Personality MCQ Quiz - Objective Question with Answer for Personality - Download Free PDF

The correct answer is - Guilford Test of Product Improvement

Key Points

• Remote Associate Test
  • Used to measure a person's ability to see relationships between seemingly unrelated concepts, which is a key aspect of creativity.
• Sharma’s Divergent Production Ability Test
  • Assesses a person's ability to generate multiple unique solutions to open-ended problems, an important dimension of creativity.
• Minnesota Test of Creative Thinking
  • Evaluates various aspects of creative thinking including fluency, originality, and flexibility.
• Guilford Test of Product Improvement
  • Focuses on evaluating a person's ability to improve existing products, which is more aligned with practical problem-solving rather than pure creativity.

Additional Information

• Creativity Tests
  • These tests are designed to assess different dimensions of creative thinking, such as:
    • Fluency: The ability to generate a large number of ideas.
    • Originality: The ability to produce unique or novel ideas.
    • Flexibility: The capacity to produce a variety of ideas or solutions.
  • Examples include:
    • Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)
    • Wallach-Kogan Creativity Tests
• Practical Problem-Solving Tests
  • These tests evaluate a person's ability to improve or optimize existing solutions or products, focusing more on practical application rather than pure creative ideation.
  • Examples include:
    • Guilford's Structure of Intellect (SOI) Model

The correct answer is - A - II, B - III, C - IV, D - I

Key Points

• Maslow - Humanistic Approach
  • Maslow is known for his Hierarchy of Needs, which is a key concept in the Humanistic Approach to psychology.
• Erickson - Life Span Approach
  • Erik Erikson developed the Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development, which is integral to the Life Span Approach.
• Sheldon - Constitutional Approach
  • William Sheldon is known for his theory of Somatotypes (body types), which is a part of the Constitutional Approach.
• Freud - Psychoanalytic Approach
  • Sigmund Freud is the father of the Psychoanalytic Approach, focusing on the unconscious mind and early childhood experiences.

Additional Information

• Humanistic Approach
  • Focuses on individual potential and personal growth.
  • Emphasizes concepts such as self-actualization and free will.
• Life Span Approach
  • Examines the development of individuals from birth to death.
  • Addresses various stages and challenges encountered throughout life.
• Constitutional Approach
  • Explores the relationship between body types and personality traits.
  • Sheldon categorized individuals into endomorphs, mesomorphs, and ectomorphs.
• Psychoanalytic Approach
  • Founded by Freud, it explores the influence of the unconscious mind.
  • Involves concepts such as the id, ego, and superego.

The correct answer is - Aptitude test

Key Points

• Aptitude test
  • Designed to measure an individual’s potential to succeed in a particular activity or learning environment.
  • Helps predict future performance based on current abilities and skills.
  • Commonly used in educational and employment contexts to identify suitable candidates for specific roles or programs.
  • Examples include the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and the Graduate Record Examination (GRE).

Additional Information

• Criterion reference test
  • Measures an individual’s performance against a fixed set of standards or criteria.
  • Used to determine whether a student has learned a specific body of knowledge.
  • Examples include end-of-unit tests in classrooms and driving license exams.
• Attitude test
  • Assesses an individual’s feelings, perceptions, and reactions towards specific situations, objects, or people.
  • Often used in organizational settings to gauge employee satisfaction and customer feedback.
  • Examples include surveys measuring employee engagement and customer satisfaction.
• Frame test
  • Not a standard term commonly used in educational or psychological testing.
  • Could be a typo or misinterpretation of another type of test.

The correct answer is - Ego defence mechanisms have adaptive value

Key Points

• Ego defence mechanisms have adaptive value
  • While Freud did propose various defense mechanisms used by the ego, the idea that they have adaptive value is not inherently a part of the Freudian Psychoanalytic Approach.
  • Freudian theory primarily focuses on defense mechanisms as ways to reduce anxiety and manage conflict between the id and the superego, rather than emphasizing their adaptive value.

Additional Information

• Id
  • The id is the raw, unorganized, inherited part of personality that contains the basic drives and instincts.
  • It operates on the pleasure principle, seeking immediate gratification of its desires.
• Superego
  • The superego consists of two sub-parts: the conscience, which punishes the ego for wrongdoing through guilt, and the ego-ideal, which rewards the ego with pride for good behavior.
  • It helps to control the impulses of the id and strives for perfection, according to societal standards.
• Ego
  • The ego is the rational part of the personality that mediates between the desires of the id and the moral demands of the superego.
  • It operates on the reality principle, trying to satisfy the id’s desires in realistic and socially appropriate ways.

