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On-line Readings in Testing and Assessment

Persona l i ty

Nico Smid

January 2010

Summary

Personality is described in this reading from a psychometric perspective. It is defined

here as referring to the publicly observable regularities in behaviours that are both

lasting and typical for individuals and by which we tell individuals apart. The Five

Factor Model of personality (FFM) is put forward as the integrative framework for

personality assessment. Personality questionnaires are described as the primary

assessment tools. Methodical problems like differences between self appraisals andappraisals by others as well as ways to counter dishonest responding are discussed.

The growing importance of modern test theory in the form of Item Response Theory

(IRT) is stressed. Finally, the predictive power of personality for real life decisions is

discussed as well as the limits put on this by culture, situations and self-monitoring

ability.


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Introduction

Sometimes, when giving a lecture or a workshop on personality, I start by asking the

audience to give a definition of Personality. After a lot of hesitations and uh, uh.,

quite a number of different descriptions follow. Often these are vague descriptions

like character or what you are like, which are quite different from each other. This

generally amounts to a dramatic demonstration of the ease with which people use an

everyday concept without ever checking whether they have a clear idea of it or

whether they agree with others regarding its content. This of course then creates a

fruitful basis for a willingness on the part of the audience to discuss the concept in

depth.

With this anecdotal experience in mind I will start by defining what will be covered in

this reading on personality and what will not.

First and foremost, I will restrict myself to normal personality. Of course, a lot of

personality research and application is done in so-called clinical contexts. That is to

say, working with individuals who have serious problems in adapting to their

environment or who are seen by others as being a serious problem in order to

understand their characteristic feelings and behaviours and to change them for the

better.

Normal personality, however, concerns itself with the normal variations in behaviour

we see between individuals who have no serious adaptive problems. The word

variations in the last sentence adds a second restriction to what will be covered. I

will focus on individual differences. That is to say, I will restrict myself to a so-called

psychometric perspective on personality. After all, this is a contribution to a website

of the International Test Commission (ITC). So, personality testing is the primary

focus. Testing should be understood here, however, in a broad sense. It refers to

any procedure that tries to assess individual differences in observable behaviour in a

reliable way in order to predict a relevant external criterion.

The following aspects will be covered:

Definition of personality

Structure of personality

Assessing personality: models and specific issues

Practical use in prediction


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Current issues in measurement and application.

Personality defined

In discussions following the above mentioned question to define personality,

consensus is quickly reached that the prime focus needs to be on observable

behaviour. Of course, people have feelings; they have intentions and are more or

less motivated to do things. But you cannot observe such feelings, intentions or

motivations directly. You have to infer them either from believing direct self-reports

like I feel, I want to , or from observing things people do , their behaviours.

Therefore, the domain of personality-relevant information is restricted here to publicly

observable behaviour.

A second restriction concerns what aspects of behaviour are attended to. An

important aspect of the personality concept is that it refers to regularities in

behaviour which are typical and lasting for an individual. That is to say, behaviours

that set one individual apart as different from others in the eyes of external

observers, not only now but also tomorrow and the day after. And not only that, but

also behaviours which are important to take into account in our daily interactions with

each other. So-called socially-relevant behaviours. Behaviours other people find

worthwhile to attend to and to react upon.

Already more than half a century ago, the American psychologist Raymond Cattell

referred to the foregoing as the sedimentation hypothesis: each typical behavioural

aspect of an individual that is socially-relevant has its sediment in everyday

language in the form of a personality descriptive adjective like talkative, orderly,

and so on. Thus, the domain of observable personality data should coincide with the

total set of personality descriptive adjectives in everyday language.

The question then arises if it is possible to reliably define this set of adjectives. And

the answer is affirmative: yes, it is. It is straightforward to do this, and has therefore

been extensively done, not only in the American language and culture but also in

other languages and cultures all around the globe. It works like this. From a standard

dictionary, identify all the adjectives that can possibly be applied to an individual, and

which refer to observable behaviour. Then the next critical step follows. Ask a

relevant sample of individuals from the language group from which the adjectives


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were identified to evaluate each adjective to determine whether it fits in the following

sentence: (s)he is by nature or (s)he is a person. Though

the latter sentence often lends itself to more adjectives being included than when the

former sentence is used, what is most remarkable is that different people show high

agreement among themselves whether an adjective fits or not. Consequently, this

methodology makes it possible to end up with a clearly defined set of relevant

personality differences represented in a neat list of 1000 to 2000 personality

descriptive adjectives, depending on the language you have used. Subsequent

research has shown that such a list, when carefully compiled, comprehensively

defines the personality domain. And what is more, the basic structure of this domain

is far more common than differences between languages or cultures. This is what

will be discussed next.

