Personality Trait measures

[Hutan]

NEO-FFI (Five factor inventory, Borkenau and Ostendorf1993; Costa and McCrae1992).

The following study assessed the stability of the Big Five personalty traits, by asking people to watch a 10 minute emotion-inducing film, and then think of happy or sad times while listening to an appropriate piece of music.

Sad but true? - How induced emotional states differentially bias self-rated Big Five personality traits, 2014, Querengässer and Schindler

"Today’s most popular framework of personality traits are the Big Five (Costa and McCrae1985). The Big Five consist of five personality dimensions: neuroticism, extraversion, openness for experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness. Personality shows a moderate degree of stability over time (Hampson and Goldberg2006; Lucas and Donnellan2011) and even has a genetic basis (Tellegen et al.1988) whilst still changing dynamically in relation to life events conceptually similarly and to the same magnitude as income (Boyce et al.2013). Though, research shows that Big Five’s retest reliability is not perfect: A meta-analysis of 848 stability coefficients from different manuals measuring one or more of the Big Five dimensions reports average coefficients varying between .69 and .76 (Viswesvaran and Ones2000). These results indicate that the remaining 42-52% variance derives from other influencing factors. Some external factors have already been identified: Namely, the source of information, for example self ratings versus ratings by external observers (Allik et al.2010), and the interview process, for example a comparison of face-to-face interviews, telephone interviews and self-rated questionnaires (Lang et al.2011). But questions about the instability of personality traits within-subject remain. In Viswesvaran and One’s own words (2000, p. 227): “The stability of personality traits … [has] been a major source of consternation for personality psychology.”"

Background
The Big Five are seen as stable personality traits. This study hypothesized that their measurement via self-ratings is differentially biased by participants’ emotions. The relationship between habitual emotions and personality should be mirrored in a patterned influence of emotional states upon personality scores.

Methods
We experimentally induced emotional states and compared baseline Big Five scores of ninety-eight German participants (67 female; mean age 22.2) to their scores after the induction of happiness or sadness. Manipulation checks included the induced emotion’s intensity and durability.

Results
The expected differential effect could be detected for neuroticism and extraversion and as a trend for agreeableness. Post-hoc analyses showed that only sadness led to increased neuroticism and decreased extraversion scores. Oppositely, happiness did not decrease neuroticism, but there was a trend for an elevation on extraversion scores.

Conclusion
Results suggest a specific effect of sadness on self-reported personality traits, particularly on neuroticism. Sadness may trigger different self-concepts in susceptible people, biasing perceived personality. This bias could be minimised by tracking participants’ emotional states prior to personality measurement.

"The conceptualization of personality suggests that its testing should not be influenced by temporary moods: People should respond to how they think and behave in general rather than how they feel in the current situation. However, being a systematic but fluctuating source of measurement variance, it is possible that emotional states bias response as other personal states (e.g., the activation of a certain social role) do (Donahue and Harary1998). Emotional states should also be considered as a source of such “patterned” measurement bias, as evidence derived from related areas of study would suggest."

At the beginning of this condition the emotion was induced via a ten minute short film. To provide strong emotions with an unequivocal valence, we chose happiness as the positive and sadness as the negative emotion. Subsequently to the film, participants were asked to imagine happy or sad scenes from their own personal experience. Music was played in accordance with the emotion. Additionally, participants were asked to focus upon their physical reactions to the induced emotion, and increase them if possible. Participants then had three minutes to adopt the emotion. In this way we used visual, auditory, proprioceptive and cognitive means to induce the emotion.

As stimuli we chose an excerpt from the film ‘Philadelphia’ and Barber’s ‘Adagio pour cordes’ to stimulate the sad condition. A short report about the fall of the Berlin Wall including a reunion of a long divided family and Mozart’s ‘Eine kleine Nachtmusik’ was used for the happy condition. The same pieces of music were successfully used to induce emotions by Eich and Metcalfe (1989).

 

[Sean]

Context and history matters. Who knew?

