Psychology – Grade XII

Chapter 2: Self and Personality

Concept of Self
• Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts
and feelings with regard to herself or himself.
• The study of self and personality help us to understand ourselves as well as others.
• Personal identity refers to those attributes of a person that make him/her different
from others.
• Social identity refers to those aspects of a person that link him/her to a social or
cultural group or are derived from it.
Self refers to the totality of an individual’s conscious experiences, ideas, thoughts
and feelings with regard to himself or herself.

Self as Subject and Self as Object – dual status of self

• Subject:
Who does something (actor).
Self actively engages in the process of knowing itself.
• Object:
Which gets affected (consequence).
Self gets observed and comes to be known.
• Kinds of Self:
(i) Different kinds of self get formed as a result of the interaction of the biological self
with the physical and socio-cultural environment.
(ii) Biological self develops as a result of our biological needs.
1. Personal Self:
(i) Leads to an orientation in which one feels primarily concerned with oneself.

(ii) A child’s psychological and social needs in the context of his/her environment
lead other components of personal self to emerge.
(iii) Emphasis comes to be laid on those aspects of life that relate only to the concern
the person, such as personal freedom, personal responsibility, personal
achievement, or personal comforts.
2. Social/Familial/Relational Self
(i) Emerges in relation with others.
(ii) Emphasises such aspects of life as co-operation, unity, affiliation, sacrifice,
support or sharing. This self values family and social relationship.

Cognitive and Behavioural Aspects of Self

• Self-concept

(i) Self-concept is the way perceive ourselves and the ideas we hold about
our competencies and attributes.
(ii) At a general level, this view about oneself can be positive or negative.
(iii) At a specific level, one may have positive view about certain abilities such
as athletic bravery but a negative view about their academic talents.
(iv) A person’s self-concept can be found out by asking the person about
himself herself.

• Self-esteem
(i) Self-esteem is the value judgement of a person about himself/herself.

(ii) some people have high self-esteem whereas others have low self-esteem.

(iii) Assessment of self-esteem involve presenting a variety of statements to a

person and asking him/her to indicate the extent to which those statements are true
for him or her.
(iv) By 6 to 7 years, children have formed self-esteem in four areas—academic,
social and physical/athletic competence, and physical appearance which become
more refined with age.
(v) Overall sense of self-esteem: It is the capacity to view oneself in terms of stable
disposition and combine separate self-evaluations into a general psychological
image of oneself.
(vi) Self-esteem has a strong relationship with our everyday behaviour. Children with
low self-esteem in all areas often display anxiety, depression, and increasing anti-
social behaviour. Children with high academic self-esteem perform better in schools.

(vii) Warm and positive parenting helps in development of high self-esteem among
children as it allows them to know they are accepted as competent and worthwhile.

• Self-efficacy

(i) Self-efficacy is the extent to which a person believes they themselves

control their life outcomes or the outcomes are controlled by luck or fate or
other situational factors.
(ii) A person who believes that he/she has the ability or behaviour required by
a particular situation demonstrates high self-efficacy.
(iii) The notion of self-efficacy is based on Bandura’s social learning theory.
He showed that children and adults learned behaviour by observing and
imitating others.
(iv) People’s expectations of achievement also determine the type of
behaviour in which they would engage, as also the amount of risk they
would undertake.
(v) Strong sense of self-efficacy allows people to select, influence, and even
construct the circumstances of their own life; also feel less fearful.
(vi) Self-efficacy can be developed. People with high self-efficacy have been
found to stop smoking the moment they decide to do so.
(vii) Society, parents and own positive experiences can help in the
development of a strong sense of self-efficacy by presenting positive
models during the formative years of children.
• Self-regulation

(i) Self-regulation refers to the ability to organize and monitor one’s own
behaviour.
(ii) People who are able to change their behaviour according to the demands
of. the environment are high on self-monitoring.
(iii) Self-control is learning to delay or defer the gratification of needs.
(iv) Will-power is the ability to respond to situational pressure with resistance
and control over ourselves.
(v) Self-control plays a key role in the fulfilment of a long-term goal.
(vi) Indian culture tradition provides certain effective mechanisms (fasting in
vrata or roza and non-attachment with worldly things) for developing self-
control.

