Paul T. Costa

Objective Personality Assessment

This chapter aims to provide a broad, empirically-based sketch of normal personality and its changes throughout adulthood. While it is not intended as a cookbook treatment of the application of objective tests to geriatric populations, it does attempt to make specific links between normal personality and clinical gerontology. One example of this is provided by a consideration of the male midlife crisis, that putatively universal, normative, developmental phase which at the same time can be considered a pre-geriatric clinical condition. Similarly, our theoretical discussion of openness to experience—a personality dimension relevant to the call for more humanistic approaches to aging—is supplemented by presentation of an instrument which may prove a useable operationalization of it. Objective personality assessment has a long and controversial past, but evidence and arguments presented here suggest that its careful use can make a substantial contribution to the field.

Personological Interpretation of Factors from the Strong Vocational Interest Blank Scales.

Abstract A principal axis factor analysis of the 58 occupational and nonoccupational scales of Form T of the Strong Vocational Interest Blank was performed using the data of 1068 males representing a wide range of age and socioeconomic status groups. Five factors, accounting for 80% of the variance, were: I, Person vs. Task Orientation; II, Theoretical vs. Practical Interaction Style; III, Tough vs. Tender Mindedness; IV, Self-assertiveness vs. Retiring Altruism; and V, Business vs. Healing. Correlations of these factors with the Cattell Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, the Allport-Vernon-Lindsey Scale of Values, education and socioeconomic status were used to provide psychological interpretations of the factors. Both occupational groupings and personality correlates showed substantial agreement with Hollands (1966) system.