Structure of Personality: the Five Factor Model (FFM)

F i v e b as i c p e r s o n a l i t y f a c t o r s

Having compiled a list of say some 1200 personality descriptive adjectives (which is

about the number of such adjectives in the Dutch language), structuring the overlap

is the next step. Not all adjectives are unique. Agreeable and pleasant, for

instance, convey almost the same information about a person. Factor analysis or

meaning similarity analyses are among the techniques that can be used to reduce

the total set of adjectives into a number of independent basic factors.

To this end, large samples of participants can be requested to rate themselves on

the total list. Furthermore, other participants can be asked to rate people that they

know well. The resulting data both the self ratings and the ratings of others can

be reduced via factor analysis to a stable set of main factors. A further technique is

to ask participants to directly compare pairs of adjectives in terms of the extent to

which they are similar in meaning. The data from these comparisons are then

analyzed and summarized into underlying common meaning scales.

The results of both kinds of analyses factor analyses and meaning similarity

have turned out to be so consistently similar worldwide that the resultant model has

gained the status of a commonly accepted overall personality model in both the

scientific and the applied practical community. It is called the Five Factor Model, FFM

for short (McCrae & Costa, 2003).


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These five factors might sometimes have somewhat different names but they all

convey similar meanings. Here, the following labels (including a short explanation)

will be used:

Need for Stability (N)

Differences in the extent to which people react emotionally to setbacks

Extraversion (E)

Differences in the extent to which people actively maintain contact with others

Openness (O)

Differences in the extent to which people look for new experiences and new

ideas

Accommodation (A)

Differences in the extent to which people place other peoples interests above

their own

Conscientiousness (C)

Differences in the extent to which people behave in an organized and purposeful

manner.

A h u m an u n i v er s al ?

The above is of course a very general and highly aggregated level of description. But

it is at the same time the core that has generally been found for the human species.

This should not come as a surprise. Well founded evolutionary theory asserts that

humans are quite a homogeneous species not only in genetic makeup but also in theenvironment in which they until very recently have evolved: hunters and gatherers in

small groups in a deprived and often hostile environment. Differences in the FFM

might be expected then to account for differences in survival value, and might thus

lead to the evolution of stable individual differences that matter both socially and

environmentally. To paraphrase a little (as well as giving a different rank order from

the list above, distinguishing between social and environmental control),

someones standing on each of the five factors of the FFM is informative to the

extent to which one may solve an important survival problem, such as:

Social control :

Accommodation : To what extent may I trust others or should I be guarded

regarding their intentions?

Extraversion : How well can I continue to take the initiative in my contacts with

other people, or would it be better to wait for them to take the first step?


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Environmental control :

Conscientiousness : How well do I control my external environment, or does the

environment control me?

Need for stability : How well do I stay in control when unexpected setbacks

happen?

Openness : To what extent should I gather new information to stay in control?

Indeed, genetic and evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Buss, 2005) have presented

considerable evidence regarding the genetic as well as the evolutionary base of the

FFM. Other scholars have shown that it is highly common to derive a FFM structure

from answers to personality questionnaires based on it as, for instance, the NEO

(Costa & McCrae, 2003).

O n e f a c t o r , s e v e r al u n d e r l y i n g f a c et s

As far as the above mentioned high level of aggregation is concerned, in practical

applications, each of the FFM factors often split up into homogeneous sub-factors,

mostly called facets. This is the for instance the case with the above-mentioned

NEO questionnaire. As a concrete example from another questionnaire, the

Reflector Big Five Personality (RBFP) (Schakel, Smid, & Jaganjac, 2007), the factor

Need for stability is subdivided into the following homogeneous facets:

Sensitiveness : the extent to which people worry about themselves.

Intensity : the ease with which people get angry Interpretation : the extent to which people emphasize problems above solutions

Rebound time : how much time people need to rebound from setbacks

Reticence : the extent to which people feel uneasy in a group.

And so on for each of the five factors within the FFM.

The facets within a single factor hang together quite well individuals who score

high one facet have a more than average chance to also score high on another from

the set but far from perfectly so. Therefore, a more fine-grained description may be

provided of differences between people who have approximately the same position

on the overall factor of, say, Need for stability , but still show a different pattern on the

underlying facets. Taking such differences in facets into account should enable a

better prediction of, for instance, performance in jobs. And empirical evidence

suggests that this in fact is the case (Schakel & Smid, 2005).