• Techniques of self-control:
1. Observation of own behaviour: provides necessary information that
may be used to change, modify or strengthen certain aspects of self.
2. Self-instruction: instruct ourselves to do something and behave the
way we want to.
3. Self-reinforcement: rewards behaviours that have pleasant outcomes.
Eg. Going to watch a view after scoring well in exams.

CULTURE AND SELF:

• Indian
(i) Shifting nature of boundary between self and other (individual self and social self).
(ii) Does not hold clear dichotomies between the self and other, man and natre,
subjective and objective.
(iii) Collectivistic culture: Self is generally not separated from one’s own group; rather
both remain in a state of harmonious co-existence.
• Western
(i) Boundary between the self and the other is relatively fixed.
(ii) Holds clear dichotomies between self and other, man and nature, subjective and
objective.
(iii) Individualistic Culture: Self and the group exist as two different entities with
clearly defined boundaries; individual members of the group maintain their
individuality.

CONCEPT OF PERSONALITY
(i) Personality refers to our characteristic ways of responding to individuals and
situations. OR Personality refers to the unique and relatively stable qualities that
characterise an individual’s behaviour across different situations over a period of
time.
(ii) Derived from persona (Latin), the mask used by actors in Roman theatre for
changing their facial make-up.
(iii) Once we are able to characterize someone’s personality, we can predict how
that person will probably behave in a variety of circumstances.
(iv) An understanding of personality allows us to deal with people in realistic and
acceptable ways.

Features of Personality:
1. Personality has both physical and psychological components.
2. Its expression in terms of behaviour is fairly unique in a given individual.
3. Its main features do not easily change with time.
4. It is dynamic in the sense that some of its features may change due to internal or
external situational demands; adaptive to situations.
APPROACHES TO STUDY PERSONALITY
• Type Approaches – attempt to comprehend human personality by examining
certain broad patterns in the observed behavioural characteristics of
individuals.

1. Hippocrates (Greek Physician)

(i) Proposed a typology of personality based on fluid or humour.
(ii) Classified people into four types - sanguine, phlegmatic, melancholic and
choleric; each characterised by specific behavioural features.

2. Charak Samhita (Treatise on Ayurveda)

(i) Classifies people into the categories of vata, pitta and kapha on the basis of three
humoural elements called tridosha.
(ii) Each refers to a type of temperament, called prakriti (basic nature) of a person.

3. Typology of personality based on the trigunas, i.e. , sattva, rajas, and tamas.
(i) Sattva guna—cleaniness, truthfulness, dutifulness, detachment, discipline.
(ii) Rajas guna—intensive activity, desire for sense gratification, dissatisfaction,envy,
materialism.
(iii) Tamas guna—anger, arrogance, depression, laziness, helplessness
All the three gunas are present in every person in different degrees—the dominance
of any guna leads to a particular type of behaviour.

4. Sheldon
Using body built and temperament as the main basis for classification:
(i) Endomorphic (fat, soft and round)—relaxed and sociable.
(ii) Mesomorphic (strong musculature, rectangular, strong body build)—energetic
and courageous.
(iii) Ectomorphic (thin, long, fragile)—brainy, artistic and introverted.
— Limited use in predicting behaviour—simple and similar to stereotypes.
5. Jung
Grouped people into two types, widely recognized.
(i) Introverts: People who prefer to be alone, tend to avoid others, withdraw
themselves in the face of emotional conflicts, and are shy.
(ii) Extraverts: Sociable, outgoing, drawn to occupations that allow dealing directly
with people, and react to stress by trying to lose themselves among people and
social activity.

6. Friedman and Roesenman

Tried to identify psycho-social risk factors and discovered types.
(i) Type-A (susceptible to hypertension and coronary heart disease): Highly
motivated, impatience, feel short of time, be in a great hurry, and feel like being
always burdened with work. Such people find it difficult to slow down and relax,
(ii) Type-B: The absence of Type-A traits.
Morris continued this research and identified:
(iii) Type-C (prone to cancer): Co-operative, unassertive patient, suppress negative
emotion, show compliance to authority.
(iv) Type-D (prone to depression).

