Welcome to Health Queries, a podcast where your health questions are answered by faculty and experts and the McQueary College of Health and Human Services at Missouri State University. I'm your host, Lauren Stockam, and today we're sitting down with Dr. Amber Abernathy and Dr. Paul Deal. They're psychology faculty members who study personality tests and types.
My name is Dr. Amber Abernathy. I am Associate Professor in the psychology department at Missouri State University. I am also the Mary Charlotte Bell Shealy chair in conscientious psychology. So I teach several classes and then I do research. My primary area of research is personality. And in particular, the personality trait of conscientiousness, that's going to be people that have a very responsible follow through, timely, organized, that type of thing. The reason that this position came about is I work with Dr. Norman Shealy. He developed the tins the electronic nerve stimulator, he's still practicing today he does holistic medicine. What he sees over and over again, is those individuals that are healthier and do better have this personality trait. So my area of research is to look at what factors are associated with that personality trait. I've looked at parenting resilience, some adverse childhood experiences, and then also looking at Can we change personality? So can you increase that area?
Hi, my name is Paul deal, and I am currently the department head in psychology, I've been in this position for five years now. Dr. Abernathy does a lot of research, as you just noted, the work that I do is a little more narrowly focused, I've been working with the Drury University Law Enforcement Academy, which is a local university that has a Law Enforcement Academy for several more than several years, six or seven years now in evaluating cadets with a couple of instruments, one of which measures, that big five factor personality model, evaluating cadets at the start of the Academy at the end of the Academy. And one question we're looking at or examining is whether there are personality changes over the course of training, but in a bigger picture. And what really the academy people are interested in is the post Academy performance of their graduates, and specifically how, how the personality characteristics of their trainees match up with field training officers and whether or not it would make sense to try and pair people or match people, if possible, on the basis of those personality characteristics. And so we're at a point now where we are following up and evaluating field training officers out at various agencies in southwest Missouri, and examining their characteristics using the same instrument. And we'll be looking at how they match up with Academy graduates, and assessing or addressing a number of issues compatibility performance, and those types of outcomes. And so we're sort of in a, we have data on quite a few graduates at the start of the Academy at the end of the Academy. And I can talk a little bit about that later. But we're also going to be examining sort of the second stage and that is, does it matter if if you have graduates who are like are or not like their field training officers. So that's where we are? Probably in the coming year, we'll be looking much more closely at that specific question.
Sweet. Yeah. And we'll get a little more into that later on when I talk about like personality in the workplace. So my second question was, and this is probably for Amber, can you give me kind of an overarching definition of personality.
So I'll give you the textbook definition of personality, and then I'll kind of break it down a little bit. personality is a set of psychological traits and mechanisms within the individual that's organized, relatively enduring, and it involves his or her interaction with an adaptation to the environment. Alright, so there's my wordy answer. So what it is, is it's several different traits within an individual. Well, the traits is where it gets tricky. That's how you measure it. So we've talked a little bit about the big five that is one area of traits it would be five particular traits that are important. When you think about traits, think about adjectives that describe a person. And so you're know you're kind of looking at what adjectives you would use. So it's this set of traits. It's relatively enduring. So personality can change. But in general, it is relatively enduring. And children, we tend to measure temperament, which is a precursor to personality. So it kind of develops there. And I'll talk about development in a minute. And then it's going to influence how we interact with other people, and how people interact with us and how we see the environment even. So you also ask, how does it develop? Well, there is a genetic component to personality. The Big Five, which is the big area that I typically study has about 20 to 60% heritability, and it's not an exact statistic, it can't be, but there is some genetic component there. And then the environment that I follow, that we we follow or grow up in can definitely impact that as well. So they talk about in genetic research, that there's this range reaction. So your heritability sets you up in this certain range. And then the environment pushes you one way or the other within that. So that's primarily how it develops. And then what role does it play in our everyday life? Well, I'm kind of a nerd when it comes to psychology and personality. So I'm going to say it plays a big role, but it involves everything. You know, how you see the world, how you take in events, how you interact with other people, how you cope, so it's going to involve every aspect of everything that you do.
