Page 377 - Understanding Psychology

Personality Testing
Reader’s Guide
Exploring Psychology
Why Do You Have Your Personality?
What makes people different from one another? The ancient Greeks thought the answer had something to do with the four basic body fluids or humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile. According to the Greek physician Hippocrates (460–371 B.C.), there were four possible personality types. Sanguine individuals had an abundance of blood: they tended to be cheerful, optimistic, and active. Phlegmatic people were listless, sluggish, and tired because they had too much phlegm. Sad, brooding melancholic temperaments resulted from too much black bile, and choleric (easy to anger) personalities resulted from an excess of yellow bile.
—from Psychology: Science, Behavior, and Life by R.H. Ettinger, Robert L. Crooks, and Jean Stein, 1994
s Main Idea
Personality tests are used to assess an individual’s characteristics and to identify problems.
s Vocabulary
• personality test
• objective test
• projective test
s Objectives
• Identify the most widely used person-
ality tests.
• Describe the use of personality tests.
Hippocrates’ adjectives survive today in the words we use to describe personality types. The explanations for what causes personality dif- ferences, though, have changed dramatically. Psychologists and psychiatrists use personality tests to assess an individual’s characteristics and to identify problems and psychological disorders, as well as to predict how a person might behave in the future. Some of these tests are objective tests, while others are projective tests.
personality test: assesses an individual’s characteristics and identifies problems
Chapter
13 / Psychological Testing 363