The correct answer is - Extroversion

Key Points

• Extroversion
  • One of the five major dimensions in the OCEAN personality model.
  • Refers to the extent to which individuals are outgoing and social.
  • Characterized by traits such as assertiveness, sociability, and enthusiasm.
  • Highly extroverted people are often described as energetic and talkative.

Additional Information

• OCEAN Personality Model
  • Also known as the Big Five personality traits.
  • Consists of five dimensions: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
• Importance in Psychology
  • Used for understanding and predicting human behavior.
  • Helps in various domains such as clinical psychology, organizational behavior, and personal development.

16 PF is 16 personality factors.  It is a self-report personality test. Cattell's personality factors are included in the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) that is widely used today for career counseling in education. In business, it is used in personnel selection, especially for choosing managers. It is also used in clinical diagnosis and to plan therapy by assessing anxiety, adjustment, and behavioral problems.Important Points

16 PF test is based on Cattell’s theory: Cattell developed an assessment based on these 16 personality factors. The test is known as the 16PF Personality Questionnaire and is still frequently used today, especially in career counseling, marital counseling, and in business for employee testing and selection.

Key Points 

Raymond Cattell described the following 16 personality dimensions:-

 All the individuals differ in their abilities, aptitudes, interests, ambitions, attitudes, achievements, learning styles, and aspirations. These are called individual differences.

Key Points Here, Mohan and Sohan are different in their personality and IQ. These differences are Inter-individual differences.

• Inter-individual differences are the variations that exist between two people in one or more kinds of traits.
• For example, gender, age, ethnic background, anxiety levels, personality, intelligence quotient, etc.
• When entering school, children exhibit interindividual differences as students are different from each other.

Thus, it is concluded that The personality and intelligence quotient of Mohan are different from Sohan. These differences are called Inter-individual differences.

HintIntra-individual differences:- These are those differences that exist within the person. It compares the child's ability in one area with the other area. For example- The child is good in Mathematics not in English so he is possessing intra-individual differences.

Carl Jung: Analytical psychology

• Carl Gustav Jung emphasized the idea that we need to study different cultures as it will provide the essence of humanity.
• Jung’s personality theory is known as the analytic theory or analytical psychology (1933).
• He proposed that everyone has a personal unconscious that is composed of one’s own experiences that have been repressed due to some reason.
• He proposed that everyone has the ability to balance the conscious and unconscious forces.
• Jung extended Freud’s idea of the unconscious. Freud considered the unconscious as an essential part of one’s personality. It is a storehouse of repressed memories, aggressive motives, and sexual desires.
• Jung deviated from this view and proposed the idea of the collective unconscious, which is the unconscious shared by all humans.
• According to him, due to the evolutionary process and common ancestors, we all carry some common past. The collection of this ancestral past is part of our unconscious known as the collective unconscious.
• According to him, the collective unconscious serves as the foundation for personality. This collective unconscious consists of all the archetypes and concepts which represent experiences that are primitive and from our ancestral heritage. For example, the conceptions about rebirth, God, evil, and so on.
• The elements of our collective unconscious have been termed by Jung as archetypes. It is shared by all humans and has some overarching qualities.
• He described various types of archetypes, some of these are as follows:
  • The self- knowing about the wholeness of one’s own identity
  • The persona- not genuine self that we show to others
  • The anima- feminine side of the men
  • The animus- masculine side of the female
  • The shadow- the darker side of our personality, consisting of aggressive urges, biological instincts, and the feeling of inferiority.

hence, In Jung's frame of reference, the part of the mind that grows out of past experience of a human being is designated as collective unconsciousness.

Personality is all that a person is. It is the totality of one’s behaviour towards one’s own self as well as others. It includes everything about the person, his/her physical, emotional, social, mental, and spiritual make-up. 

• Projective techniques of personality measurement are the tests that are designed to reveal those central aspects of personality that lie in the unconscious mind of an individual.

Key Points 

'Children Appreciation Test' or 'CAT' is a kind of projective test invented by psychologist 'Leopold Bellak' for children of three to ten years of age.

• It is a projective measure for acquiring information about children's personalities and psychological processes.
• It was an offshoot of the psychologist Henry Murray's Thematic Appreciation Test in which people portraying cards are used to evaluate children's personalities.
• In the CAT test, picture cards are given to children to reveal and evaluate their interests.
• Children’s observation power, pattern of thoughts, etc are recognized while they give responses to those cards.
• The CAT Cards substitute 'animals for people' by assuming that the children would identify the pictures of animals more easily than that of people and would give significant responses.
• Some of the dimensions of personality include the level of reality testing and judgment, control and regulation of drives, defences, conflicts, and level of autonomy.

Hence, we can conclude that personality is measured through the ‘Children Apperception Test' administered by a teacher to a group of students.