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such adjectives are included in the analysis, a sixth factor generally emerges. This

factor is commonly referred to by terms like integrity or sincerity (Ashton et al.,

2004). This finding does not mean, however, that the FFM is shown to be incorrect

but only that apart from what people objectively observe, they separately also

ascribe good or bad moral intentions to others. This is fruitful knowledge in its own

right but it refers primarily to the way the observer arrives at a moral judgment and

not to a direct description of observable behaviour.

The third line of research is akin to the latter. Here, the structure of personality in

non-western cultures is investigated. Also here, especially in Asian cultures, a sixth

factor integrity or other-directedness has been established (Cheung et al., 2003).

Again, this factor might be derived on a similar basis to the second line of research

discussed above. Within the boundaries of a culture, all statements are sampled that

might be attributed to people by members of the culture, without however explicitlydistinguishing by design between observable behaviours and ones that can only be

inferred, as was done when constructing the FFM. What is clear from this research is

that in the Asian and other, for instance, African (Meiring et al., 2005) cultures

moral attributions are important aspects within social relations. But these are also

partially grounded on observations of behaviour that form a separate domain in their

own right.

D o n t m i s t a k e an i n f e r e n c e f o r a n o b s e r v a t i o n

It may be concluded then from the above that it is a reasonable strategy to restrict

the data for investigating personality to the set of observable and stable personality

adjectives. Under such a restriction, the FFM stands out as the worldwide commonly

applicable core of general personality factors. At the same time, it is true that people

ascribe all sorts of moral intentions to other people, partly based on observations

and partly on their own moral ideas, which may be empirically summarized by terms

like honest or sincere. This is not a personality description, though, but an

observer inference. The FFM, however, is about summarizing observations of

behaviour and not about interpreting them.


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How to assess personality

P er s o n a l i t y a s t h e c o m m o n p e r s p e c t i v e o f o t h e r s

Having defined the domain of data that is used to study personality, the next

question that needs to be addressed is how to assess the personality of individuals.Personality testing is the core business of the psychometric perspective on

personality.

Remember that the basic domain refers to observations of behavioural regularities.

Therefore, personality enacts itself in the public domain. The most straightforward

way to assess someones personality is then of course the average appraisal made

by all knowledgeable persons. How should one interpret knowledgeable?

When the objective is to summarize as accurately as possible the typical and lasting

aspects of an individuals behaviour also often called: the gist of behavior who

then is in the best position to do so? In principle the individual him- or her-self, since

(s)he observes most of it. At the same time we know that our evaluation of ourselves

is subject to a number of biases, not the least of which is the tendency to see

ourselves in a more favourable light than others see us.

Moreover, there is only one of me. This makes my self-appraisal quite unreliable.

The reliability of a single self-appraisal on a single scale will generally not transcendthe .30 barrier, which heavily reduces its usefulness as a predictor of any external

criterion.

Now the same is true of a single external observer. So, when using external

observers to assess someones personality, one should use the common appraisal

of at least five to eight observers in order to arrive at an acceptable level of reliability

of the average appraisal. There is of course a second reason to do so. Each

observer generally sees only a specific aspect of anothers typical behaviour (e.g.,

what a boss sees could be different from what a colleague sees). Therefore

differences in the perspectives of observers should be averaged out to arrive at a

common appraisal across all observers.

The use of averaged appraisals by other people to assess the personality of a

specific individual is seldom advocated, however. Within the perspective put forward


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here, cost limitations and practical difficulties to gather such appraisals are among

the reasons for this. However, some people claim that you should not use appraisals

by others at all to assess the personality of an individual. The individual him-/her-self

is said to have specific knowledge about his/her own behaviour which cannot be

appraised by other people. Within the present perspective this can only refer to

internal states, not to observable behaviour. Thus, intentions, emotions or feelings

can of course only be fully appraised by the individual him- or her-self, but these are

explicitly excluded in the FFM as a direct database for assessing personality as

argued above.

W h y u s e s e l f a p p r a i s al t h e n ?

Most personality assessment is done by way of using personality questionnaires.

These are generally self appraisal instruments instead of common appraisals by

others. How can we derive valid personality inferences that is, the common

perspective of others from instruments that are merely self appraisals?

To answer this question, a closer look at the differences between self appraisal of

ones own behaviour and the appraisal by others of the same behaviour is useful.

There has been done a lot of research on this topic. The conclusions from such

research may be summarized as follows:

When a person responds honestly on a questionnaire that asks what (s)he generallydoes, his/her answers will in general be somewhat more favourable than those of

people who know him/her well and who also answer the questionnaire in a honest

manner. Whats more, for each personality factor the extent of surplus favourability in

a self appraisal is quite well known, and a next important finding is that most self

appraisals show about the same amount of favourability bias for different individuals.