So before we go any further, can you tell me what the big five personality traits are?
Yeah, the big five is, as Amber pointed out, and it's probably one of the more if not the most frequently cited or our way of conceptualizing personality. It's a descriptive classification system that breaks down typical personality into five broad dimensions. And then depending on the more narrowly focused model, there are a number of facets within each of those broad factors. But generally, the theory behind this model is that you can you can think about individuals personalities as falling on a dimension in five broad categories neuroticism, the tendency to experience psychological distress, extraversion, the amount of energy intensity directed externally, openness to experience, how broad minded or pragmatic an individual might be, when it comes to new experiences. agreeableness, the type of interaction style a person possesses, ranging from compassion generosity to more tough minded, pragmatic and then conscientiousness, which is more about control, organization, persistence and goal directed behavior. And so, this this broad model, theorizes that everybody can be placed on those dimensions, as either being, you know, somewhere, very extroverted, or at the opposite end of the continuum, not extroverted or introverted. And so, sometimes those descriptors have have some connotations that may not necessarily be appropriate for this model like neuroticism. When people hear neuroticism, they may have an idea of, of what that looks like when in actuality within this model, it's really more about you know, how likely a person is to experience distress in a number of different ways anxiety, depression, impulsiveness, those types of issues. So it's, it's, it's not sort of the historical popular media conceptualization of of neuroticism, it's really just a label to describe a person's tendency or likelihood of experiencing distress. So, again, the different
tests and evaluation measures that have been created based on this model tap into those in an attempt to try and identify where a person falls along those five broad factors and then the individual facets when within each of those factors. I just want to add the easy way to remember that is ocean so openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism, what I always teach my classes, just an easy way to remember those big five. Great, I love a level of things like that.
What is an actual personality test and what are they normally used for?
Actually, there's a relatively well in the context of modern psychology, a long history of tests being used to determine or identify a number of different characteristics related to personality, a lot of tests that individuals may be familiar with the Rorschach or the mmpi. Those are designed to tap into or evaluate the extent to which a person may be experiencing some type of psychological distress or abnormal behavior behavioral condition, that the tests that amber and I work with are, are geared for different purposes and designed to identify or determine, again, what are considered more typical or or normal personality characteristics and traits. And so the one that, that I use the LPI three, again, is based on that five factor model. And it's used in at least for my purposes, and sort of work related settings and tried to identify where a person falls on those different dimensions. And for my specific project, and as I mentioned earlier, looking at a match or a fit between individuals on the basis of their characteristics, where where you see personality tests use often are in work related settings. And one of the tests that students or individuals may be more familiar with the Myers Briggs type inventory has a long history, not without some controversy, but a long history of use in and work related settings. And sort of similar to the project that I'm working on is, you know, co worker interactions and trying to evaluate where individuals fall on different dimensions within that particular model, in an effort to improve performance to improve compatibility between coworkers between supervisor and supervisee. And so with typical personality tests, what you may find in the work setting are efforts to to improve performance to improve the work setting.
So Amber, before we sat down to record, you told me about the type of data collected and a personality assessment, can you maybe tell us what that data is and define it.
