Scientists use personality inventories to assess an individual's personality traits. Personality inventories are questionnaires, often with true-false or agree-disagree questions, on which people answer the items truthfully. These questions are designed in a way that gauge a wide range of feelings and behaviors. Common traits and behaviors include things like extraversion, anxiety, and self-esteem.
The MMPI, the Minnesoat Multiphasic Personality Inventory, is the most widely researched and used personality inventory. Instead of assessing normal personality traits, it assesses abnormal traits like emotional disorders. The items on the MMPI are empiracally derived. This type of test is a test developed by a large pool of questions with which the questions for the specific test are selected based on how the various diagnostic groups differed. Examples of the opposing diagnostic groups include the following: masculinity-femininity; introversion-extraversion; as well as scales that assess depressive tendencies.
As opposed to projective tests, personality inventories can be scored objectively, so much so that a computer can adminster and score them. This doesn't necessarily guarantee validity, seeing as though individuals may answer the questions in a way that is socially desirable. In doing this, they may score high on a scale that assesses faking and lying.
Citations:
Myers, D. (2010). Module 47: Contemporary Research on Personality. Psychology In Modules, 9th Edition (). New York: Worth Publishers.
The MMPI, the Minnesoat Multiphasic Personality Inventory, is the most widely researched and used personality inventory. Instead of assessing normal personality traits, it assesses abnormal traits like emotional disorders. The items on the MMPI are empiracally derived. This type of test is a test developed by a large pool of questions with which the questions for the specific test are selected based on how the various diagnostic groups differed. Examples of the opposing diagnostic groups include the following: masculinity-femininity; introversion-extraversion; as well as scales that assess depressive tendencies.
As opposed to projective tests, personality inventories can be scored objectively, so much so that a computer can adminster and score them. This doesn't necessarily guarantee validity, seeing as though individuals may answer the questions in a way that is socially desirable. In doing this, they may score high on a scale that assesses faking and lying.
Citations:
Myers, D. (2010). Module 47: Contemporary Research on Personality. Psychology In Modules, 9th Edition (). New York: Worth Publishers.