 

[bobbler]

The irony being that any results gleaned have to be 'interpreted' - by individuals who possess personality and agenda and sensitivity or lack of it etc themselves.

I'm hoping I'm using the term right but this feels like meta-on-meta

I theoretically think that the methodological idea of doing something to see how much is 'accounted for by other things' is less bad than the initial idea it seemed to have of that you could combined something impossible to measure ('emotion'), measured by a trite context (more likely to be social consciousness/role playing), with something decades of psychology only got so far on. But then read the rest of the words of their article and that moment of self-awareness seemed to have been lost by them.

ie using this to 'test the robustness of the traits/measures themselves' shows how flawed questionnaires and research designs are to 'somethings' which are clearly unqualified/mixed across individuals given if it were a mere shift to the right or left with the same shape they'd have said that. But by using adding in more flawed designs and questionnaires how can they be sure it is instability if certain personality types could have been predicted to 'fake' and others to 'influence' and others to 'honesty' I'd imagine there could/should be some pretty solid retorts on this methodological topic from original researchers if all is still alive in the subject.

If they'd ethically actually been able to take a mixed bunch of personalities and real-life do something that would make all actually sad (even steal all their money and pets and isolate them I'm not sure all would react the same - anger, game playing, denial etc would come in) then they could say that was the difference/consistent independent variable, but yes all they can describe is context. A 'sad video or song' will involve things like how much you relate/have empathy as well as any memories associated with said music (good psychology research noting this)? Then measures and contexts that probably capture people-pleasing and 'shoulds' (they hardly 'buried the lead/aim' in the design)?

So the following is pretty worrying anyone can state with a straight face: "Manipulation checks included the induced emotion’s intensity and durability."

If those who produced the body of research literature (there is quite a bit on the big 5 as understandably personality needed 'something' from those who acknowledge it is a methodological impossibility, but that one could actually quantify 'the best you can get is only this accurate' and 'its only stable/valid on the 'layer below' ie conscientiousness as a scale 'within' across persons not perfectionism etc) are still all about I'd think/hope this should/would get short shrift. Of course neuroticism would be susceptible to all those trite circumstances with thinly veiled shoulds re: social etiquette. But so would extroversion for different attributions in their experimental set-up.

It's like thinking you got high scores on your CBT satisfaction survey because people were miraculously recovered by it instead of some wanting to kid themselves, others having to kid the questioner because their future depended on their report for x, and others just being the type who a hairdresser could shave half their head when they went in for highlights and they'd still feel compelled to say they love it to them before leaving to cry at home.

 

[Hutan]

It's like thinking you got high scores on your CBT satisfaction survey because people were miraculously recovered by it instead of some wanting to kid themselves, others having to kid the questioner because their future depended on their report for x, and others just being the type who a hairdresser could shave half their head when they went in for highlights and they'd still feel compelled to say they love it to them before leaving to cry at home.

I'm not sure if having a person hovering around your head with sharp scissors is part of it, but I do think that hairdressers should take any positive feedback they get and halve it, in order to have a rough idea of what people are really thinking.

And, even the Bobbler Personality Survey division of people into three types 'happy to kid themselves'; 'the pragmatic - just give me the report for my benefit application' and the 'too polite/frightened to complain to a hairdresser' test of personality is a rather situational. Because I have been that person who made appreciative noises when the hairdresser had cut and blowdried my hair into something a bit like Mrs Slocombe of Are You Being Served, and then went home to feel sad. (With apologies to anyone who has hair like Mrs Slocombe, I'm sure it's fine on you.). But, as you know, I'm more than happy to complain to quite a number of other sorts of people.



You are very right Bobbler, that anyone thinking that their particular set-up with their particular choice of sad music has miraculously identified all of the confounding issues that make measurement of personality a nightmare would be deluding themselves. I think these researchers were mostly just setting out to show that results on a personality test can be manipulated, and are subject to the situation a particular person finds themselves in when answering.