So most of the personality tests that we've been talking about the big five, and even the Myers Briggs, things like that are done with s data, which is known as survey data, or self report data as well. So it's interviews or it is filling out questionnaires. Most research on personality is done using interviews and self report, it is easy to obtain, there's the idea of who knows you better than you. So most of the time, that's what we use. But it's not the only way you can assess personality. So another way is observer report or what they call old data. So a lot of times, you know, looking at something like the big five, they might have a spouse fill it out, or a teacher or someone else. So what do you observe? Sometimes we don't accurately report. And so maybe the spouse would or maybe just getting, you know, your friend or someone else to report about you. So you can still use questionnaires, interviews, things like that using observer report. There's also test data. And this is looking not at survey testing, but it's looking at a lot of times physiological test, or standardized test, as far as how does someone respond when I put you in this circumstance? I add a little bit of this to my research. So I often do things like skin conductance. So you know, you can report on how much anxiety you feel, or how easily distressed you are, as Dr. Deal was talking about earlier, but is that accurate? You know, can you accurately report that? So a lot of my research, we do things like we hook you up to skin conductance and show videos. So do you have a response to that? And then we can relate that to these different personality assessments and how you've completed things. We've looked at that related to like empathy, and, you know, response to abuse and things like that. So that's a form of test data. Also, how do you respond in things like, you know, so are you a leader? If I put you in a group setting? Are you going to take over and be the leadership? You know, are you going to be conscientious in this setting? So test data is just another good way to get the information we put you in a setting either physiological or environmental, how are you going to respond? And then the last one is L data, which is life outcome data. You don't find out as much about personality with this, but it's going to be things like maybe you know how many times you've been married, how many speeding tickets, you've got things like that real real world information. So if I'm looking at Are you a conscientious individual, are you responsible Are you following through, and you have a whole lot of speeding tickets, I might say no, because that's not a responsible thing to do. So I can kind of get a little bit with that. So now that we know a little bit about the data, what does your research say about which test is the most reliable or accurate? So I'll give you the answer I give my classes. Currently, the big five has the most consensus in psychology. It's been used in more languages, it's been used in different formats. So you know, when we're talking about personality test, it does have different formats. So Dr. Deal is talking about that any Oh, there's different formats for it. But the big five overall has the most consensus than any other trait taxonomy. So I would say that, in a broad overarching sense, there's more research behind it currently. So you know, there's different ways that we come up with these different taxonomies these different traits, and it's got a lexical approach, meaning language, it's got statistica l approach. So I'd say there's more research behind it, and it's more used.
I would agree, I think that the big five is, is again, as amber said that it's probably not probably the most widely utilized model. And there are a number of commercially available tests, ones that cost money that that measure, but also some that are open access. And I don't know if Amber's will talk about it. But I know in a class that I teach psychological tests and measures, I have students complete the Big Five version, but it's from the ipi p website, that international personality inventory pool, is that what it is Amber?
Yes, that's what I use. That's exactly what I use.
Every semester that I teach this class, I have students take the test, and then I'll ask them for their results, unless they want to give them to me and a lot of them do, I don't, I'm not necessarily interested in them individually, in terms of their personality, what I am interested in is, how closely their results line up with what they think of themselves. And, you know, that's one way I guess you can get at validity of an instrument. Generally, the results are not a surprise. I mean, I think that people who are even marginally self aware, have a good sense of whether or not they are extroverted. They like to be around people, they enjoy going out to social activities, they like big crowds. They're externally focused versus not being like that at all. And so every semester that I have, I go through this exercise. Almost every single student says, yeah, that's pretty much what I think of myself. And for those, and I encourage them to do this as well. Amber was talking about observer reports, I'll have them say, talk to your roommate, or talk to your significant other about these and see what they say. And again, almost universally, students will respond. Yeah, that's kind of how they view me as well. So I think with that type of instrument, it's not one that people typically take in and respond with results like, Oh, my gosh, I had no idea because I think most people do.
So I as well. I teach personality, psychology, a personality. So I always have my classes fill out different personality inventories, I've done a variety of things with that. I will say my class sometimes is a little surprise. One issue with validity of personality test is unfortunately, mood can impact how they answer and I tell them again and again and again. And it's written at the top do not answer based on your mood today do not answer, but it comes in and so often, I've done a couple different research projects using my classes. One looking at did Can you change your personality one looking at do your results match up with the research we've discussed during the semester? And a lot of times I'll get people to say, Well, I really wasn't that you know, neurotic. I was just sad that day or will you know, whatever might happen. I just broke up with my boyfriend. Okay, so that skewed my results. So unfortunately, a lot of times the best way to do personality inventories if you can, is do them multiple times. And so that way you can get multiple feedback, multiple assessments. The other thing I wanted to add you guys were talking about observer report, and how close it was. I did a project multiple semesters with my class. I'm writing it up for publication currently, where I had they filled out a big five inventory. A fam close family member filled out a big five inventory, a significant other or best friend and a stranger in the class filled out the inventory. And so I looked at the results in comparison, really surprisingly, very surprisingly, the stranger was statistically closer to the self report that any of the other people, and what happened is the best friend or significant other and the parent, inflated the values, they saw them as better off is how I would interpret that. And the stranger and the stranger was a new classmate we did on the second day of class, you know, I'd made them go tell their names, but the classmate was able to just by observing them for two days get a little bit closer, oddly enough to that. One thing I often talk about with my classes is that we are kind of there's an overarching personality that we have, that's what we're measuring with this. But we also have multiple personalities. And I don't mean that as in multiple personality disorder type thing. What I mean is that we have social personalities, I always ask my class, do you think I'm extroverted or introverted? That's my question for my class, when I discussed this, and everybody says extroverted, that's my social personality. I'm not if I fill out an inventory, it's going to show up introverted. So we can be different things for different people. And so sometimes, to get the best results, you might have to have multiple people fill it out or fill it out about when you're in this circumstance. And that might get an overarching idea as well.