This bias is therefore a quasi-constant so to speak.

Then, a methodical trick is used. Subtract the scores representing the self appraisal

of an individual on a personality questionnaire scale from the average self appraisal

scores of a well defined sample this is commonly called norming and you will

end up with a fairly good approximation of the averaged appraisal of the above

mentioned knowledgeable others.


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According to this line of reasoning, an adequately normed score on a self appraisal

personality questionnaire which is the ubiquitous method to assess personality is

not merely a self appraisal. It is, when responded to honestly, a good

approximation of what is meant by personality within the FFM framework: the

common appraisal of the gist of someones behaviour by knowledgeable others. Not

perfectly so, of course, but as good as it gets, and as practical as generally

affordable.

H o n e s t r e s p o n d i n g

The above argument assumes honest responding. It is a challenge for personality

assessment to ensure honest responding. The most straightforward way to do so is

to take care that it is in the interest of the individual taking the questionnaire to

respond honestly. This could be achieved when the questionnaire is used as

information for the individual him/herself who wants to know his/her possibilities and

limitations for personal development. When, however, the questionnaire is used by a

prospective employer to estimate the suitability for a job, the individual may be

tempted not to answer honestly but to present him/herself in a manner that fits best

with the demands of the job.

A lot of research has been done to show that people can easily do this. In particular,

when the answer format is a so-called Likert scale which might look as follows:

1. Does not apply to me at all2. Does generally not apply to me

3. Sometimes applies to me and sometimes does not apply to me

4. Generally applies to me

5. Applies to me.

Apart from trying to convince the individual that it is in his/her best interest to answer

honestly which will not always work, of course a technical solution is often put

forward. Instead of presenting a Likert scale as given above, the person is asked to

make a forced choice between statements that do not differ much in terms of

favourability. For instance:

1. I am an orderly person

2. I am a friendly person.


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To analyze the responses on such forced choices in order to assess someones

standing on a specific personality factor, as in this example, Conscientiousness or

Accommodation, has always posed quite a methodological problem. But recent

analysis models have overcome these problems. Thus, forced choice personality

questionnaires will be more common in the future.

O t h e r m e t h o d s o f a p p r ai s a l

Other than the use of personality questionnaires other methods have also been

proposed. Common to all these alternatives are that they are much more laborious,

while the value they add is not always clear-cut.

Most alternatives have in common that they avoid self appraisals but use

observations by others. Two frequently used alternatives are the following:

First, the use of extensive interviewing. Research shows that when personality

descriptions based on such interviews are used to predict external criteria like

performance in jobs, they are generally no better predictors than less

complicated instruments like tests for mental capacities or relevant for the

present context well-constructed and honestly taken personality

questionnaires. Of course, interviews can be made more reliable which could

probably result in better predictions, but this will be very laborious and too

expensive. Interviews must cover many different subjects to give a total picture,and more than one interviewer should be used, independent from one another.

Broadening an interview database by extending subjects to be covered and using

a number of different interviewers is, however, much more difficult to realize than

making a personality questionnaire longer to make it more reliable in order to

enhance its predictive power.

A second alternative is the direct observation of behaviour by a number of

external observers. Either in real life, or in controlled environments like role

playing according to a standardized script. Here, the same argument applies as

for interviewing. Though the observations might be much more standardized than

with interviewing, a lot of different observation situations or, for that matter, role

playing situations are needed to get a reliable estimate of the regularities in

behaviour. For that is what personality is all about: assessing the regularities

the gist of a persons behaviour, averaged across relevant time frames and

relevant situations.


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To this end, applied professionals mostly use personality questionnaires instead of

more complicated observational procedures. Such questionnaires are by no means

perfect but their utility is at least as good as that of the alternatives, when taking time

and processing limitations into consideration.

Personality testing: some psychometric issues

Obse rvab l e da t a , l a t en t t r a i t s

Defining only observables as the basis for assessing personality is first and foremost

based upon a methodical argument. It does not imply that the observable data

coincides with the personality of an individual. These observables, however, should

be conceived as objective indicators from which an individuals position on one or

more personality dimensions may be derived. Such dimensions themselves areconceived to be latent . Thus, the more behaviours are observed which indicate

Need for stability, for example, the higher an individual is supposed to be standing

on the latent trait Need for stability.

The problem of course is how to arrive at an accurate assessment on a latent trait

when one only has fallible observables. This refers to the domain of psychometrics.

In analyzing personality questionnaires as argued above, the most commonly used

method of collecting personality data classical test theory (CTT) is generally used

for that purpose. The problem with CTT in this context is, however, that it is not a

formal model which enables one to test whether a assumed link between the scores

on the questionnaire itself and a persons standing on a latent trait is in fact correct

or not. It simply stays with the observables. CTT defines someones true score on

such a trait as the average across repeatedly completing the questionnaire.

