Personality and Test Performance

Abstract

Aspects of a person’s intelligence are generally measured by his performance on well defined tasks whereas aspects of someone’s personality are explored by means of self-reports. In most instances these two approaches, as well as the matters they investigate, are carefully separated. Some protective methods, however, e.g. the Rorschach Ink Blot test, are exceptions to this implicit rule: these methods provide a rather rough idea about the intelligence level of the person in addition to information about aspects of the personality. A basic assumption of these projective ‘tests’ is that personality and intellectual aspects together determine the behaviour of a person in a psychological test situation. To a certain extent intellectual output is indeed affected by mood, attitude, temperament, character, and aspirations. Performance then must be considered as the overall outcome of “intelligence” and “personality”.