Free personality testing by Thomas Hawk from San Francisco, USA – No Obligation. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Annotated Links
6 Sample Questions Employers Ask to Assess your Personality These 6 questions may be questions you are likely to see the next time you apply for a job. From Business Insider, July 16, 2015.
11 Interview Questions Hiring Managers Ask To Test Your Personality From the website: In an effort to find new hires that are great cultural fits, employers are putting more emphasis on soft skills, or intangible qualities […] some qualities that are a good indication of success in a role include organizational and communication skills, great team player, strong leadership skills, an ability to think on your feet, drive, and initiative. FromBusiness Insider, June 11, 2014.
Explanation and Examples By Dr. Chong Ho Yu.
How Not to Spot Personality Test Fakers Can response times reveal test fakers? Maybe not. This notion was tested in research by Mindy Shoss and Michael Strube and summarized here in Research Digest, September 14, 2011.
Husbands, Rate Your Wives. A psychologist’s attempt to improve marriages provides an interesting glimpse into the social norms of the 1930s—and into one of the first scientific matchmaking services. From Time Capsule by Nick Joyce and David B. Baker, APA Monitor on Psychology, May 2008.
I Want You To Know That I’m Tyrion Lannister The Forer (Barnum) Effect has found a new home: The Internet Quiz. Writer Maria Konnikova suggests that the reason why we are so drawn to these obviously false personality quizzes may have to do with our fascination with the self and our fundamental need to belong. From The New Yorker, May 1, 2014.
James Randi Educational Foundation James Randi has an international reputation as a magician and escape artist, but today he is best known as the world’s most tireless investigator and demystifier of paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Towards this end, his website features educational modules on “How to Think About Dubious Claims”, “Astrology: Supersition or Science?”, “Do you have ESP?” and more.
Links AmoebaWeb maintained by Douglas Degelman at Vanguard University of Southern California, features an impressive array of links on specific topics in measurement and research methods.
Nonproductive Workplace Behaviors An overview by Eve Ash on the many forms of dishonesty in the work place and how to handle them.
Online Text Chapter 7: Variables, Validity, and Reliability from Christopher L. Heffner’s online Research Methods text.
On The California Shore, Sizing Up Female Marines’ Combat Readiness The Pentagon has decreed that the Marines must open combat roles for women by 2016 unless they can show a good reason not to. The Marine Corps has teamed up with the University of Pittsburgh to scientifically measure skills, strength, and endurance in order to establish valid and reliable gender-neutral standards. Runs 7 minutes, 18 seconds; transcript and photos available.
Personality Tests: Can they Identify the Real You? BBC news writer Lucy Ash describes the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and what it can — and can not — tell us about personality. Includes speculations on the personality type of Madonna, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Donald Trump, the Queen Elizabeth and others.
Psychometric success: Everything you need to pass job selection tests While ultimately this site wants you to buy their products and visit their sponsors, along the way they provide a good overview of how personality and aptitude tests are used in hiring and selection. They also describe and provide briefs samples of the following tests: numerical aptitude, verbal aptitude, abstract reasoning, spatial ability, technical ability, clerical aptitude, and personality.
Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Inc. The home page of APA Division 14 includes background information about employment testing including questions to ask before purchasing a test, introductory modules for I-O psychology, Master’s and PhD guidelines, graduate training programs, and more. Check out their background information on employment testing, including types of employment tests, statistics on the number of companies using employment tests, test formats and other information related to testing.
Teaching Resources From the University of Sydney.
Teaching Wiki from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology The SIOP Teaching Wiki features sample syllabi, in-class exercises, movies and video clips, case studies, teaching tips, links and more, contributed by other instructors for use in I-O Psychology courses.
Testing and Assessment: A Guide to Good Practices for Workplace Investment Professionals This pamphlet, created by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2006, provides this overview to help career counselors and development professionals implement good assessment practices and legal standards for hiring, training, and career development of their workforce.
What is Industrial/Organizational Psychology? Psychology.org provides this informative page on what I/O psychology is, how to become one, what a typical day is like for an I/O psychologist, and a list of resources.
Which Personality Traits Are Most Important to Employers? Summarizes research by Paul R. Sackett and Philip T. Walmsley published in the journal Perspectives in Psychological Science (2014) which found that employers seek candidates who are high in conscientiousness and agreeableness and that these traits are related to success across a range of jobs.
Who Feels Treated Unfairly After Taking An Assessment? Researchers Laura Honkaniemi, Taru Feldt, Riitta-Leena Metsäpelto, and Asko Tolvanen identified three personality types who differ in their Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Conscientiousness. They found that people hold different perceptions of the fairness of personality testing depending on their personality type: Overcontrolled, Undercontrolled, Resilient, or Bohemian according this summary publish in the British Psychological Society Research Digest, August 1, 2013.
Assignments, Exercises, and Activities
Activities Guide: Teaching Ethics in the Introduction to Psychology Course The Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology (OTRP) is pleased to announce this new resource for teachers by Ana Ruiz and Judith Warchal of Alvernia University. This 23-page guide presents 17 activities related to ethics for each chapter in a typical Introduction to Psychology text as it integrates the APA Learning Goals and Outcomes for ethics into that course. For each chapter, the activity lists the student learning outcome, instructions for conducting the activity, materials needed, approximate time required, and a method of assessment. Activities most relevant to the personality class include APA Ethics code Jeopardy, Research Methods, Personality Testing, and Debating controversial topics. (Opens in PDF format).