Moreover it assumes that the unreliability of a score on a specific questionnaire is

always the same, independent from someones position on the latent trait, be it low

or high.

Both assumptions the way a true score is defined and equal reliability for each trait

position are demonstrably false but cannot be empirically checked within CTT

itself.

This is not a problem specific to personality assessment, but it is relevant in this

context because it not only hinders theoretical progress but also leads to


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interpretational problems. More specifically, distinguishing between real personality

information and distortion by so-called response biases as, for instance, dishonest

responding cannot be done without ambiguity.

Modern test models have been developed to overcome such problems, among other

things.

Mode rn t e s t m ode l s : I t em R es p o n s e Theo r y ( IRT)

Recent research and practice in analyzing and using personality questionnaires is

based more and more on the so-called Item Response Theory (IRT). For the present

purposes, IRT may be described as a set of models by which one can test formally

how an individuals observable responses on a personality questionnaire can be

translated into a specific position on a latent personality trait. When the test is not

falsified by a given set of data, someones position on the latent trait can then be

directly measured.

Most importantly, at least two advantages of using IRT may be mentioned where

personality assessment is concerned. First, one may actually test the correctness of

different alternative models of personality against each other, whereas within CTT

the questionnaire responses at hand are by definition assumed to be correct

indicators. Referring to the FFM discussion above, IRT might fruitfully be used to test

models that formally specify in what way more than five factors might be needed toaccount for all variation in personality questionnaires.

A second advantage is the possibility to properly analyze forced response

questionnaires as described above in order to control for dishonest responding.

Within CTT, this is hindered by formal statistical problems.

IRT will not psychometrically be described here. The reader is referred to

psychometric articles elsewhere or on the present website.


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Predictive power and utility

C h ai n o f i n f e r e n c e an d p r e d i c t i v e u t i l i t y

From a psychometric perspective someones personality is not assessed merely in

its own right, but as a predictor of some relevant external criterion. In contexts of personal development this might be a measure of life satisfaction or career

development. In organizational contexts the criterion might be suitability for a job or

the quality or quantity of performance in a job.

Common to these criteria is that they depend on a host of other things besides

someones personality. For example, often things that are beyond the control of the

individual such as economic circumstances impact on the job performance of a sales

manager. The latter state of affairs inevitably results in a decrease of predictive

power of personality as a predictor.

In fact we have a so-called chain of inference here. At the end of the chain is the

criterion we want to predict. Lets stay with the example: performance as a sales

manager. The personal part an individual can contribute to his/her quality as a sales

manager is the last but one part of the chain: his/her own behaviour. All behaviour

that contributes to being a good sales manager is summarized under the label:

competencies . In the case of a sales manager, a competency like persuasiveness

might be a relevant behaviour.

The first part of the chain is someones personality. In line with the foregoing this

might be a specific profile of scores on the factors and facets of the FFM. A relevant

facet here might be Rebound time from the FFM factor Need for stability as

defined earlier.

Now, when directly predicting the third part of the chain performance from the

first part personality two bridges have to be crossed. The first bridge is the extent

to which rebound time predicts the quality of the competency persuasiveness. This

prediction will not be perfect of course, since persuasiveness as a competency is a

skill to be learned , for which a short rebound time as a personality trait might be of

more or less help.


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The second bridge is the extent to which the competency persuasiveness is an

important contributor to performance as a sales manager. This partly depends on

economic circumstances, tough or easy, for instance.

Thus the predictive power of personality is always to some extent decreased by the

two bridges to be crossed. In order to investigate the utility of using personality as a

predictor it is a wise strategy to attend to the bridges themselves instead of looking

at the direct predictive power by spanning both bridges at once.

First, one should empirically investigate which competencies are relevant

contributors to the criterion. In our example: are people who are really skilled in

persuasiveness relatively more often the better sales managers?

Then the second research step follows. Which personality facets from the FFMpredict the extent of effort and time needed to learn a specific competency as well as

the easiness by which this competency may be skilfully executed when it is needed

in practice? Again in our example the following turns out to be the case: the less

rebound time one needs to recover from setbacks, the more easily and faster one

learns to master the competency persuasiveness (and a number of other

competencies of course).