Personality typologies are usually too simplistic as human behaviour is highly

complex and variable. Assigning people to a particular personality type is difficult.
People do not fit into such simple categorization schemes so neatly.

Trait Approaches – focuses on the specific psychological attributes along

which individuals tend to differ in consistent and stable ways.

These theories are mainly concerned with the description or characterisation

of basic components of personality.

They try to discover the building blocks of personality.

A trait is considered as a relatively enduring attribute or quality on which one
individual differ another. They are:
(i) Relatively Stable over Time
(ii) Generally consistent across situations.
(iii) Their strengths and combination vary across individuals leading to individual
differences in personality.

1. Allport’s Trait Theory (Gordon Allport)

(i) Individuals possess a number of traits which are dynamic in nature and determine
behaviour.
(ii) Analysed words people use to describe themselves and argued that they
provided a basic for understanding human personality. He then categorized them
into—
a. Cardinal Traits: highly generalized disposition, indicates the goal around . which
a person’s entire life revolves, e.g., Hitler’s Nazism.
b. Central Traits: less pervasive in effect, but still quite generalized disposition. e.g.,
sincere.
c. Secondary traits: least generalized characteristics of a person, e.g., likes
mangoes.
(iii) The way an individual reacts to a situation depends on his/her traits.
(iv) People sharing the same traits might express them in different ways.

2. Personality Factors (Raymond Cattell)

(i) Identified primary traits from descriptive adjectives found in language.
(ii) Applied factor analysis, a statistical technique to discover the common structure
on which people differ from each other.
(iii) He found -

a. Source or Primary Traits (16): these traits are stable and are building blocks
of personality. They are described in terms of opposing tendencies.
b. Surface Traits: result out of the interaction of source traits.
(iv) Developed Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) Questionnaire for the assessment
of personality.

3.

Eysenck’s Theory (H.J. Eysenck)

(i) Reduced personality into two broad dimensions which are biologically and
genetically based and subsume a number of specific traits.
a. Neuroticism (anxious, moody, touchy, restless) vs. Emotional stability (calm,
even tempered, reliable)—the degree to which people have control over their
feelings.
b. Extraversion (active, gregarious, impulsive, thrill seeking) vs. Introversion
(passive, quiet, caution, reserved)—the degree to which people are socially outgoing
or socially withdrawn.
(ii) Later proposed a third dimension, Psychoticism (hostile, electric, and antisocial)
vs. Sociability, considered to interact with the other two dimensions.
(iii) Developed Eysenck Personality Questionnaire to study dimensions of
personality.
• Psychodynamic Approach (Sigmund Freud)
A. Levels of Consciousness
1. Conscious—thoughts, feelings and action of which people are aware.
2. Preconscious-—mental activity which people may become aware only if they
attend to it closely.
3. Unconscious—mental activity that people are unaware of.
(i) A reservoir of instinctive or animal drives. It stores all ideas and wishes that arise
from sexual desires.
(ii) Cannot be expressed openly and therefore are repressed or concealed from
conscious awareness.
(iii) Constant struggle to find a socially acceptable way to express unconscious
awareness.
(iv) Unsuccessful resolution of conflicts results in abnormal behaviour

Approaches to the Unconscious

1. Free Association—a method in which a person is asked to openly share all the
thoughts, feelings and ideas that come to his/her mind.
2. Dream Analysis.
3. Analysis of Errors—mispronunciations, forgetting.

Psycho-analysis is a therapeutic procedure, the basic goal which is to bring

repressed unconscious material to consciousness, thereby helping people to live in a
more self-aware and integrated manner.

B. Structure of Personality
1. According to Freud’s theory, the primary structural elements of person are the
three competing forces—i.e. id, ego and superego which influence behaviour.

2. The relative strength of each structure determines a person’s stability.

• Id:
1. Source of a person’s instinctual energy—deals with immediate gratification of
primitive needs, sexual desires and aggressive impulses.
2. Works on the pleasure principle, which assumes that people seek pleasure and try
to avoid pain.
3. Demanding, unrealistic and does not care for moral values, society, or other
individuals.
4. Energised by instinctual forces, life (sexual) instinct (libido) and death instinct.

