Working with the 'Personality Assessment Inventory'
Personality is the unique combination of characteristics – including thoughts, feeling and behaviours – that make a person who they are. Put quite simply, a mood is a state of mind whereas the personality is enduring across time.
The word ‘personality’ comes from the Latin word ‘persona’ which means ‘mask.’ As much as personality is about what’s inside us, it’s also about the face that we present to the world and how people perceive us. On the most basic level, assessing someone’s personality allows us to adjust our expectations and behaviour. In the professional world, a person’s personality might be extremely relevant to what career a person is suited for or whether a workplace would be a good fit for a job applicant. In schools, understanding a student’s personality might be crucial to helping them learn to their best potential.
In the therapeutic world, a psychologist needs to consider a client’s personality to diagnose disorders and determine an appropriate intervention. Psychologists are trained to look for things like ingrained patterns of behaviours, thoughts and moods, or whether a person’s behaviours and feelings are divergent from the “societal norm”.
To best understand a client’s personality, most psychologists will combine clinical interviews/conversations with some kind of ‘assessment’.
A stereotypical example of a personality assessment from the early 1900s is the Rorschach Inkblot Technique. A bit of paper with an inkblot on it was shown to a person and the test-taker had to describe what they saw; the examiner would observe a person’s responses and draw conclusions about the tester’s personality… Psychology and science have come a long way since the Inkblot test.
A more reliable and accurate approach to determining an individual’s personality is a ‘self-report inventory’. We refer to these inventories as ‘assessments’ instead of calling it a ‘test’ because there is no right or wrong outcome; it’s not a pass or fail situation. A tester is asked to report on themselves by answering questions about their behaviour, feelings, attitudes, interests, fears and values.
At CQ Psych Services, the personality assessment that our clinicians utilise is the ‘Personality Assessment Inventory’ – the PAI for short.
Personality Assessment Inventory
The PAI is a useful tool for several reasons. The PAI is specifically useful because it provides information relevant for clinical diagnosis, treatment planning, and screening for personality disorders.
The PAI is so useful because it gives your clinician a wide variety of information. It provides information about a person’s personality that allows a clinician to recognise or diagnose a personality disorder; it helps identify important diagnostic flags pertaining to neurotic characteristics (the degree that a person experiences the world as distressing, threatening and unsafe), psychotic characteristics and behavioural/impulse control issues.
The PAI also provides useful treatment information. It flags potential complications in treatment that would not always be apparent from the diagnostic information (mentioned in the paragraph above).
Finally, a person’s interpersonal style is important for a clinician to be mindful of when building a rapport/developing a treatment plan. The PAI indicates a person’s interpersonal style in terms of how warm they are, how they affiliate with others, how they perceive rejection, their levels of dominance, their levels of submissiveness, and their desire for control.
Further FAQ on the PAI:
- The PAI has been used by mental health clinicians since 1991 (though has been updated since then!).
- The PAI is only used with adults over the age of 18.
- The assessment can be done on paper or online.
- The PAI is able to measure 22 different indexes reflecting different aspects of personality. These 22 sub-scales are extremely broad. Some examples are a tester’s feelings of tensions, worry and nervousness; whether a tester experiences unusual sensory experiences, bizarre thoughts, and social detachment; a tester’s recreational drug use; and the consistency with which a tester answers questions.
- The PAI is quite comprehensive – it comprises of 344 questions that might take a person around an hour to complete.
How to Access a Psychologist at CQ Psych Services:
- Contact us directly by calling 07 49726929 or email admin@cqpsychservices.com.au
- Ask your GP or health professional to refer you to our clinic.
- Come in and see our friendly staff at Shop 1 & 2, 13 Tank Street, Gladstone QLD 4680.
- Visit our website and complete a ‘Contact Us’ form and one of our friendly staff will reply to your enquiry. Website: https://cqpsychservices.com.au/
Author: Kelsie Realf