Key Points

• Carl Gustav Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist whose research was deeply rooted in psychoanalysis.
• According to him, personality consists of three elements

1. ​​Conscious ego: It determines the process of thinking, feeling and remembering.
2. Personal unconscious: It is highly individualistic in nature and is determined by personal experiences.
3. Collective unconscious: It is primitive in nature and is consisted of the material which had never reached the conscious mind before.

• Jung has divided all human beings into two distinct types, introverts, and extroverts, according to their social participation and interest in social activities.
• Introvert: These people tend to withdraw into themselves, especially when they face emotional disturbance. They are lonely loving people of shy nature. They generally avoid the company of others.
• Extroverts: These people deal with social situations very efficiently. They are conventional, social and friendly. They are free from worries and take the problems of life very lightly.

The word “personality” has been derived from the Latin word “persona” which means a mask worn by an actor while performing a character on the stage. 

• According to Allport (1961) personality is the “dynamic organization within the individual of those psycho-physical systems that determine his unique adjustment to his environment” It means that personality “resides” within the individual and these systems are woven into an organization.

Key Points

Characteristics of Personality: These are some features that reflect the personality of an individual.

• Psychophysical systems: Personality is a system that has both psychological and physical aspects. This system is composed of interacting elements and the main elements of the system are traits, emotions, intellect, temperament, character, and motives. 
• Dynamic organization: It signifies that different elements of the psychological system are independent but function in an interlocking manner and are subject to change. However, this change can take place over a period of time in a gradual manner.
• Unique adjustment to the environment: Every person is characterized by a dynamic organization of psychological traits that makes his adjustment. The reason for this is that experiences of every person are unique therefore their reaction to the environment is also unique.
• Development of personality structure: Personality development is the natural quality of a growing organism. The path is from simple to increasingly complex factors and situations an individual has to pass by.
• Consciousness: Personality is conscious in that it develops out of our interaction with the environment. This interaction results in the formation of the concept of self.

Hence, we can conclude that the Personality of an individual includes all aspects of a person.

Freud theory of personality

• Freud developed the psychoanalytic theory of personality development, which argued that personality is formed through conflicts among three fundamental structures of the human mind: the id, ego, and superego.

• Freud claimed that the human psyche could be classified into the conscious and unconscious mind. There are three components - id, ego, and the superego.
• The id, indicating the unconscious mind, is the biologically determined senses that someone holds since birth.
  • The id, the most primitive of the three structures, is concerned with the instant gratification of basic physical needs and urges. 
  •  It operates entirely unconsciously (outside of conscious thought).
  • For example, if your id walked past a stranger eating ice cream, it would most likely take the ice cream for itself. It doesn’t know, or care, that it is rude to take something belonging to someone else; it would care only that you wanted the ice cream.
  • According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality.
  • The id is driven by the pleasure principle, which strives for immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs.
• The superego represents the moderating portion of society's traditional morals and taboos, where it is usual that every person does not act on impulse.
  • The superego is concerned with social rules and morals—similar to what many people call their “conscience” or their “moral compass.”
  • It develops as a child learns what their culture considers right and wrong. 
• The ego, which represents the conscious mind, is made up of thoughts, memories, judgments, and feelings. It gives a person their sense of identity and personality.
  • In contrast to the instinctual id and the moral superego, the ego is the rational, pragmatic part of our personality. 
  • It’s what Freud considered to be the “self,” and its job is to balance the demands of the id and superego in the practical context of reality. 

So, if you walked past the stranger with ice cream one more time, your ego would mediate the conflict between your id (“I want that ice cream right now”) and superego (“It’s wron g to take someone else’s ice cream”) and decide to go buy your own ice cream.

Defense Mechanism:

• The defense mechanisms are unconscious psychological responses that protect people from feelings of anxiety, threats to self-esteem, and things that they don't want to think about or deal with.
• Most notably used by Sigmund Freud in his psychoanalytic theory, a defense mechanism is a tactic developed by the ego to protect against anxiety.
• In order to deal with anxiety, Freud believed that defense mechanisms helped shield the ego from the conflicts created by the id, superego, and reality.
• Refusal to accept external reality because it is too threatening; arguing against an anxiety-provoking stimulus by stating it does not exist; resolution of emotional conflict and reduction of anxiety by refusing to perceive or consciously acknowledge the more unpleasant aspects of external reality. Denial is one of the aspects of the defense mechanism

Conclusion:

Freud's theory provides one conceptualization of how personality is structured and how the elements of personality function. In Freud's view, a balance in the dynamic interaction of the id, ego, and superego is necessary for a healthy personality. Some of the best-known defense mechanisms have become a common part of everyday language. We might describe someone as being "in denial" of a problem they face. When someone falls back into old ways of doing things, we might term them as "regressing" into an earlier point of development. They can serve a helpful role by protecting our ego from stress and providing a healthy outlet. From this discussion, we come to the conclusion that both statements are correct.