So what is the NEO test measuring? Can you give me an in depth description of like the actual test?
Yeah, the NEO the most recent version, NEO-PI 3 has 240 items. And they are using a likert scale. So five points strongly disagree, disagree, neutral agree, strongly agree. And so the person is asked to essentially, you know, read the question reply, how much does that fit them? And as amber noted earlier, you know, the emphasis is on not right this minute. But over the last, you know, however, I'm not sure what the exact timeframe on using that is, but it's trying to get at how are you over the course of time, not at this moment right now. And so, individual responses are to those 240 items are summed, and then the raw scores are converted into standard scores. And those standard scores are based on the normative sample, people who were evaluated and what their scores look like. So an individual is compared to a larger sample, the Nao has different norms for males and females, because there are some slight differences. But what it provides then, is a range of scores from 20 to 80, t scores under standard scores. And you can interpret those in a number of different ways either as a percentile, yeah, your score on this facet is higher than 50% of people, like you, or qualitative categories, average low average, really below average, above average those types of comparisons. And so the information provides an individual estimate of where they compare to everybody else. And that's an oversimplification. But essentially what that does is how does a person stack up compared to the population as a whole, the the items are, again, it's it's a third version. With most tests that measure psychological constructs, they are updated fairly regularly to make them more current, both in terms of language and terms of, of items that do a good job, in terms of comparing them to the population as a whole. And so good tests, good tests will be revised and updated, again, somewhat regularly, 10 1215 years just to be more current. So that's just a brief description of the NEO.
So we know personality tests are often used in the workplace. How have you used or seen somebody else use this specific NEO test in a workplace setting?
With the individuals that I'm studying at the Law Enforcement Academy in unit, Amber notice noted this earlier, one of the issues we're looking at or we've looked at are, are there changes, personality tends to be fairly stable, even though we know that it can change over time, both deliberately or through direct intervention as well as through experiencing various events. And so even though it does tend to be stable, there can be some changes. So one question we were interested in examining was, does involvement in law enforcement training result in changes. And the data that we have to date suggests that actually at the end of the Academy, there are some changes. They're small, they're significant, but because our numbers are so long, large, the effect is not really all that noteworthy. But it is interesting and not unsurprising. Generally, where the changes have shown up to be most noteworthy are in the extraversion domain, that specific factors like warmth, and positive emotion. Those are lower at the end of the academy for individuals who've been involved in this project. And you think about law enforcement training and everything that it entails, that's not really a surprise, you're looking just broadly, not surprisingly, and at least in our sample of individuals, students have lower neuroticism scores at the front end. And at the end, they have higher conscientious scores. Overall, that doesn't really change across the course of the the Academy, it makes sense, both in terms of who's the type of person that's likely to go into law enforcement, as well as what happens as a result of four or five or six months of daily training in issues related to law enforcement. And so just in that one small sample, I think, I think it probably what most useful at this point is just really confirming what we know. And there's research out there on on using the big five and law enforcement samples. And it's pretty consistent that higher performers, and this is true across different job categories, but especially in law enforcement, higher performing individuals have higher conscientious scores and lower neuroticism scores. And, you know, there's a lot of reasons why that that would be the case. So I think in this narrow, focused area, that's probably where it's shown to be most useful.
