Deeply Confusing: Conflating Difficulty With Deep Revelation on Personality Assessment

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 514-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy Stein ◽  
Alexander B. Swan

The factors that contribute to lay expectations of personality assessments are not well understood. Five studies demonstrate that people conflate difficulty of personality assessment items with revelations of deep insights. As a result, popular yet invalid assessments of personality can be seen as “deeper” than assessments from social and personality psychology. In Study 1, participants evaluated items from a popular personality “type” assessment as more difficult and better at revealing deep insights into personality than Big-Five personality inventory items. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this effect experimentally using a manipulation of assessment items’ difficulty. Studies 4 and 5 show that the same effect also holds for a less direct method of supposed personality assessment (e.g., assessments that ask about which colors are associated with trivial concepts). Moderating factors and the popularity of shoddy personality assessments are discussed.

Author(s):  
Briana M. Sobel ◽  
Valerie K. Sims

Humans often attribute a humanlike mind to a nonhuman to better understand its behavior in a process known as anthropomorphism. This paper seeks to use personality assessment as a measure of perceived humanlike mental capacities of computers. The relationship was further examined by comparing to assessments of a living counterpart, in this case pets. Participants were given a Big Five Personality inventory and asked to rate each item’s suitability to describe a person, a computer, or a pet. Results indicate that computers are seen for their intellectual similarity to humans while pets have a social and emotional similarity to humans. This research shows that measures of human mental characteristics, such as personality, can also be used to describe nonhumans. Researchers can now better understand the relationship between humans and the various nonhumans in their lives and use this to design more effective interactions.


2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 236-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Atsushi Oshio ◽  
Shingo Abe ◽  
Pino Cutrone ◽  
Samuel D. Gosling

The Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI; Gosling, Rentfrow, & Swann, 2003 ) is a widely used very brief measure of the Big Five personality dimensions. Oshio, Abe, and Cutrone (2012) have developed a Japanese version of the TIPI (TIPI-J), which demonstrated acceptable levels of reliability and validity. Until now, all studies examining the validity of the TIPI-J have been conducted in the Japanese language; this reliance on a single language raises concerns about the instrument’s content validity because the instrument could demonstrate reliability (e.g., retest) and some forms of validity (e.g., convergent) but still not capture the full range of the dimensions as originally conceptualized in English. Therefore, to test the content validity of the Japanese TIPI with respect to the original Big Five formulation, we examine the convergence between scores on the TIPI-J and scores on the English-language Big Five Inventory (i.e., the BFI-E), an instrument specifically designed to optimize Big Five content coverage. Two-hundred and twenty-eight Japanese undergraduate students, who were all learning English, completed the two instruments. The results of correlation analyses and structural equation modeling demonstrate the theorized congruence between the TIPI-J and the BFI-E, supporting the content validity of the TIPI-J.


2021 ◽  
pp. 089020702110129
Author(s):  
Joshua K Wood ◽  
Jeromy Anglim ◽  
Sharon Horwood

Researchers and practitioners have long been concerned about detrimental effects of socially desirable responding on the structure and criterion validity of personality assessments. The current research examined the effect of reducing evaluative item content of a Big Five personality assessment on test structure and criterion validity. We developed a new public domain measure of the Big Five called the Less Evaluative Five Factor Inventory (LEFFI), adapted from the standard 50-item IPIP NEO, and intended to be less evaluative. Participants ( n = 3164) then completed standard (IPIP) and neutralized (LEFFI) measures of personality. Criteria were also collected, including academic grades, age, sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, exercise, protesting, religious worship, music preferences, dental hygiene, blood donation, other-rated communication styles, other-rated HEXACO personality, and cognitive ability (ICAR). Evaluativeness of items was reduced in the neutralized measure. Cronbach's alpha and test-retest reliability were maintained. Correlations between the Big Five were reduced in the neutralized measure and criterion validity was similar or slightly reduced in the neutralized measure. The large sample size and use of objective criteria extend past research. The study also contributes to debates about whether the general factor of personality and agreement with socially desirable content reflect substance or bias.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefan Poier

AbstractThis study among owners of photovoltaic systems investigates whether users' Big Five personality traits derived from their Facebook likes contribute to whether or not they adopt an electricity storage. It is based on the finding that the digital footprint, especially the Facebook likes, can in part predict the personality of users better than friends and family. The survey was conducted among 159 Facebook users in Germany who owned a photovoltaic system. For comparison, a control sample with data from the German Socio-Economic Panel with 425 photovoltaic owners among 7286 individuals was used. The results show that, for extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, the mean scores could be sufficiently predicted. However, a positive correlation could only be detected for extraversion. The comparison of the user groups could not provide satisfying results. None of the Big Five personality traits could be used to distinguish the two user groups from each other. Although the results did not support the hypotheses, this study offers insights into the possibilities of combining data mining, personality psychology, and consumer research.


