Personality Assessments And Theories
Personality Assessment and Theories
Cassandra Burrell
Axia College of University of Phoenix
Personality Assessments and Theories
Assessing a person’s personality can provide psychologists with beneficial insight into the human mind, such as why people behave certain ways. There are four types of theories used to assess personality, each with their own corresponding methods of assessing the personality: psychodynamic, humanistic, trait, and cognitive-social learning.
Psychodynamic theories evolve around five main principles. One principle is that the unconscious plays a vital role in the way people think. Another principle is the simultaneous activity of our emotions, motivations, and thoughts, and the conflicts that arise because of the parallelism. The third principle is the dramatic affect childhood experience and personality formation has on adult personalities. The fourth principle is that mental interpretations of oneself, other people, and the relationships we are involved in influence how we interrelate with society. The final principle refers to the affect regulating sexual and aggressive emotions has on personality development, as well as learning to be mutually dependant with society rather than depend on society alone affects the development of personality. The personality assessments that correspond with psychodynamic theories are projective tests and personal interviews. These types of tests are favorable because an unlimited number of different answers may be given and they are believed to draw on the unconscious mind. (Morris & Maisto, 2002).
One particular personality assessment, found on Similarminds.com and referred to as the Jung Word Test, is a projective test. This specific test has a person rate 70 adjectives on a scale of one to five, based on whether these adjectives are most like them or least like them. I feel the test is fairly accurate, though the accuracy depends on the person taking the test. Because this test is based...
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