• Ego:
1. Seeks to satisfy an individual’s instinctual needs in accordance with reality.
2. Works on the reality principle, and directs the id towards more appropriate ways of
behaving.
3. Patient and reasonable.

• Superego:
1. Moral branch of mental functioning.
2. Tells the id and ego whether gratification in a particular instance is ethical
3. Controls the id by internalising the parental authority the process of socialisation.

C. Ego Defence Mechanisms

1. A defence mechanism is a way of reducing anxiety by distorting reality
unconsciously.
2. It defends the ego against the awareness of the instinctual reality.
3. It is normal and adaptive; people who use mechanism are often unaware of doing
so.

4. Various forms of maladjustment develop if these defence mechanisms are used to

an extent that reality is distorted.

(i) Repression: Anxiety provoking behaviours or thoughts are totally dismissed by

the unconscious. ‘
(ii) Projection: People attributes their own traits to others.
(iii) Denial: A person totally refuses to accept reality.
(iv) Reaction Formation: A person defends against anxiety by adopting behaviours
opposite to his/her true feelings.
(v) Rationalisation: A person tries to make unreasonable feelings or behaviour
seem reasonable and acceptable.

D. Stages of Personality/Psychosexual Development (Five Stage Theory of

Personality)
1. The core aspects of personality are established early, remain stable throughout
life, and can be changed only with great difficulty.
2. Problems encountered at any stage may arrest development, and have long-term
effect on a person’s life.

(i) Oral stage: a newborn’s instincts are focused on the mouth. This is the
infant’s primary pleasure seeking centre. The infant achieves oral
gratification through feeding, thumb sucking, biting and babbling.
- It is during these early months that people’s basic feelings about the
world are established.
- Thus, for Freud, an adult who considers the world a bitter place
probably had difficulty during the oral stage of development.

(ii) Anal Stage: It is found that around ages two and three the child learns to
respond to some of the demands of the society. One of the principal
demands made by parents is that the child learns to control the bodily
functions of urination and defecation.
- Most children at this age experience pleasure in moving their bowels.
The anal area of the body becomes the focus of certain pleasurable
feelings.
- This stage establishes the basis for conflict between the id and the
ego, and between the desire for babyish pleasure and demand for
adult, controlled behaviour.
(iii) Phallic Stage: This stage focuses on the genitals. At around ages four
and five children begin to realise the differences between males and
females. They become aware of sexuality and the sexual relationship
between their parents.
• Oedipus Complex (Male)
Love for mother, hostility towards the father, and fear of punishment or
castration by the father.
The resolution of the Oedipus complex takes place by accepting his
father’s relationship with his mother and modelling his own behaviour after
his father.
• Electra Complex (Female)
Attaches her love to the father and tries to symbolically marry him and
raise a family.
When she realises that this is unlikely, she begins to identify with her
mother and copies her behaviour as a means of getting (or sharing in) her
father’s affection.

The critical component in resolving the Oedipus complex is the

development of identification with the same sex parents. Boys give up
sexual feelings for their mothers and begin to see their fathers as role
models rather than as rivals; girls give up their sexual desires for their
father and identify with their mother.

(iv) Latency Stage: This stage lasts from about seven years until puberty.
During this period, the child continues to grow physically, but sexual urges
are relatively inactive. Much of a child’s energy is channelled into social or
achievement related activities.

(v) Genital Stage: During this stage, the person attains maturity in
psychosexual development. The sexuality, fears and repressed feelings of
earlier stages are once again exhibited. People learn to deal with
members of the opposite sex in a socially and sexually mature way.
However, if the journey towards this stage is marked by excessive stress
 or over-indulgence, it may cause fixation to an earlier stage of
development.

Failure of a child to pass successfully through a stage leads to fixation to that stage.
The child’s development gets arrested at an earlier stage. For example, a child who
does not pass successfully through the phallic stage fails to resolve the Oedipal
complex and may still feel hostile toward the parent of the same sex. This failure
may have serious consequences for the child’s life. Such a boy may come to
consider that men are generally hostile, and may wish to relate to females in a
dependable relationship.

Regression occurs when a person’s resolution of problems at any stage of

development is less than adequate. People display behaviours typical of a less
mature stage of development.

