Maudley`s Personality Inventory

Aim: To assess the introversion-extraversion, emotional stability-neuroticism dimensions of

personality of the participant using MPI.

Basic Concept:
According to Allport, personality is the dynamic organizations within the individual that
determine
its behaviour.

Theories of Personality

❖ Behavioral Theories
Behavioral theories suggest that personality is a result of interaction between the individual
and the environment. Behavioral theorists study observable and measurable behaviors,
rejecting theories that take internal thoughts and feelings into account. Behavioral theorists
include B. F. Skinner and John B. Watson.

❖ Psychodynamic theories
Psychodynamic theories include Sigmund Freud's psychosexual stage theory and Erik
Erikson's stages of psychosocial development. Psychodynamic theories of personality are
heavily influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, and emphasize the influence of the
unconscious mind and childhood experiences on personality.

❖ Humanist Theories
Humanist theories emphasize the importance of free will and individual experience in the
development of personality. Humanist theorists emphasized the concept of self-actualization,
which is an innate need for personal growth that motivates behavior. Humanist theorists
include Carl Rogers and Abraham Maslow.

❖ Trait Theories
The trait theory approach is one of the largest areas within personality psychology.
According to this theory, personality is made up of a number of broad traits. A trait is
basically a relatively stable characteristic that causes an individual to behave in certain
ways. Some of the best known trait theories include Eysenck's three-dimension theory and
the five factor theory of personality.

I. Gordon Allport’s Trait Theory

Gordon Allport was one of the first modern trait theorists. Allport and Henry Odbert worked
through two of the most comprehensive dictionaries of the English language available and
extracted around 18,000 personality-describing words. From this list they reduced the
number of words to approximately 4,500 personality-describing adjectives which they
considered to describe observable and relatively permanent personality traits.
Allport organized these traits into a hierarchy of three levels:
• Cardinal traits dominate and shape an individual's behavior, such as Ebenezer Scrooge’s
greed or Mother Theresa’s altruism. They stand at the top of the hierarchy and are
collectively known as the individual's master control. They are considered to be an
individual's ruling passions. Cardinal traits are powerful, but few people have personalities
dominated by a single trait. Instead, our personalities are typically composed of multiple
traits.
• Central traits come next in the hierarchy. These are general characteristics found in varying
degrees in every person (such as loyalty, kindness, agreeableness, friendliness, sneakiness,
wildness, or grouchiness). They are the basic building blocks that shape most of our
behavior.
• Secondary traits exist at the bottom of the hierarchy and are not quite as obvious or
consistent as central traits. They are plentiful but are only present under specific
circumstances; they include things like preferences and attitudes. These secondary traits
explain why a person may at times exhibit behaviors that seem incongruent with their usual
behaviors. For example, a friendly person gets angry when people try to tickle him; another
is not an anxious person but always feels nervous speaking publicly.

II. Hans Eysenck: Three Dimensions of Personality

British psychologist Hans Eysenck developed a model of personality based upon just three

universal trails:

Unlike Allport and Cattell, theorist Hans Eysenck only included three general traits in his list.

They are:

1. Introversion- Extraversion

As in Carl Jung's personality type theory, Eysenck classified people as either introvert, those

who directs focus on inner world, or extravert, those who gives more attention to other

people and his environment.

2. Neuroticism-Emotional Stability

This category is synonymous to "moodiness versus even-temperedness", where in a

neurotic person is inclined to having changing emotions from time to time, while an

emotionally stable person tends to maintain a constant mood or emotion.

3. Pyschoticism-Sociability

This dimension refers to the finding it hard to deal with reality. A psychotic person may be

considered hostile, manipulative, anti-social and non-empathetic.

Type Approach

The type approaches attempts to comprehend human personality by examining certain

broad patterns in the observed behavioural characteristics of individuals. Each behavioural

pattern refers to one type in which individuals are placed in terms of the similarity of their

behavioural characteristics with that pattern.

Friedman and Rosenman’s type theory (/OR Write any one type theory from NCERT)

They have classified individuals into Type A and Type B personalities. The theory

describes Type A individuals as ambitious, rigidly organized, highly status-conscious,

sensitive, impatient, take on more than they can handle, want other people to get to the

point, anxious, proactive, and concerned with time management. People with Type A

personalities are often high-achieving "workaholics", push themselves with deadlines,

and hate both delays and ambivalence.

The theory describes Type B individuals as a contrast to those of Type A. Type B

personality, by definition, are noted to live at lower stress levels. They typically work

steadily, and may enjoy achievement, although they have a greater tendency to disregard

physical or mental stress when they do not achieve. When faced with competition, they

may focus less on winning or losing than their Type A counterparts, and more on

enjoying the game regardless of winning or losing. Unlike the Type A personality`s

rhythm of multi-tasked careers, Type B individuals are sometimes attracted to careers of

creativity: writer, counselor, therapist, actor or actress.

Methods of assessing personality
Personality assessment refers to the procedures used to evaluate people on the basis of
certain characteristics. The most commonly used methods for assessing personality are –
psychometric tests, self-report measures, projective techniques and behavioural analysis.
We are using self-report measures here, which are fairly structured, often based on a theory,
that requires subjects to give verbal responses using some kind of rating scale. The method
requires the subject to objectively report his/her own feelings with respect to various items.
They are scored in quantitative terms and are interpreted on the basis of norms developed
for the test.
Examples –
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory [MMPI], Eysenk Personality Questionnaire
[EPQ] and 16 Personality factor [PF]

❖ Advantages – Used for career guidance, vocational exploration, personal counselling and
personality development.

❖ Disadvantages – Social desirability is the tendency on the part of respondent to endorse

items in a socially desirable manner. Acquiescence is the tendency of the subject to agree
with items irrespective of their contents.

