What is the purpose of personality assessment?

A personality test is a tool used to assess human personality. Personality testing and assessment refer to techniques designed to measure the characteristic patterns of traits that people exhibit across various situations.

Personality assessment provides you with standardised, useful insights regarding how candidates behave in a work context and predict job performance and company fit. By using this data to identify and hire the right candidate you’ll also improve the overall productivity and effectiveness of your teams.

Objective personality testing began with Woodworth’s Personal Data Sheet in 1917. That test was developed to identify soldiers prone to nervous breakdowns during enemy bombardment in World War I (WWI). Soon after, many competing personality tests were developed for use in industry.

Using personality tests in the workplace helps you understand your employees as individuals and as a team. When used effectively, these tests increase productivity, teamwork and communication, leading to a happier and more profitable business.

Projective tests are based on Freudian psychology (psychoanalysis) and seek to expose people’s unconscious perceptions by using ambiguous stimuli to reveal the inner aspects of an individual’s personality. Two of the most popular projective measures are the Thematic Apperception Measure and the Rorschach test.

Personality development helps you develop an impressive personality and makes you stand apart from the rest. Personality development also plays an essential role in improving one’s communication skills. Individuals ought to master the art of expressing their thoughts and feelings in the most desired way.

According to Psychology Today, approximately 80% of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests to assess employees. A recent Washington Post article estimated that 200 federal agencies pay for personality testing (specifically the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator) as part of their training programs.

The modern era for personality assessment began in late-nineteenth-century England with the work of Sir Francis Galton. The first self-report personality inventory used to obtain personality information was developed by Robert Woodworth during World War I.

Personality embraces moods, attitudes, and opinions and is most clearly expressed in interactions with other people. It includes behavioral characteristics, both inherent and acquired, that distinguish one person from another and that can be observed in people’s relations to the environment and to the social group.

There is a diversity of approaches to personality assessment, and controversy surrounds many aspects of the widely used methods and techniques. These include such assessments as the interview, rating scales, self-reports, personality inventories, projective techniques, and behavioral observation.

Personality tests allow hiring managers to better understand how to keep individual employees engaged and motivated at work. Well-designed, standardized assessments allow an organization to improve its legal defensibility by providing a fairer method of candidate comparison.

Personality can also help us systemize goals by telling a coherent story, says Mayer. It helps you choose a career instead of a job, providing long-term information about what you can contribute and accomplish. You can also use knowledge of your personality to shape the way you behave with others.

Objective tests (Loevinger, 1957; Meyer & Kurtz, 2006) represent the most familiar and widely used approach to assessing personality.

The tests involve role plays for which the selling could be realistic or created through a video play. Behavioural ratings: These are used for assessment of personality in educational and industrial settings. These ratings are taken from people who have known the subject for a period of time.

It helps gain confidence, self-esteem, positive impact on one’s communication skills and the way one sees the world. Students should develop an outgoing and impressive personality that will enhance the quality of learning. … It’s also an initiative to improve certain traits which contribute to overall personality.

Personality plays a key role in organizational behavior because of the way that people think, feel, and behave effects many aspects of the workplace. People’s personalities influence their behavior in groups, their attitudes, and the way they make decisions.

• Pro: Test what candidates will do, rather than what they say they’ve done.
• Con: Companies use the wrong tests in the wrong situations.
• Pro: Tests avoid unconscious biases.
• Con: The test itself may be biased — or worse.
• Pro: Tests may improve candidate experience.

• Type A personality. The Type A personality is the “go getter” type. …
• Type B personality. The Type B personality is the laid back one. …
• Type C personality. The Type C personality is the detailed one. …
• Type D personality. The Type D personality is the existentialist one.

Psychologists say that our personality is mainly a result of four major determinants, i.e. Physical (Biological/Hereditary), Social (the community you are brought up in and your role in the community), Psychological (your behaviour, emotions and inner thought patterns) and Intellectual (your values and beliefs).

There are three criteria that are characterize personality traits: (1) consistency, (2) stability, and (3) individual differences. To have a personality trait, individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their behaviors related to the trait.

• Openness to Experience.
• Conscientiousness.
• Extraversion.
• Agreeableness.
• Neuroticism (emotionality)

Unstructured tests used for personality assessment that rely on the subject’s interpretation of ambiguous stimuli. Projective techniques involve asking subjects to interpret or fill in visual stimuli, complete sentences, or report what associations particular words bring to mind.

• It may screen out qualified candidates. For many jobs, there isn’t a mainstream personality that fits the job type. …
• It may cause flawed results. …
• The purpose of the test may not fit into your hiring process. …
• There may be legal risks.

When you understand what personality type you are, you can understand yourself and what communication styles are most effective for you. And when we understand our colleagues’ personalities, we can work better with them, develop closer relationships, and create a friendlier, more cohesive work environment.

Test results are interpreted by comparing the person’s responses with a set of criterion-refernced normative data. a measure’s stability, consistency, and accuracy. There will always be a certain degree of error or noise.