• Post-Freudian Approach Neo-analytic or Post-Freudian View

(i) Less prominent role to sexual and aggressive tendencies of the Id.
(ii) Expansion of the concept ego.
(iii) Emphasis on human qualities of creativity, competence, and problem-solving.

1. Carl Jung: Aims and Aspirations are the source of energy (Analytical
Psychology)
(i) Saw human beings as guided by aims and aspirations.
(ii) He developed his own theory of personality - Analytical Psychology; personality
consists of competing forces and structures within the individual (that must be
balanced) rather than between the individual and the demand of society, or between
the individual and reality.
(iii) Collective unconscious consisting of archetypes or primordial images; not
individually acquired, but are inherited—found in myths, dreams and arts of all
mankind.
(iv) The self-strive for unity and oneness; for achieving which, a person must become
increasingly aware of the wisdom available in one’s personal and collective
unconscious, and must learn to live harmony with it.

2. Karen Horney: Optimism

(i) She adopted a more optimistic view of human life with emphasis on human growth
and self-actualisation.
(ii) Challenge to Freud’s treatment of women as inferior—each sex has attributes to
be admire by the other, and neither sex can be viewed as superior or inferior;
countered that women were more likely to be affected by social and cultural factors
than by biological factors.
(iii) Psychological disorders were caused by disturbed interpersonal relationship
during childhood.
(iv) When parent’s behaviour toward a child is indifferent, discouraging and erratic,
the child feels insecure and a feeling called basic anxiety results—deep resentment
towards parents or basic hostility occurs due to this anxiety.

3. Alfred Adler: Lifestyle and Social Interest –attainment of personal goals is

the source of energy (Individual Psychology)
(i) Individual Psychology: human behaviour is purposeful and goal directed.
(ii) Each one of us has the capacity to choose and create.
(iii) Personal goals, goals that provide us with security and help us in overcoming the
feelings of inadequacy, are the sources of our motivation.
(iv) Every individual suffers from the feeling of inadequacy and guilt, i.e., inferiority
complex, which arise from childhood. Overcoming this complex is essential for
optimal personality development.

4. Erich Fromm: The Human Concerns

(i) Fromm developed his theory from a social orientation - viewed human beings as
social beings who could be understood in terms of their relationship with others.
(ii) Character traits (personality) develop from our experiences with their individuals.
(iii) Psychological qualities such as growth and realisation of potentials resulted from
a desire for freedom and striving for justice and truth. Character
traits/personality develop from our experience with other individuals.
(iv) People’s dominant character traits in a given society work as forces in shaping
the social processes and the culture itself.

(v) His work recognises the value of positive qualities such as tenderness and love in
personality development.

5. Erik Erikson: Search for Identity

(i) Rational, conscious ego processes in personality development.
(ii) Development is viewed as a lifelong process, and ego identity is granted a central
place in this process.
(iii) Identity crisis at the adolescent age—young people must generate for
themselves a central perspective and a direction that can give them a meaningful
sense of unity and purpose.

• Criticism to Psychodynamic Theories

1. The theories are largely based on case studies; they lack a rigorous scientific
basis.
2. They use small and a typical individuals as samples for advancing generalisations.
3. The concepts are not properly defined, and it is difficult to submit them to scientific
testing.
4. Freud has used males as the prototype of all human personality development and
overlooked female experiences and perspectives.

• Behavioural Approach – do not give importance to the internal dynamics of

behaviour – believe in data which is definable, observable and measurable.
1. Focus on learning of stimulus—response connection and their reinforcement.
2. Personality is the response of an individual to the environment. Structural unit of
personality is the response. Response is a behaviour which is emitted to satisfy a
specific need.
• Cultural Approach
1. Considers personality as an adaptation of individuals or group to the demand of
their ecology and culture.
2. A group’s economic maintenance system plays a vital role in the origin of
cultural and behavioural variations.
3. The climatic conditions, the nature of terrain of the habitat and the availability of
food determine people’s settlement patterns, social structures, division of labour, and
other features such as child-rearing practices.
4. These elements constitute a child’s overall learning environment. Skills, abilities,
behavioural styles, and value priorities are viewed as strongly linked to these
features.