The Barnum Effect Pierre Ysewijn created this on-line personality test which gives false feedback. Despite the obviously invalid questions people still rate the feedback as accurate, illustrating the Barnum Effect.
The Barnum Effect Take this test to remind yourself why good personality tests should provide specific feedback…and why horoscopes are so much fun! This online test of 47 questions plus some background demographics gives the appearance of a legitimate personality test. Respondents receive the typical Barnum feedback and rate how accurate it is. The beauty of this on-line version is that students can change some of their answers and see that their description never changes. In the words of Prof. Birnbaum at Fullerton State who developed this page, Self-validation is no validation according to the explanation given here
Here’s a Quick Way to Figure Out What You Should Do With Your Life, Based on Your Personality Check out this colorful flow chart, based on the work of John Holland, which asks a series of questions to help you find your ideal career. From The Muse, July 13, 2015.
Validity and Reliability Mark Mitchell and Janina Jolley for the Research Design Explained website provide these materials for students to administer a pencil-and-paper version of the Ice Cream Personality Test to a friend. Based on Miserandino, M. (2006). I scream, you scream: Teaching validity and reliability via the ice cream personality test. Teaching of Psychology, 33, 265-268.
Electronic Texts
Chronback & Meehl (1955) Chronback, L. J. & Meehl, P. E.(1955) Construct Validity in Psychological Tests, Psychological Bulletin, 52, 281-302.
Examples and Illustrations
Forced Ranking: The Poisonous Employee-Ranking System That Helps Explain Microsoft’s Decline Writing for Slate Magazine, Will Oremus, on August 23, 2013 claims that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer oversaw a system called “stack ranking,” in which employees on the same team competed directly with one another for money and promotions. Critics say this rewarded brown-nosing and sabotage
Microsoft’s Lost Decade Due to Forced Ranking Appraisal Systems Kurt Eichenwald argues that a forced ranking system may have had negative effects on Microsoft’s corporate culture. From Vanity Fair, August 2012.
Stacked (Forced) Ranking From Michael Britt at The Psych Files: Here’s a sound byte from an episode of TWIT (This Week in Technology: twit.tv/twit) podcast in which Leo Laporte and John Dvorak discuss the negative effects of a performance appraisal system often called Stacked or Forced ranking. Psychologists refer to scales like this as ordinal scales. From July 15, 2012, show #362. (This audio clip runs 1 minute, 55 seconds).
Lecture Notes
Slide Presentations
Tests, Measures, and Scales
The Barnum Effect Pierre Ysewijn created this on-line personality test which gives false feedback. Despite the obviously invalid questions people still rate the feedback as accurate, illustrating the Barnum Effect.
The Barnum Effect Take this test to remind yourself why good personality tests should provide specific feedback…and why horoscopes are so much fun! This online test of 47 questions plus some background demographics gives the appearance of a legitimate personality test. Respondents receive the typical Barnum feedback and rate how accurate it is. The beauty of this on-line version is that students can change some of their answers and see that their description never changes. In the words of Prof. Birnbaum at Fullerton State who developed this page, Self-validation is no validation according to the explanation given here
Multimedia Resources
On The California Shore, Sizing Up Female Marines’ Combat Readiness The Pentagon has decreed that the Marines must open combat roles for women by 2016 unless they can show a good reason not to. The Marine Corps has teamed up with the University of Pittsburgh to scientifically measure skills, strength, and endurance in order to establish valid and reliable gender-neutral standards. Runs 7 minutes, 18 seconds; transcript and photos available.
Discovering Psychology: Testing and Intelligence (Program 16) The complete updated series hosted by Philip Zimbardo is available online for streaming in the classroom or for outside of class viewing as well as in DVD format. From the website: This program peers into the field of psychological assessment — the efforts of psychologists and other professionals to assign values to different abilities, behaviors, and personalities. With Dr. Claude Steele of Stanford University and Dr. Robert Sternberg of Yale University. Updated. 30 minutes.
Reliability — The Foundation of Any Good Personality Test Michael Brit, former professor of psychology, broadcasts a podcast about psychology called The Psych Files. In this video episode (Episode 168), he describes the concept of reliability in a concrete and enjoyable way through the classic, but invalid, Ice Cream Personality Test, the Distorted Tunes Test of musical perception, and a test of Achievement Motivation (runs 12 minutes, 6 seconds).
Stacked (Forced) Ranking From Michael Britt at The Psych Files: Here’s a sound byte from an episode of TWIT (This Week in Technology: twit.tv/twit) podcast in which Leo Laporte and John Dvorak discuss the negative effects of a performance appraisal system often called Stacked or Forced ranking. Psychologists refer to scales like this as ordinal scales. From July 15, 2012, show #362. (This audio clip runs 1 minute, 55 seconds).
Validity — How Can You Tell a Good Test From a Bad One? Michael Brit, former professor of psychology, broadcasts a podcast about psychology called The Psych Files. In this video episode (Episode 169), he describes the concept of validity in a concrete and enjoyable way through the classic, but invalid, Ice Cream Personality Test, the Distorted Tunes Test of musical perception, and others. High validity is what separates the many fun-to-take but essentially meaningless tests you’ll find on the web, and a truly solid test of your personality (runs 14 minutes, 40 seconds).
World’s Quickest Personality Test Are you imaginative, analytical, or suspicious? Richard Wiseman describes how to assess your personality via this quick measure. A fun way to introduce personality testing and the importance of validity to your students. (runs 1 minute, 26 seconds).