Personality Case

Personality is a measure of the emotional aspects of a person's life and how those aspects predict the individual's behavior. Personality may be measured in a variety of ways, and it may be measured by the self or by an outside source. Over the years, many psychologists have constructed personality tests as a way to predict individuals' behaviors. It is also commonplace for companies to measure personalities of prospective employees to determine future work performance.

When measuring personality, an individual has vast insight into his or her own feelings. Therefore, he or she may be able to measure that personality to a certain degree. Most individuals have some sense of their own personalities. People generally understand if they are outgoing or shy, happy versus sad, etc. Therefore, the self's image of his or her personality is somewhat valid.

Although people generally have an understanding of their own personalities, they often do not identify with those emotions that are undesirable to themselves or society. Therefore, the self may not realize that it is an aggressive person or an intimidating person, while society measures the person as having those qualities. People may understand general principles about their own personalities, but they may also possess a certain sense of denial when it comes to negative aspects of their personalities.

When speaking about those negative aspects, one is really talking about personality constructs. A construct is a measurement of what exists within an individual's personality. This is the scale that was referenced above in the happy versus sad analogy. There are limitless possibilities on the number of constructs that exist, and many constructs do not even apply to certain individuals. But for just about every construct that an individual can create, the individual being measured falls somewhere on the scale of that construct. Every individual has some degree of sadness and some degree of happiness. When society and the individual begin to measure those constructs, a personality test is taking place.

In a personality test, key indicators are used to determine where an individual falls on a scale of emotion. Each emotion is unique to the individual, and psychologists may argue that it is somewhat quantifiable. Personality tests may, to a certain degree, measure those scales in order to construct the individual from an outside viewpoint. But just how reliable are these personality tests?

As stated above, people only possess a limited understanding of their own constructs. A woman with low self esteem who lashes out at coworkers may see herself as a somewhat happy, amiable individual. When asked on a test how she would deal with a certain work conflict, she may predict that she would behave in a more positive manner than she would behave in actuality. Therefore, a personality test might measure her amiability to be higher