No abstract

No abstract

Differential relationships were predicted for four rational forms of the tendency toward novelty experiencing (External Sensation, Internal Cognitive, Internal Sensation, and External Cognitive), which had been derived by cojoint classification of source and type of experience. Most of the predictions with respect to the variables of demographic information, social desirability, other novelty variables, self-descriptive traits, patterns of ego control, external versus internal control, interpersonal attraction, and needs proposed by H. A. Murray received support. In addition, reasonably good differentiation of the forms among themselves, and with the external variables, was obtained, especially for forms sharing neither source nor type of experience. These results provide support for the fruitfulness of the strategy of measurement, this particular conceptualization of novelty experiencing, and for the adequacy of the scales.

This chapter is one of the intermittent series which has had "assess ment" in its title. The authors have dropped that term because of its impre cision and its connotations. Assessment has often been used to refer to the combining of measures, usually by human judgment, to predict a criterion. But personality measurement as a whole involves the combination or reduc tion of observations to obtain an index and is concerned with much more than the prediction of criteria. Additionally, the terms assessment and crite ria have an evaluative flavor; while adequacy of functioning is involved in much of personality, a science of personality must not be limited to norma tive considerations. Finally, assessment has the connotation of dealing with the whole person. It seems quite clear that we cannot have a science of the whole person, or even of substantial segments of personality, until we un derstand the components.Most concepts in the personality field are so broad and heterogeneous in their referents that when one concept is used to describe different persons, it is very doubtful that the identical attribute is applied to each. The task fac ing personality today is the identifi cation and delineation of attributes which can be uniformly applied to persons, the objects of this science, with the specifi c applications of each attribute differing only in quantity, not quality. Coordinate with that task is the work of developing operations for measur ing each of these attributes. Such procedures must be standardized so that the measurements can, in principle, be replicated for the same persons and, particularly critical in this area, so that the measurements are getting at the same attribute in the different persons measured, without any sizable per son-instrument interaction. This chapter is concerned with the extent to which these standards are being approximated in personality measurement today.A science develops by an interactive or cyclical process, observations leading to concepts, and concepts guiding the next set of observations. In personality, an infi nity of observations has been conceptualized in a variety of sets of terms with general statements about them. These literary or even

lthough many studies have been done in the framework of Rogerian theory, few have mcluded the constructs of openness to experience and organismic valumg Yet these occupy a central place m the structure of Rogers' (1959) theories of therapy, personality, and psychological adjustment, and as such deserve extensive study The purpose of the present study was to test the Rogerian proposition that openness to experience and orgamsmic valuing are positively related m a normal population Because of the breadth of the definitions of these constructs, a strategy of conceptual-operational coordmation advocated by Fiske (1966) was followed Each of the two large constructs was analyzed into several constituent, but smaller, subconstructs, which would presumably be more congruent with measurement operations Openness to experience, accordmg to Rogers (1959) refers to the complete availability of all stimulation to awareness, and to a perceptual-symbolic process whose function is to keep expenence and symbolization congruent Organismic valumg, on the other hand, is defined as "an on-gomg process in which values are never fixed and rigid, but experiences are bemg accurately symbolized and contmually and freshly valued m terms of satisfactions organismically expenenced [Rogers, 1959, p 210] " It IS a type of valuing process m which actions are based upon the values of the person rather than upon introjected or external values.