5. rituals, ceremonies, religious practices, arts, recreational activities, games and

play are the means through which people’s personality gets projected in a culture.

6. People develop various personality (behavioural) qualities in an attempt to adapt

to the ecological and cultural features of a group’s life.

7. Eg. In agricultural societies, children are socialised to be obedient to elders,

nurturant to youngsters, and responsible to their duties. Since these behavioural
qualities make people more functional in agricultural societies, they become
dominant features of people’s personality in contrast to independence, autonomy
and achievement, which are more functional (and thus highly valued) in hunting-
gathering societies. Because of different economic pursuits and cultural demands,
children in hunting gathering and agricultural societies develop and display different
personality patterns.
• Humanistic Approach

Carl Rogers
1. The most important idea proposed is that of a Fully functioning person.
Fulfilment is the motivating force for personality development (people try to express
their capabilities, potentials and talents to the fullest extent possible).
2. Assumptions about human behaviour:
(i) It is goal-oriented and worthwhile.
(ii) People (who are innately good) will almost always choose adaptive, self-
actualising behaviour.
3. People are constantly engaged in the process of actualising their true self.
4. Ideal self is the self that a person would like to be—correspondence between ideal
and real self = happiness, discrepancy = dissatisfaction.
5. People have tendency to maximize self-concept through self-actualisation.
6. Personality development is a continuous process.
7. Role of social influences in the development of self-concept—positive social
conditions lead to a high self-concept and self-esteem, generally flexible and open to
new experiences.
8. An atmosphere of unconditional positive regard must be created in order to
ensure enhancement of people’s self-concept.
9. Client-centered therapy that Rogers developed basically attempts to create this
condition.

• Abraham Maslow
1. Maslow has given a detailed account of psychologically healthy people in terms of
attainment of self-actualisation, a state in which people have reached their own
fullest potential.
2. Maslow had an optimistic and positive view of man who has the potentialities for
love, joy and to do creative work.
3. Human beings are considered free to shape their lives and to self-actualisation.
4. Self-actualisation becomes possible by analysing the motivations that govern our
life.

5. Biological needs, security and belongingness needs (survival needs) are

commonly found among animals and human beings. Thus, an individual’s sole
concern with the satisfaction of these needs reduces her/ him to the level of animals.
The real journey of human life begins with the pursuit of self-esteem and self-
actualisation needs

• Characteristics of Healthy Person

1. Healthy people become aware of themselves, their feelings, and their limits;
accept themselves, and what they make of their own responsibility; have ‘the
courage to be’.
2. They experience the ‘here-and-now’; are not trapped.
3. They do not live in the past or dwell in the future through anxious expectation and
distorted defences.

• Assessment of Personality
- A formal effort aimed at understanding personality of an individual is termed as
personality assessment.
- Assessment refers to the procedures used to evaluate or differentiate people on the
basis of certain characteristics.
- The goal of assessment is to understand and predict behaviour with minimum error
and maximum accuracy.
- Besides promoting our understanding, assessment is also useful for diagnosis,
training, placement, counselling, and other purposes.

Self-Report Measures - Direct techniques

• It was Allport who suggested that the best method to assess a person is by asking
her/him about herself himself.
• Fairly structured measures, based on theory that require subjects to give verbal
responses using some kind of rating scale.
• The method requires the subject to objectively report her/his own feeling with
respect to various items. Responses are accepted at face value, scored in
quantitative terms and interpreted on basis of norms for the test.
• Eg. MMPI, EPQ, 16 PF

1. MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY

- Developed by Hathaway and McKinley
- Effective in identifying varieties of psychopathology
- Revised version is MMPI-2
- Consists of 567 statements. The subject has to judge each statement as
‘true’ or ‘false’.
- The test is divided into 10 sub scales which seek to diagnose
hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviant, masculinity-
femininity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, mania and social
introversion.
- In India, Mallick and Joshi have developed Jodhpur Multiphasic Personality
Inventory. (JMPI)

2. EYSENCK PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE

- Developed by Eysenck
- Initially assessed 2 dimensions of personality: Introversion-Extraversion and
emotionally stable-emotionally unstable.
- These dimensions are characterised by 32 personality traits.
- Later on, Eysenck added a third dimension, called psychoticism. It is linked
to psychopathology-sociability.
- It represents a lack of feeling for others, a tough manner of interacting with
people, and a tendency to defy social conventions. A person scoring high on
this dimension tends to be hostile, egocentric and antisocial.