When only the relevant competencies are carefully selected on the one hand, and

only the relevant personality facets to predict those competencies are selected on

the other hand, the predictive power of a personality questionnaire commonly

called: its validity may approach a value between .30 and .40, depending on what

criterion is to be predicted. This may strike you as being a low figure after all, but the

utility in practical contexts is nevertheless considerable. For one, the best predictor in

organizational contexts, general intelligence, has a validity coefficient between .50

an .60 (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). More important, however, is to realize what this

means. A validity coefficient of .30 means that one avoids about 30 percent of the

false decisions one would have made if one would have selected candidates for the job of sales manager at random, without taking the targeted personality information

into account. Quite a substantive gain in utility indeed.


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E n h a n c i n g v a l i d i t y : s u b j e c t m a t t e r ex p e r t s

The way in which validity should be investigated as exemplified above is of course

more easily written down then actually done. As far as the second bridge from

competencies to actual performance is concerned, directly studying the validity is a

feasible research task. Let us elaborate on our example a little bit further. First, one

samples evaluations of the actual skill of sales managers or future sales managers in

terms of a number of competencies. Then one collects present or future sales

figures. Evaluating the predictive power of the skill in those competencies might then

actually show that persuasiveness has the highest validity. So, persuasiveness

should be the competency to be predicted with the first bridge from personality to

competency. We will not dwell here on the methodical aspects of doing a

professionally sound predictive validity study. Readers are referred to other readings

in this regard.

Studying the first validity bridge is the bigger problem. Remember what is to be

predicted here: effort and time needed to learn a specific competency. This demands

a research design in which at regular intervals over many years data on actual

competency skill should be collected. Then, after enough years there should be

enough data to establish a valid trend. One would then correlate the speed of

learning in our example: the speed of learning persuasiveness with the initial

scores obtained for a number of personality facets. In our example this might result

in the assertion that rebound time is quite a good predictor of the speed with which

one may learn persuasiveness.

Such a study is not often done and will not often be done in the future either. There

is a good alternative, however: use well-informed judges, so-called subject matter

experts (SME). Select for such SMEs people who have a lot of experience in

observing both skill in competencies and standing on personality traits for different

individuals. Applied psychologists will generally be a good choice. Now the following

not unreasonable assumption is that each of these SMEs has a non-zero validity of,

say, a modest .10 or .20 in predicting speed of learning a specific competency likepersuasiveness for a person who has a high score on a personality facet like

rebound time. Ask each SME to directly estimate the validity of rebound time in

predicting speed of learning persuasiveness Then, elementary psychometrics will

show that the average estimate of some five to ten SMEs is as good an estimate as

may be obtained from any complicated validity study conducted over many years, as

described above. This approach is probably even better and more consistent,


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because a study conducted over many years is confronted with many

methodological problems. Of course, this is the main reason why not many such

studies are undertaken in the first place.

And the SME-strategy has been shown to work. In studying the validity of a specific

FFM questionnaire, the RBFP (Schakel & Smid, 2005), SMEs were used to estimate

the validity of FFM facets in predicting speed of learning competencies. Then, these

predictions were checked in a large database of evaluations of actual skill in a

number of competencies gathered over a number of years. The resultant validity

coefficients were between .20 and .50. These are the figures one would have

expected when the relevant facets to use in prediction were originally selected

through a complicated research project spanning many years..

Also for personality research it is therefore a wise thing to remember that theaverage appraisal of well-informed SMEs often is a good alternative to laboriously

collecting fallible data in a complicated research design. This is not tp say that SME

input should completely replace empirical data, but this approach can provide a

sufficiently accurate estimate of the validity coefficient.

Some current issues

To draw this reading to a close, some current issues will be briefly touched on.

Recent personality research literature will cover these issues in depth. The reader is

referred to this literature for more specific further information on concepts and

empirical results.

I n t e r c u l t u r a l e x c h a n g e a b i l i t y

Above we already mentioned the research into additional personality factors up and

above the FFM. In particular, research has been done in Asian (especially Chinese)

and African (especially indigenous South African) cultures. As mentioned,interpersonal commonness and respect as well as integrity are additional factors

which might be added to account more fully for what the personality construct

encompasses within these cultures. At present, targeted personality questionnaires

taking these additional factors into account are being developed. In these research

approaches the original FFM kernel is safeguarded while adding some extra factors.


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Another line of research concerns itself with the question of whether the FFM has

intercultural applicability. This research has mostly been done with personality

questionnaires. For example, the intercultural applicability of the NEO (McCrae &

Teracciano, 2005) has been extensively investigated. In general one might conclude

from this research that the FFM structure of the NEO (and other FFM based

questionnaires) has a broad intercultural exchangeability, though on specific facets

some reliable small average differences between cultures have been found.

