Personality and Psychometrics
Do you ever wonder why people behave the way they do? Are you curious about whether someone is a right fit for a job or a team?
All will become clear when you understand the psychological background of personality.
The word personality comes from the Latin persona, which refers to the masks once worn by actors to give clues as to the emotions driving their behaviour. Today the term personality refers to the sets of predictable behaviours by which we profile a person. These sets of behaviours are known as types or traits and profiling tools are known as psychometric tests.
Personality profiling goes back to 2400 years to Hippocrates who suggested that one’s persona is based upon four separate temperaments (Air, Fire, Earth, and Water). This was probably the first 4-box personality type profiles which are still popular today – you may have come across tools such as DISC (Marston, 1987) or Herman Brain Dominance.
Psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, (1875 – 1961) categorised mental functioning into sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a 16-type indicator of Carl Jung’s Psychological Types (1940’s) and has been one of the most enduring of the psychometric tests used by organisations.
The weakness of MBTI is that as a ‘Type’ indicator it assumes that people are one of opposites, they are either extrovert or introvert, there is no in-between. The majority of organisational psychologists and common sense, suggest that personality is a ‘Trait’ and is more like a sliding scale (standard distrubution) where your personality can be at any point on the scale (1-10).
Using factor analysis psychologists (including Costa & McCrae 1976 and Brand 1984) have demonstrated that there exist five traits that predict personality across culture. Linking this research to Management Development gives us the Big 5 model of personality.
Using the Big 5, managers, recruiters, trainers and coaches can understand the differences between people and design work, learning and development plans to suit individuals. In addition understand the Big 5 factors can help managers and consultants to create high performing teams and winning cultures.
The 5 factors (UK labels) are Will, Control, Affection, Energy and Emotionality with 13 sub factors (see chart).
The Big 5 Psychometric test (Facet5) is completed online and takes about 25 minutes to complete. Here is a summary of the five factors for you to do a quick self evaluation:
Will is the promotion and defence of one’s own ideas. If you score high on Will you will be good at setting objectives and pushing ideas through but you may come across as stubborn and arrogant (think autocratic boss). If you score low on Will, you will be flexible and willing to listen but you may come across as a procrastinator or too easily swayed.
Control is a measure of one’s own internal standards of the right/wrong way to do things. If you score highly on control you are organised, procedural and hard working. You may come across as overcautious, inflexible and authoritarian (think civil servant). A low score on Control indicates free thinking, casual and creative; however you may come across as disorganised with no follow-through.
Affection is a measure of how we treat and relate to others. A high score on Affection will mean you are understanding and sympathetic, very good at getting people on-side. The flip side of this is that you may be too soft even naive. A low score indicates you are pragmatic and business-like, not easily taken advantage of. The risks of low Affection are that you can come across as only looking after number one.
Energy is a measure of our interaction with the social world. A high score on Energy means you are involved, lively and enthusiastic (think extrovert). This means you may get bored easily, talk too much and interrupt others. A low score for Energy indicates that you take time to get to know people and can work independently; however you may come across as distant and a poor communicator.
The fifth factor is Emotionality which is a measure of our emotional reaction to, and our ability to cope with events and people. Emotionality is an interpreting factor which can exaggerate and distort how the other factors are seen. Highly emotional people are easily upset, anxious (lose sleep) and lack self-belief and self-confidence. Low emotionality is demonstrated by people who don’t get panicked and take things as they come. Taken to extreme low emotionality can make people appear cold and unexciting.
How did you go? Did you recognise yourself? Do you have self-awareness?
When we put all these personality factors together we get a picture of how the person might behave in a particular situation. There are 17 profiles with easily understood titles such as, promoter, producer, developer, entrepreneur etc. We can use these profiles for team dynamics, job fit or for Leadership development. In fact, Big 5 can be used to instead of the Thomas- Killman conflict handling model and Belbin’s Team Roles Model, giving a universal approach to developing people in the workplace.
If you are interested how Facet5 Psychometric or Personality testing can increase the productivity of your organisation feel free to contact Self Leadership International in Singapore.
January 20th, 2009 at 5:28 pm
It is my understanding that “personality” tests that promote the combination of “emotion” and inherent genetic brain processing, are flawed since the combination possibilities are in the millions, 16.8 million to be exact.
I am certified in DISC (behavioural), MBTI (i agree it is flawed) and CBCI. Personally, I find, and so do training participants, the CBCI which only identifies brain processing and brain communication a much more accurate representation of perception. This, in conjunction with Emotional drive identification using CBC Cards (provided by Directive Communication International who also designed the CBCI – Colored Brain Communication Inventory) gives a very accurate and nondiscriminatory representation of how people act and react to each other. A much ore practical model in my opinion.
January 23rd, 2009 at 11:45 am
Thank you for your comment. Big 5 factor theory does not measure emotions BUT emotionality, sometimes called Neuroticism, Anxiety or Stress Tolerance. Emotionality affects how the other 4 factors work. For example if someone is high on the emotionality scale, the negative factors of the trait will be more visible.
I too am a fan of DISC, it is a ‘quick and dirty’ tool that can be used as a broad brush to describe type, but only measures 2 traits.
We all have our favourite instruments and so I know my post will cause some reaction, however I urge you to step back from preference and look to the research, especially Costa and McRrae (1987) and Cattell and Brand (1984).
March 29th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo
April 17th, 2009 at 1:06 am
I am working with unemployed young people in slum areas in Nairobi and would like to get a tool that can help them in understanding themselves as we work through of issues of self leadership. Which of the tools is simple and easy to work with-preferably not done online due to difficulty of accessing computers.
Githaiga
September 10th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Interesting article. Thank you. I must look into Big5. As a consultant, I like to use the Team Management Profile with my learners. It’s not a ‘personality’ tool as such. Rather it gives feedback on how people like to work in their jobs. Whereas personality, by definition, is stable, the team management profile feedback is framed up in terms of work preference – which is something that is dynamic and may change over time. I find my learners respond well to this feedback. And it makes my facilitating work a lot easier.