Imagine, how long it takes you to get to know a person! In many situations psychologists don't have that kind of time. Research on personality has stimulated the development of a variety of tests, rating scales & questionnaires aimed at personality assessment. The success of intelligence tests in predicting future achievement led researchers to try to develop similar ways to measure personality. But personality isn't something that can be measured by a total score that's high, medium or low. Rather than testing general knowledge, personality inventories asks people questions about themselves. These questions may be of variety of forms. When taking such a test, you might have to decide whether each of a series of statements is accurate as a self - description, or you might be asked to respond a series of true-false questions about yourself & the world.
Since its introduction in 1943, MINNESOTA MULTIPHASIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY has been one of the most widely used psychological tests. The current version is MMPI-2, includes 10 scales related to different groups of clinical disorders. These scales are usually referred to by the abbreviations in parentheses, hypochondriasis(Hs), depression(D), hysteria(Hy), psychopathic deviate(Pd), masculinity-femininity(Mf), paranoia(Pa), psychasthenia (Pt), schizophrenia (Sc), hypomania(Ma), and social introversion(Si). In addition to these standard clinical scales, there are numerous special scales. For example, the 16 item anger scale reflects irritability, impatience, grouchiness, and hot - headedness. People who sometimes swearing or smashing things may get high scores on these scales. Scores on MMPI - 2 scales can be compared with those of the normal standardization group and samples of reliably diagnosed clinical cases.