How these differences should be interpreted is still open to debate. This hinges on

the definition of the concept of culture. This is often loosely paraphrased as the way

we do things around here. Remember that in a previous section we drew a

distinction between personality questionnaire items as behavioural indicators of

latent personality traits. It might well be conceivable, for example, that Japanese and

European people do not differ on average on a personality facet like deference, butthat they simply express it in a culturally different way. Japanese people might

express it by the steepness of their bows, European people by the politeness of how

they address a stranger. Personality questionnaires with such items as indicators will

show differences in responses between both cultures. But this need not indicate

differences on the latent trait of deference.

As also mentioned above, disentangling cultural differences in indicators and

underlying identity in latent traits can only be well researched by using modern test

theory, namely, Item Response Theory (IRT). This is an additional reason to expect

that the use of IRT models in personality research will increase.

I m p o r t a n c e o f s i t u a t i o n s : b r o a d v e r s u s s m a l l p r e d i c t o r s

In presenting the structure of the FFM we mentioned the broad level of aggregation

of the five factors. On the simple question are you conscientious? most people will

respond it depends. Depends on what? The situation.

Two aspects should be taken into account as regards this issue. First, a factor such

as Conscientiousness consists of a broad set of behaviours which comprise

different facets that are only imperfectly correlated. These facets might be broadly

categorized into two classes. In particular, facets which describe orderly behaviour

like I regularly clean my desk, as well as facets describing dependable behaviours

like people can count on me. Not all people who show the latter behaviour also


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show the former, though, more often than no, they are found together in one person

than not. This is the reason they are subsumed under the general factor of

Conscientiousness in the first place. So, even where someones general behavioural

tendencies are concerned, it depends on the person who you observe whether (s)he

will show both classes of behaviour in general.

A second aspect to attend to in this context, however, is on the individual level. Even

if a person is in general both orderly and dependable, then it still depends on the

situation whether one or both of these behaviours will in reality be manifested. For

this to happen the latent trait orderly or dependable should first be activated

through demands within the situation. Without proper activation nothing is

manifested. This refers to an important present research approach, the so-called

trait-activation theory (Tett & Burnett, 2003).

This line of arguing surely calls for not using the broad big five factors of the FFM in

predicting external criteria, but instead using much smaller and more homogeneous

predictors at the level of facets. In fact, most research on FFM-based questionnaires

like the NEO as well as the RBFP are based on this strategy. And this research

results in higher validities than using the much broader big five factors themselves as

predictors.

P er s o n a l i t y a n d m e n t a l a b i l i t y

There is a big difference between tests for mental ability and personality

questionnaires. The former are so-called maximum performance instruments, and

the latter are commonly referred to as typical performance instruments.

In mental ability tests it is known beforehand which is the correct answer, and you

certainly cannot fake the correct answer if you do not actually know it. Someones

standing on a personality trait on the other hand is generally defined as the actual

relative frequency (s)he shows on a set of behaviours which are presumably

indicators of that trait. This is assessed by simply asking a person whether (s)he

does so. Such a question refers to typical behaviour. Of course, here one may easily

fake what one does, even if this is not the case. And this occurs more frequently

when a 5-point so-called Likert scale is used, as explained above.


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Now, more intelligent persons those scoring higher on mental ability tests might

more easily fake on the one hand and at the same time understand that it is not in

their interest to do so. This is a really important state of affairs to take into account

when trying to prevent faking in personality questionnaires. Though, as also

explained above, most of the time a technical solution like the use of forced choice

items is preferred. Anyhow, background and prevention of faking are presently

important issues and are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Especially in

relation to the more frequent use of IRT models.

Research shows that there is virtually no correlation between mental ability and

profiles on a personality questionnaire when the latter has been honestly responded

to. There is only a small correlation with the factor Openness but the interpretation

of this correlation is a matter of debate.

Yet, at the same time more intelligent persons may learn and master competencies

easier, which does not fit well with their personality relative to the personalities of

less intelligent ones. To take our earlier example: even persons who in general have

a long rebound time might well learn to adequately master a competency that does

not fit them like persuasiveness, simply because it might easier for them to know

how to do this even when it is not their most natural behaviour. This is one of the

reasons why general intelligence is often shown to be the best general predictor of

performance in organizations. The smarter you are, the more you may not only

capitalize on your personality but also compensate for those facets which fit less well

with the demands that are made of you.

Therefore, in using personality as a predictor of external criteria the interplay with the

level of general intelligence will remain a very important and fascinating research

subject for time to come.

Conclusion

The concept of personality has been studied from a multitude of perspectives. In the

present article the psychometric perspective was elaborated. The role of well-

constructed personality questionnaires as the primary source to study personality

was described. The Five Factor Model was put forward as the integrative framework

for constructing and using such questionnaires.


