How 'Bout Them Personality Inventories?

How well do you know the different personality inventories (or tests) that are described in your text? For this exercise, pretend that either you are taking a series of personality tests or that you have just finished doing so. In either case, there is no identifying information on any of the tests. Your goal is to identify each of these tests based on their particular characteristics or what the test examiner says about the tests. Write the correct name of the inventory in the box following each of the descriptions or examples given below.

Names of Personality Inventories:
  • MMPI
  • 16PF
  • NEO-PI
  • TAT
  • Rorschach
1. While taking this personality inventory, you overhear the test administrator tell her assistant that factor analysis will be used to analyze the results of the inventory that you and several other students are taking.

2. You are shown a series of inkblots, one by one, and asked to report what you "see" in each.

3. After you finish taking this test, you ask the test examiner how he knows that you did not lie on some of your responses. She replies, "Oh, we have a built-in safeguard against that."

4. You are shown a series of cards, one at a time, that contain a person or persons in an ambiguous situation. You are asked to describe what is happening in each situation.

5. A few days after taking this inventory, the test examiner shows you your results, which are plotted in a linear profile.

6. This inventory appears to have many questions on it that relate to how introverted/extroverted and anxious you are.

7. As you are responding to the individual items in this inventory, you notice that the test examiner is recording each of your responses in terms of what you say, your response latency (how long it takes you after first seeing the item to respond to it), and the total time you take to respond to each item.

8. The test you are now taking contains hundreds of items to which you are instructed to respond, "true," "false," or "cannot say."

9. When you ask the test examiner how he will score the personality inventory that you just took he replies "I will look for certain themes in your response to the ambiguous situations shown in each of the cards. These themes reflect the primary characteristics of your personality."

10. Before taking this personality inventory, you ask the test examiner whether this is an older or a newer test. He replies that it was developed in 1950 by a person by the name of Cattell.