3. SIXTEEN PERSONALITY FACTOR QUESTIONNAIRE (16 PF) –

- It was developed by Raymond Cattell and his colleagues.
- The technique of factor analysis was used to discover and measure
the fundamental personality traits.
 - The test provides declarative statements, and the subject responds to
a specific situation by choosing from a set of given alternatives.
- It is used with high school students and for purposes like career
counselling, occupational testing, etc.

Limitations of Self-Report Measures

1. Social Desirability is the tendency of the respondent to respond to the test

items in a socially desirable manner.
2. Acquiescence is the tendency to agree with the questions irrespective of
what is being asked. It often appears in the form of saying Yes to items.

Projective Techniques – Indirect Method

• Direct methods of personality assessment cannot uncover the unconscious part of
our behaviour.
• These techniques are based on the assumption that a less structured or
unstructured stimulus or situation will allow the individual to project her/his feelings,
desires and needs on to that situation. These projections are interpreted by experts.
• Eg. Rorschach Inkblot test, Thematic Apperception Test, Sentence Completion
Test, Draw-a-Person Test.

1. The Rorschach Inkblot test – Hermann

Rorschach
- The test consists of 10 inkblots.
- Five of them are in black and white,
two with some red ink, and the
remaining three in some pastel colours.
- The blots are symmetrical in design
with a specific shape or form.
- Each blot is printed in the centre of a white cardboard of about 7”10”
size.
 - The blots were originally made by dropping ink on a piece of paper and
then folding the paper in half (hence called inkblot test).
- The cards are administered individually in two phases.
a. First phase, called performance proper, the subjects are shown
the cards and are asked to tell what they see in each of them.

b. Second phase, called inquiry, a detailed report of the response is

prepared by asking the subject to tell where, how, and on what
basis was a particular response made.

- Fine judgment is necessary to place the subject’s responses in a

meaningful context. The use and interpretation of this test requires
extensive training. Computer techniques too have been developed for
analysis of data.

2. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) - Morgan

and Murray.
- The test consists of 30 black and white
picture cards and one blank card.
- Each picture card depicts one or more
people in a variety of situations.
- Some cards are used with adult males or
females. Others are used with boys or girls.
Still others are used in some combinations.
- Twenty cards are appropriate for a subject, although a lesser number
of cards (even five) have also been successfully used.
- The cards are presented one at a time. The subject is asked to tell a
story describing the situation presented in the picture: What led up to
the situation, what is happening at the moment, what will happen in the
future, and what the characters are feeling and thinking?
- A standard procedure is available for scoring TAT responses.
- The test has been modified for children and for the aged. Uma
Chaudhury’s Indian adaptation of TAT is also available.
3. Rosenzweig’s Picture-Frustration Study (P-F Study) - Rosenzweig
- Assesses how people express aggression in the face of a frustrating
situation.
- The test presents with the help of cartoon like pictures a series of
situations in which one person frustrates another, or calls attention to a
frustrating condition.
- The subject is asked to tell what the other (frustrated) person will say or
do.
- The analysis of responses is based on the type and direction of
aggression. An attempt is made to examine whether the focus is on the
frustrating object, or on protection of the frustrated person, or on
constructive solution of the problem.
- The direction of aggression may be towards the environment, towards
oneself, or it may be tuned off in an attempt to gloss over or evade the
situation.
- Pareek has adapted this test for use with the Indian population.

4. Sentence Completion Test

- This test makes use of a number of incomplete sentences.
- The starting part of the sentence is first presented and the subject has
to provide an ending to the sentence.
- It is held that the type of endings used by the subjects reflect their
attitudes, motivation and conflicts.
- The test provides subjects with several opportunities to reveal their
underlying unconscious motivations.
- Eg.. My father——————————————.
My greatest fear is —————————.