Sweet. So Paul mentioned and Amber, you've mentioned this, too, that personality can change, although it often doesn't. And you gave a couple just vague examples of what can cause that. But do you have any specifics or like, What's something that would happen in somebody's life that might change their personality,
Experiencing traumatic events, that has the potential to result in in changes, not just in what you would expect in neuroticism, but but other areas as well, possibly agreeableness, but natural disasters, in fact, about the Joplin tornado that was recently in the news, hurricanes, those even individual traumatic events, assault of some kind, there are data to suggest that for individuals who experienced something like that, they do show some changes in different personality characteristics. So that's, that's the negative or the downside aspect to this. And I think there's positive ones as well.
Yeah, they're things like alcohol or synonymous has actually been shown to change people's personality. So treatment to kind of work on personality. And that's not directly assessing personality. But you know, it does create more conscientiousness and things like that. So working that way, that's been a big area of my research, I actually have a publication on working to change one's personality. And we did it two different ways. One was using behavioral activation. And so the idea there was that they were going to be kind of coached and given feedback, and they set small goals, and they kind of increase these goals. And it specifically changed their conscientiousness. So we did it with a five week small goal setting, and it changed that certain personality trait. We also did a study on coaching, again, a different kind of not the small goals, but coaching, this would change this personality of the Big Five, having them kind of work on ways themselves. And it was 12 weeks, and we actually changed four of the Big Five, statistically, openness was the only one that didn't change. And so this was with college students. So, you know, being aware of your personality, being aware of deficits, I hate to use that word, because it's who you are. But the fact that certain aspects of our personality can create negative things in our environment, like you know, it can create downfalls and so working to change that. And so we actually found that both of those did increase and change people's personality. So although we talked about it being relatively enduring, we often talk about, you know, post traumatic stress that you know, something like that changes people's personality. The good news is you can actively change your personality, if you are aware of it and work on it. And so you know, we discuss ways if you're looking at something like openness open to new experience, well, to change that, you might need to be open. So go try different things, you know, that kind of aspect. And so we saw some changes.
So it can be environmental or pretty conscious effort?
Absolutely, absolutely. Most of the time, it is seen environmentally, there's actually a whole train of thought that says, You can't change your personality. My old adviser for my alma mater, was a firm believer that you cannot actively change your personality. So there is some people that believe you can't, and say only environment can things like that. But it depends on your research and your beliefs. My area is, let's work on it. Let's change it. Let's work on our own environment.
Sweet. So the last question that I haven't like officially asked, but I think we've already touched on is what would you say to people who question the validity or the accuracy of personality tests. And we have touched on that a little bit. But if you had anything else to add either one of you, you can do it now.
The only thing I'll say is, nothing is perfect in research. That's why we do multiple research and multiple times and replication. It's also why I don't just often use survey data. So let's look at other ways. Can we back this up with physiological? So I think if you're worried about validity, validity and accuracy, the best thing that I say to do is look at multiple studies, you know, has this been used multiple times, do it multiple ways. And I think that's going to get you at the best accuracy that you can get.
Well, this was great. Thank you both for joining me and teaching us about all the ways personality comes into play in our lives. I'll let you say goodbye. And feel free to tell us about any additional personality resources you may have.
Thank you, Lauren, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about both personality broadly. And as well as our specific projects that we're working on. I enjoyed this and again, thank you very much.
If anyone is looking to take a personality inventory, there is something called and Paul mentioned it earlier, the International personality item pool. It's the IPIP. And so there's a website and it gives a variety of different these are primarily the Big Five that we've been talking about, but you can go on and take some free personality inventories on that. Thanks so much for having us. I really enjoyed this personalities, my big area of study so I love sharing that information with you. Thanks for the wonderful questions and I had a great time.
Join us back here next month as we take another dive into your health questions and interests. For more information on the McQueary College of Health and Human Services, visit Missouristate.edu/MCHHS and follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @MSUMCHHS.