History and description

A questionnaire designed to measure two major dimensions of personality, namely
extraversion and neuroticism, according to the theory of personality of the German-born
British psychologist H. J. Eysenck (1916–97), first propounded in his books Dimensions of
Personality (1947) and The Scientific Study of Personality (1952). Eysenck published the
test initially in the journal Rivista di Psicologia in 1956. Later versions of it were called the
Eysenck Personality Inventory and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. MPI abbrev.
[Named after the Maudsley Hospital in Denmark Hill, south London, where Eysenck worked,
and which in turn is named after the English psychiatrist Henry Maudsley (1835–1918) who
founded it].
Each of these two traits are measured by means of 48 questions. Neuroticism refers to
general emotional stability of a person, his emotional over responsiveness and his stability to
neurotic breakdown under stress. Extraversion as opposed to introversion refers to the
out-going, uninhibited, sociable proclivities of a person. The two dimensions are conceived
of as being quite independent: thus all the theoretically possible combinations of scores may
in fact be observed.

Reliability and Validity

For the neuroticism scale, the split-half reliability coefficient values nearly lie between 0.85
and 0.90; for extraversion scale, they lie between 0.75 and 0.85 with the majority above
0.80. Retest reliabilities are available only on about 100 cases; they are 0.83 and 0.81
respectively. The correlation between the long and short MPI scales are 0.86 and 87
respectively for N and E.

Preliminaries
Name:
Age:
Gender:
Qualification:
Place of conduction: Psychology Lab
Time:

Materials Required
MPI manual, response sheet, MPI questionnaire form, pen/pencil

Precautions
1. Optimal conditions for testing were ensured before the test begun
2. Time of start and finish were noted
3. The tester should ensure that the subject is not familiar with the test.
4. Subject should be told that there is no correct answer.
5. Subject should not skip any item and use “?” only when required. 5. Subject should be
assured of confidentiality of test results.

Rapport Formation
Rapport was established between the subject and the tester, prior to the test so that he/she
could
feel comfortable and at ease. In such a state, she/he should answer the questions in a calm
manner and any doubts should be cleared before starting the test.

Instructions
The following instructions were given:
• “There are some questions regarding the way you feel, behave and react.”
• In each item there are three answers `yes`, `no` and `?`
• Don’t leave any question and try to complete as soon as possible.
• There are total of 48 items in this test.
• There are no right or wrong answers
• Give the first natural answer as it comes to you. When in doubt, give the best possible
answer.

Administration
After the instructions were given, the subject was asked to fill in the necessary details. The
tester ensured that the instructions were clear and understood.
The MPI questionnaire was given to the subject and was completed in less than 10-15
minutes. The raw score was obtained after the subject completes the test.

Introspective Report
The test was quite insightful and fun to do. The tester made me feel at ease.
[You can write the introspective report given by your participant]]

Scoring
The inventory is scored directly from the test forms. The raw scores were converted into
Standard Score through the Short Scale and Long Scale Forms which was added to give a
total of ___________ for neuroticism and ______ for extraversion respectively. All the items
that are in `YES` are weighed as 2 [except the ones where NO is allotted 2] and `No` is
scored as 1. All the `?` are scored 1.
(Mention your participant scores in the missing blanks).

Result Table

Neuroticism Extraversion

Raw Score

Standard Score [Sten

Score]

Interpretation

Personality is the dynamic organization within the individual of those psychophysical

systems which determine his/her unique and characteristic thought and behaviour. Trait is a

relatively enduring attribute or quality on which individuals differ from one another.

Extroversion is the outgoing, uninhibited and sociable proclivities of a person. The

participant’ raw score for Extraversion = 42 [write your participant`s score here] and for

Sten score for Extraversion=10 [write your participant`s score here]. Since the Sten’s

score was 10 [write your participant`s score here] for Extraversion, she was seen as

highly extraverted. She is highly sociable, friendly, outgoing and enjoys interacting with other

individuals. The participant’s score for raw score for “Neuroticism”=20 [write your

participant`s score here] and for Sten score= 5 [write your participant`s score

here].Since the Sten score was 5 [write your participant`s score here] for “Neuroticism”,
she was seen to be neither extremely neurotic, nor extremely emotionally stable, but was

seen to be of average emotional stability.

Note: (IF participant gets sten scores of 1,2,3 on neuroticism participant is

emotionally stable; if sten is 4,5,6,7, participant is of average stability and 8,9,10 then

participant is neurotic so describe accordingly. For extraversion 1,2, 3, participant is

an introvert; 4,5,6,7, ambivert and 8,9,10, participant is an extravert)

**Ambiverts lie in the middle of the spectrum between introversion and

extraversion. They may lean more toward extroverted or introverted behavior

depending on the situation. (Interpretation if your participant’s score depicts

ambivert personality)

Conclusion

The participant is emotionally stable/neurotic and introverted/ambiverted/extraverted.

(As per your participant’s score interpretation)

(TO BE DRAWN NEATLY ON ONE SIDE OF A BLANK WHITE SHEET WITH
YOUR RESPONSE+SCORING SHEET ENVELOPE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF
THIS SHEET)

References

· MPI manual

· NCERT psychology textbook

· A Dictionary of Psychology

· Baron RAC (2001)

REFERENCE TABLE FOR CONVERSION OF DIMENSION-VISE RAW SCORES INTO
STEN SCORES (NOT TO BE DRAWN)

Norms for General population [combined] for long scale

Dimensions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Extraversion 0-15 16-18 19-21 22-24 25-28 29-31 32-34 35-37 38-40 41-48

Neuroticism 0-3 4-8 9-13 14-18 19-23 24-28 29-33 34-38 39-43 44-48

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Sten scores