In this video I describe the relationship between scores on trait assessments and actual behaviors. As Walter Mischel demonstrated, the correlation between trait scores and behaviors is fairly low, but it’s important to keep in mind that traits describe tendencies, … Read More
The Five Factor Model or “Big Five”
In this video I briefly describe the Five Factor Model or Big Five, which considers five main dimensions of personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. This model comes from the work of Robert McCrae and Paul Costa, … Read More
Which Personality Traits Matter?
In this video I describe several approaches to narrowing down personality traits into a manageable number of ways of thinking about how people differ. These include Gordon Allport‘s hierarchy of cardinal dispositions, central traits, and secondary traits, the use of … Read More
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory MMPI
In this video I briefly describe the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory or MMPI, which consists of 338 statements to which subjects respond True or False. I also describe criterion keying, which is a technique for finding patterns of responses for … Read More
The Forer Effect or Barnum Effect
In this video I describe one difficulty of assessing the accuracy of personality tests, which is that people’s perceptions of accuracy are subjective. This was demonstrated by Bertram Forer, who gave participants false generic feedback from an assessment which was … Read More
Trait-Based Assessment of Personality
In this video I describe a nomothetic approach to personality using universal trait dimensions. Comparisons between people allow us to place them on a dimension for a number of possible traits. Unlike the infinite possible responses of projective techniques, responses … Read More
Projective Techniques – The Rorschach Inkblot Test & the TAT
In this video I explain how projective techniques have been used to assess personality. These represent an idiographic approach to assessment and focus on the unique aspects of a person’s personality. The most famous projective test is the Rorschach Inkblot … Read More
Psychodynamic Theorists: Adler, Horney, Jung
In this video I briefly describe some critiques and concepts introduced by the Psychodynamic theorists or Neo-Freudians. Alfred Adler disagreed with Freud’s emphasis on sexual and aggressive drives and proposed social tensions as important in the development of an inferiority … Read More
Freudian Defense Mechanisms
In this video I describe several of the defense mechanisms theorized by Sigmund Freud and his daughter Anna Freud. These defense mechanisms provide ways of coping with anxiety, which could be reality anxiety, neurotic anxiety, or moral anxiety. While these … Read More
Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
In this video I describe Freud’s psychosexual stages of personality development. Each of the stages has a focus of pleasure and a conflict which needs to be resolved. Failure to properly resolve a conflict could result in a fixation, which … Read More