Personality traits fundamentally impact the way people live their life. Personality traits are related to many important life outcomes, for example to health-related behaviors and outcomes such as mortality and morbidity, educational success and job performance, and relationship quality including relationship satisfaction and marital failure. In the research endeavor of explaining human behavior, an ongoing refinement of methods, approaches, and paradigms is necessary to go beyond what is already known. To facilitate advances in personality research, sophisticated methods for the assessment of personality are vital. In the symposium, some extraordinary examples of innovations in personality assessment will be presented.

In the first contribution, Delroy Paulhus presents a study on a taxonomy mapping the “dark side†of personality (Dark Triad). The study examines the common core of the Dark Triad traits narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy.

In the second contribution, Johannes Zimmermann presents a new measure integrating structural and dynamic aspects of personality allowing researchers to identify psychological mechanisms involved in the development and maintenance of maladaptive dispositions.

In the third contribution, Matthias Ziegler presents a recently developed measure following the interactionist perspective of personality psychology. The measure extends the well-known Big Five model by adding five dimensions of situational perception, thereby fostering a refined view on the psychological functioning of persons in situations.

In the last contribution, Christoph Kemper presents a program of research on a widespread but controversial approach of personality assessment – short scales – and the trade-off between resource savings and construct validity to be considered.

All four contributions involve new taxonomies or assessment approaches for normal as well as abnormal personality traits. By visiting the symposium, scholars visiting the ITC may gain new insights on significant innovations in personality assessment.

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Elaborating the Structure of the Dark Triad of Personalities
Delroy L. Paulhus, University of British Columbia & Craig S. Neumann, University of North Texas

The so-called ‘Dark Triad’ of personalities (narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) show some distinctiveness and some overlap (mean intercorrelation = .29).   A comprehensive program of research has demonstrated that, despite their overlap, the triad members predict distinct external behaviors.   The overlapping component may have substantive meaning in its own right – possibly, callousness.

The present study was designed to confirm the exploratory evidence for a 3-factor structure underlying dark personalities.  We also expect a global factor overlapping with all four group members.

A sample of 440 students completed a brief measure of the Dark Tetrad and a measure of interpersonal callousness.  M-Plus software was used to apply a bi-factor analysis of the 29 items.

The fit of the bi-factor model was acceptable (CFI = .88; RMSEA = .05).  The common factor was shown to correlate with interpersonal callousness.

The Dark Triad facets fit a bi-factor model. The model is consistent with the notion that interpersonal exploitation plays a role in all three triad members.  Rather than contamination, the general factor has substantive meaning.  Nonetheless, the separate group factors indicate distinctive variance, supporting the argument for keeping the Dark Triad members distinct.

 

Integrating structure and dynamics in personality assessment: Development and validation of a Personality Dynamics Diary
Johannes Zimmermann, Psychologische Hochschule Berlin & Aidan G. C. Wright, University of Pittsburgh

Both clinical theories and cutting-edge research highlight the dynamic nature of personality, thereby posing significant challenges for a between-person, trait-based approach in personality assessment.

We explored the viability of integrating within-person, dynamic aspects into clinical personality assessment by means of daily dairy methods.

In Study 1, 314 students filled out a 73-item questionnaire capturing daily behaviors and situation experiences across 10 consecutive days. We used multilevel factor analyses to construct a shortened 32-item version. In Studies 2 and 3, the shortened version was applied in a sample of 70 psychotherapy inpatients and 30 psychotherapy outpatients across up to 100 days, respectively. In Study 3, therapists additionally judged the clinical utility of an automatically generated feedback summarizing mean level and within-person associations of behavior and situations.

We were able to construct a 32-item Personality Dynamics Diary (PDD) capturing 5 major dimensions of adaptive and maladaptive behavior as well as 3 major dimensions of situation experience, mostly with acceptable reliability. Application in clinical samples corroborated the validity and clinical utility of the PDD, but also highlighted the need for further refinement.

Daily diary methods have the potential to integrate between- and within-person approaches to personality assessment. By applying measures like the PDD, clinicians may gain insight into the psychological mechanisms that give rise to, and maintain, a person’s maladaptive dispositions, and ultimately find individualized leverage points for targeted therapeutic interventions.

 

 

Assessing Situational Perception and the Big 5 in One Reliable, Stable, and Valid Measure
Matthias Ziegler, Kai Horstmann, Johanna Ziegler, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin & Leonard Schünemann, Marco Vette, Schuhfried

The idea that individual behavior within a specific situation is determined through personality and situational aspects is anything but new. However, psychometrically sound tools, which can be used to assess both aspects have not been available so far.

Recent theoretical milestones have made the construction of such a tool possible. Presenting these milestones was the main goal of our research. The Big Five Inventory of Personality in Occupational Situations (B5PS) allows the assessment of the Big Five, including 42 facets, and at the same time the assessment of five dimensions of situational perception: The Situation 5.

The main idea of the B5PS follows the maxim stated above and uses vignettes of typical occupational situations to assess personality and situational perception. Due to the design it is also possible to show how the Big Five manifest differently because of differing situational aspects. The construction processes of the B5PS consisted of several qualitative and quantitative stages and will be reported here. Different research and practical questions require different measurement approaches. Therefore, the B5PS has different versions: a long version, a short version, a modular version, and a fake-proof selection version exist.

Evidence for the psychometric quality of the scores derived from these versions will be presented in detail.

Scores are reliable, stable, and valid measures of personality and situational perception.

Short Scales for the Assessment of Personality
Christoph J. Kemper, University of Luxemburg

Short scales are a subset of a well-established assessment approach that researchers and practitioners have used for more than a century – the self-report. Short scales allow for a more efficient measurement of a personality construct compared to scales measuring the same construct with more items. Accordingly, the use of a short scale usually results in substantial savings of assessment resources, most importantly, assessment time and related cost. These savings may translate into further advantages, for example, lower burden for test takers in clinical settings or higher response rates and data quality in research settings. These advantages fueled a widespread use of short scales. However, this development has been paralleled by substantial criticism regarding this assessment approach. Especially the construct validity of short scales has been called into question.

Main aim of the research to be presented is to demonstrate that short scales are a viable method of personality assessment and to elucidate the necessary conditions for their use as well as their limitations.

Several individual studies from a program of research will be reviewed to demonstrate the effects of scale shortening/short scale use on different psychometric criteria such as reliability, factorial validity, criterion validity, and diagnostic validity.

The results clearly show that the use of short scales comes at a cost – a trade-off between efficiency and construct validity inevitable occurs. For example, test scores of short scales yield lower reliability estimates. However, these do not necessarily result in lower validity coefficients. Other psychometric criteria may be affected as well.

Short scales are a viable and useful method of personality assessment as long as limitations are considered and the fit of the scale’s profile of psychometric properties to the demands of the assessment setting is maintained. Implications for the use of short scales in different assessment settings will be discussed.