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Carciofo ◽  
Jiaoyan Yang ◽  
Nan Song ◽  
Feng Du ◽  
Kan Zhang

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Buecker ◽  
Marlies Maes ◽  
Jaap J. A. Denissen ◽  
Maike Luhmann

This preregistered meta–analysis ( k = 113, total n = 93 668) addressed how the Big Five dimensions of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness) are related to loneliness. Robust variance estimation accounting for the dependency of effect sizes was used to compute meta–analytic bivariate correlations between loneliness and personality. Extraversion ( r = −.370), agreeableness ( r = −.243), conscientiousness ( r = −.202), and openness ( r = −.107) were negatively related to loneliness. Neuroticism ( r = .358) was positively related to loneliness. These associations differed meaningfully in strength depending on how loneliness was assessed. Additionally, meta–analytic structural equation modelling was used to investigate the unique association between each personality trait and loneliness while controlling for the other four personality traits. All personality traits except openness remained statistically significantly associated with loneliness when controlling for the other personality traits. Our results show the importance of stable personality factors in explaining individual differences in loneliness. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 753-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison M. Tackman ◽  
Erica N. Baranski ◽  
Alexander F. Danvers ◽  
David A. Sbarra ◽  
Charles L. Raison ◽  
...  

Past research using the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an observational ambulatory assessment method for the real–world measurement of daily behaviour, has identified several behavioural manifestations of the Big Five domains in a small college sample ( N = 96). With the use of a larger and more diverse sample of pooled data from N = 462 participants from a total of four community samples who wore the EAR from 2 to 6 days, the primary purpose of the present study was to obtain more precise and generalizable effect estimates of the Big Five–behaviour relationships and to re–examine the degree to which these relationships are gender specific. In an extension of the original article, the secondary purpose of the present study was to examine if the Big Five–behaviour relationships differed across two facets of each Big Five domain. Overall, while several of the behavioural manifestations of the Big Five were generally consistent with the trait definitions (replicating some findings from the original article), we found little evidence of gender differences (not replicating a basic finding from the original article). Unique to the present study, the Big Five–behaviour relationships were not always comparable across the two facets of each Big Five domain. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology


2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 496-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Sorokowska ◽  
Piotr Sorokowski ◽  
Andrzej Szmajke

People are able to assess some personality traits of others based on videotaped behaviour, short interaction or a photograph. In our study, we investigated the relationship between body odour and the Big Five personality dimensions and dominance. Sixty odour samples were assessed by 20 raters each. The main finding of the presented study is that for a few personality traits, the correlation between self–assessed personality of odour donors and judgments based on their body odour was above chance level. The correlations were strongest for extraversion (.36), neuroticism (.34) and dominance (.29). Further analyses showed that self–other agreement in assessments of neuroticism slightly differed between sexes and that the ratings of dominance were particularly accurate for assessments of the opposite sex. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Jonni Sitorus ◽  
Nirwana Anas ◽  
Ermaliana Waruhu

This research aims at describing the ability and level of student’s creative thinking and student’s cognitive knowledge. It is qualitative research to search for data and information. Operationally, this research was conducted with some steps namely: (1) giving a set of big five personality test to 215 students to determine their personality type, (2) giving a set of creative thinking test of 215 students to measure the ability and level of their creative thinking, and (3) choosing one student randomly from each student’s personality type to be interviewed to search their cognitive knowledge. The results show that every student has a creative thinking ability, but the level of creative thinking varies. The category of student’s creative thinking ability based on Big Five Personalities is 'moderate or high'. The level of student’s creative thinking based on the big five personality is 'very creative, creative, quite creative or less creative'. The student’s cognitive knowledge based on the big five personality is drawing, designing, ascertaining, dividing, reasoning, analogy, imagining, utilizing, solving, understanding, determining, mentioning, and using trial and error.


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