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It has been stressed that personality should be conceived as enacting itself in the

public domain. The average appraisal of the well informed other should therefore

be approximated by any assessment instrument. Under conditions of honest

responding it can be shown that a personality questionnaire does a reasonably good

job in that respect. Of course, such conditions are not easily ensured, but both paired

comparison response formats and modern test theory in the form of Item Response

Theory models are promising tools in this respect.

As a final comment it is worthwhile to realize that there is much more to predicting

behaviour than only including personality traits. Culturally specific ways of behaving,

the powerful influences of situations as well as the ability to monitor your own

behaviour should also be taken into account. In the same way that we can tell

different persons apart from each other, we can tell situations and cultures apart as

well.


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References

Ashton, M.C., Lee, K., Perugini, M., Szarota, P., De Vries, R.E., & Di Blas, L. (2004)

A six-factor structure of personality-descriptive adjectives: Solutions from

psycholexical studies in seven languages. Journal of Personality and Social

Psychology , 86 (2), 356-366.

Buss, D.M. (Ed.)(2005). The handbook of evolutionary psychology. New York: Wiley.

Cheung, F. M., Leong, F. T. L., & Ben-Porath, Y. (Guest Editors) (2003). Special

Section: Psychological Assessment in Asia. Psychological Assessment, 15, 243-

310.

De Raad, B., & Barelds, D.P.H. (2008). A new taxonomy of Dutch personality traits

based on a comprehensive and unrestricted list of descriptors. Journal of personality

and Social Psychology, 94 , 347-364.

McCrae, R.R., & Costa, P.T., Jr. (2003). Personality in adulthood: A five-factor theory

perspective . New York: Guilford.

McCrae, R.R., & Terraciano, A. (2005). Personality profiles of cultures: aggregate

personality traits. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 89, 407-425.

Meiring, D., Vijver, F.J.R. van de, Rothmann, S., & Barrick, M.R. (2005). Construct,

Item, and Method Bias of Cognitive and Personality Tests in South Africa. South

African Journal of Industrial Psychology , 31 (1), 1-8.

Schakel, L., Smid, N. & Jaganjac, A. (2007). Workplace Big Five: Professional

Manual . Utrecht: PiCompany.

Schakel. L. & Smid, N.G. (2005). Predicting career decisions through combining

personality and competencies. HRM Network Conference , TU Twente.


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Schmidt, Frank L., & Hunter, John E. (1998). The Validity and Utility of Selection

Methods in Personnel Psychology. Practical and Theoretical Implications of 85 Years

of Research Findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124 , 262-274.

Tett, R. P., & Burnett, D. D. (2003). A personality trait-based interactionist model of

job performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88, 500517.


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Questions for discussion

How would you explain the psychometric perspective of personality?

What are the implications of restricting the domain of personality data to publicly

observable behaviours?

What are the main arguments why the Five Factor Model has a global

intercultural applicability, and which should be the limiting conditions in this

respect?

What are reasons to expect that smaller and more homogeneous behaviouralfacets of the main big five factors of the FFM are better predictors of real life

criteria than those big five factors themselves?

What are the conceptual differences between behaviours, intentions and

motivations in relation to the concept of personality as defined in this reading?

What are the consequences for research methodology?

In what way may well-constructed self appraisal personality questionnaires be

perceived as good approximations of the average personality appraisal by well-

informed others?

Which methods may be used to counter dishonest responding in self appraisal

personality questionnaires?

What important contributions to personality research can be made by modern

test theory in the form of Item Response Theory (IRT) in contrast to deficiencies

in Classical Test Theory (CTT)?

How would you describe the two bridges to be crossed in the chain of inference

from personality assessment to a real life criterion?

In what way is the predictive power of personality influenced by differences in

mental ability?


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About the author

Nico Smid

Nico Smid has been a principal consultant within PiCompany since 1999. Before that

time he has had a broad and varied experience in both scientific research and

teaching as well as HR consulting. As a university lecturer he taught research

methodology as well as personality theory and assessment, while at the same time

fulfilling central university management roles.

He became a PhD in Psychology with a dissertation on Determinants of Personality

Judgements. He was a co-founder and board member of the European Associationof Personality Psychology. From 1986 onwards he was a central concept

development consultant for management development within Philips Electronics and

he has among other things redesigned and implemented selection and potential

appraisal systems within that company. Following that he has been a HR strategy

and assessment centre development consultant within two consultancy firms, Beteor

and Towers Perrin. At present within PiCompany he is responsible for quality

management and concept development as well as maintaining external professional

networks.

Psicologia Traduzir

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