The term “personality” is derived from the Latin word “persona” which means the mask worn by the Roman actors. In this sense, personality means the individual as seen by others. Personality is the totality of everything about a person his/her physical, emotional, mental, social, ethical, and spiritual make-up. ​
Key Points

• At the moment of conception, each new human being receives a genetic inheritance that provides all the potential for his behavior and development throughout his lifetime. The personality pattern is determined by physical and mental characteristics which constitute the individual's hereditary endowment.
• Although social and other environmental factors affect the form a personality pattern takes. How a person will develop depends on the environmental influences within which a person grows. 
• Human behavior is determined by the interaction of heredity and environment. Both are complementary to each other in molding the life of an individual.
• The personality of the individual is a product of heredity and environment.
• Individual differences in intellect, personality, performance, etc. are all the outcome of heredity and environment.
• How a person will develop depends on the environment but how far a person can develop depends on heredity.
• Heredity places a limit on IQ and the environment determines the numeric position of IQ within these limits. 

Hence, we can conclude that personality is the function of heredity and environment.

Tolman's revised system of learning

• Tolman's theory combines the advantages of stimulus-response theories and cognitive field theories. He revised his theory in 1949. According to the findings of these experiments, the learner does not reach the goal in a fixed sequence of movements but changes his behaviour according to the variation in conditions.
• Edward C. Tolman (1886- 1959), like behaviourists, rejected the idea of introspection as a method of studying human behaviour.
• he believed the objective method of collecting data. He remarked that we do not only respond to the stimulus but we act on beliefs and express attitudes. Behaviour can be modified by experience and training.

According to Tolman, the behaviour depends upon:

• The need system,
• The belief value matrix
• The behaviour space

Equivalence belief learning

• Equivalence Beliefs - a feeling that a “subgoal” has the same value as the main goal. If a sporting achievement temporarily reduces a competitor's need for love, the achievement has served as an equivalence belief.

Formation of Cathexis

• Cathexis - learned tendency to associate certain objects with certain drives. In the example, vegans tend to satisfy their hunger with non-animal products (positive cathexis), and not meat (negative cathexis).
• Field Expectancies - learning in which the organism learns what action leads to what outcome. Field expectancies are formed for example when one learns what tools can be used for what task, or the way from one place to another. Field expectancies form cognitive maps. Unlike the first two mentioned kinds of learning (cathexis and equivalence beliefs), this kind of learning does not directly depend on reinforcements and suggests Tolman is at least partly cognitive theorist.
• Field Cognition Modes - Tolman offers very little explanations on this type of learning, yet it should present a way of approaching a problem-solving situation through arranging the perceptual field with a certain configuration. For example, using language when learning a maze solution in laboratory conditions. A person is likely to learn the solution as a verbal sequence of right and left turns.

Drive Discrimination

• learning to discriminate between drives in accordance with desired outcomes, like learning to satisfy hunger with food and thirst with water in animals. This type of learning is very similar to cathexis and it is not quite clear why Tolman introduced a new category for it.

Hence, the Formation of Cathexis term is taken from Freud's psychoanalytic theory of motivation - learned tendency to associate certain objects with certain drives.

H. Sheldon divided all human beings into endomorphic, mesomorphic, and ectomorphic categories of physical dimensions. This method of personality is called the Type method.

Key Points According to Morgan and King, “ A type is simply a class of individuals said to share a common collection of characteristics.” It means that people are classified into categories according to the characteristics they share in common. For example, some people prominently show tendencies of being outgoing, happy-go-lucky nature, mixing with people, less task orientation, etc.

• William Sheldon tried to relate physique to temperament. On the basis of somatotype (body build), he assigned each individual to one of the three categories:-
  • Endomorphy – Such persons are short and fatty with a round shape of the body. Endomorphic people are similar to the “pyknic” type mentioned by Kretschmer. They like to eat and drink and make merry. They are gregarious by nature and have leisurely attitudes toward life. Temperament wise Sheldon termed them “viscerotonic.”
  • Mesomorphy – These people are muscular types. Their muscles and bones are quite well developed and they are physically well-shaped. These people generally are considered to be toughminded, risk-taking, assertive, and aggressive. They like to boss over others. Sheldon called these personalities “somatotonic”
  • Ectomorphy – Such people are tall but thin. Sheldon called them “cerebrotonia”. These people like to remain away from people.

Thus, it is concluded that Sheldon has divided all human beings into different categories on the physical dimension. This method of personality is called the Type method.