics and, therefore, the psychometric model is well able to meet the demands of good scientific work. Thus psychometrics is concerned with the development of psychological tests thus ensuring as sound quantification as possible. Similarly psychometrics has always placed great emphasis on sampling, research design and statistical analysis, as can be seen, for example, in Nunnally (1978), Cattell (1978) and Kline (1992a). This is one important advantage of the psychometric model of personality compared with other approaches. Thus it is notoriously difficult to put psychoanalytic theory to a rigorous scientific test, although by no means impossible (Kline, 1981).

There is a further advantage inherent in the psychometric view of personality. This is simply that it is virtually all embracing. It claims that all behaviour can be understood in terms of traits. If at present this seems to be impossible, this is only because of shortcomings in measurement and in the mathematical conceptualisation of the problems of personality, at least as argued by Cattell (1981).

Before concluding this chapter a little more needs to be said about traits. In the English language there is a huge number of trait terms. Traits which seem to be concerned with problem solving, such as intelligence, a pervasive trait, are usually conceptualised as ability traits. These have been shown (Cattell, 1957) to be separate from personality traits in the sense that the correlations between traits in these different fields are generally low and non-significant. However, there is a distinction to be drawn among personality traits themselves. This is between temperamental and dynamic traits. The former account for how we do what we do, the latter for why we do it. To exemplify the distinction, extraversion is a temperamental trait. Extraverted individuals can be easily spotted. As they do things they make a lot of noise and expend a great deal of energy. If other people are about they talk and joke with them. Dynamic traits, on the other hand, are drives. Fear can be a powerful drive as is sex or hunger.

A distinction can also be made between states or moods and traits. Traits are relatively constant, enduring characteristics of an individual, whereas states are transient. Anxiety is particularly interesting in this respect because there is clearly trait and state anxiety. Trait anxiety is the general level of anxiety which each individual has, if nothing particularly arousing has occurred. State anxiety reflects the anxiety provoked by some event or thought. Visits to the dentist, examinations and unusual situations are all likely to arouse state anxiety.

In the relevant chapters of this book, these distinctions will be fully discussed and the basis for them will be examined together with their implications for the psychometric view of personality. Here it is sufficient...