Incorporating personality testing and interpretation into psychology programmes [Invited Symposium]

It’s been established that students are able to estimate their personality trait scores, albeit with low/moderate accuracy (Furnham & Chamorro‐Premuzic, 2010). This suggests that there is scope to increase introspective knowledge of personality, with the potential for application in future academic, work and everyday life settings. This presentation will describe an initiative to increase university students’ insight into personality. After learning about the ‘Big Five’ trait theory, students were asked to estimate their levels on each trait, then participated in a practical class where they completed and scored a psychometric measure of the Big Five (NEO-FFI-3) under the direction of qualified staff. They were then guided to reflect on surprising discrepancies, and think about how their trait levels may be beneficial or counterproductive in their working, academic and personal lives. Class-level data, showing ‘individual differences in action’ with relationships between class data, age, gender and, unbeknownst to them, lecture attendance(!) were presented at the end of the course. Student feedback has revealed this initiative to be an enlightening experience, beyond the practical psychometric skills developed; particularly with respect to preparing for graduate-level employment. This presentation will summarise the student-identified benefits, and interesting trends in the relationships between estimated and measured trait scores in the student cohort.