5. Draw-a-Person Test
- It is a simple test in which the subject is asked to draw a person on a
sheet of paper.
- A pencil and eraser is provided to facilitate drawing.
 - After the completion of the drawing, the subject is generally asked to
draw the figure of an opposite sex person.
- Finally, the subject is asked to make a story about the person as if
s/he was a character in a novel or play.
- Some examples of interpretations are as follows:
a. Omission of facial features suggests that the person tries to evade
a highly conflict-ridden interpersonal relationship.
b. Graphic emphasis on the neck suggests lack of control over
impulses.
c. Disproportionately large head suggests organic brain disease and
preoccupation with headaches.

Limitations of Projective Techniques

1. The interpretation of the responses requires sophisticated skills and

specialised training.
2. There are problems associated with the reliability of scoring and validity of
interpretations. But, the practitioners have found these techniques quite
useful.

Behavioural Analysis

A person’s behaviour in a variety of situations can provide us with meaningful

information about her/his personality.

Observation of behaviour serves as the basis of behavioural analysis.

An observer’s report may contain data obtained from interview, observation, ratings,
nomination, and situational tests.

1. Interview
a. Diagnostic interviewing generally involves in-depth interviewing which
seeks to go beyond the replies given by the person.
b. In unstructured interviews, the interviewer seeks to develop an
impression about a person by asking a number of questions. The way a
 person presents her/ himself and answers the questions carries enough
potential to reveal her/his personality.
c. The structured interviews address very specific questions and follow a
set procedure. This is often done to make objective comparison of persons
being interviewed. Use of rating scales may further enhance the objectivity
of evaluations.

2. Observation
- It requires careful training of the observer, and a fairly detailed
guideline about analysis of behaviours in order to assess the
personality of a given person.

- For example, a clinical psychologist may like to observe her/his client’s

interaction with family members and home visitors. With carefully
designed observation, the clinical psychologist may gain considerable
insight into a client’s personality.

- Limitations of observation method:

a. Professional training required for collection of useful data through

these methods is quite demanding and time consuming.
b. Maturity of the psychologist is a precondition for obtaining valid
data through these techniques.
c. Mere presence of the observer may contaminate the results. As a
stranger, the observer may influence the behaviour of the person
being observed and thus not obtain good data.
3. Behavioural Ratings
- Frequently used for assessment of personality in educational and
industrial settings.
- Behavioural ratings are generally taken from people who know the
assessee intimately and have interacted with her/him over a period of
time or have had a chance to observe her/him.
- They attempt to put individuals into certain categories in terms of their
behavioural qualities.
- The categories may involve different numbers or descriptive terms.
- It has been found that use of numbers or general descriptive adjectives
in rating scales always creates confusion for the rater.
- In order to use ratings effectively, the traits should be clearly defined in
terms of carefully stated behavioural anchors.
- Limitations of Rating Method
a. Raters often display certain biases that colour their judgments of
different traits. For example, most of us are greatly influenced by a
single favourable or unfavourable trait. This often forms the basis of
a rater’s overall judgment of a person. This tendency is known as
the halo effect.
b. Raters have a tendency to place individuals either in the middle of
the scale (called middle category bias) by avoiding extreme
positions, or in the extreme positions (called extreme response
bias) by avoiding middle categories on the scale. These tendencies
can be overcome by providing raters with appropriate training or by
developing such scales in which the response bias is likely to be
small.

4. Nomination
- Used in obtaining peer assessment.
- In using nomination, each person is asked to choose one or more
persons of the group with whom s/he would like to work, study, play or
participate in any other activity.
- The person may also be asked to specify the reason for her/his
choices.
 - Nominations thus received may be analysed to understand the
personality and behavioural qualities of the person.
- This technique has been found to be highly dependable, although it
may also be affected by personal biases.

5. Situational Tests - situational stress test

- Provides us with information about how a person behaves under
stressful situations.
- The test requires a person to perform a given task with other persons
who are instructed to be non-cooperative and interfering.
- The test involves a kind of role playing. The person is instructed to play
a role for which s/he is observed.
- A verbal report is also obtained on what s/he was asked to do.
- The situation may be realistic one, or it may be created through a video
play