Skip to main content

LUP Student Papers

LUND UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES

Personality, Positive Psychology and Evaluatively Neutralised Measurements

Persson, Hampus LU (2023) PSYP01 20231
Department of Psychology
Abstract
Examining the relationship between personality and positive psychology can when using a standard measure of personality produce spurious correlations, due to socially desirable responding (aka the evaluative factor). In this study Big Five measures of personality were related to the five most common measures of positive psychology. Using both an evaluative and an evaluatively neutralised measure of personality the study aimed to separate the evaluative factor from personality and show that predicting variance with the evaluative factor separately produces results that better fit the data. Data was collected on the campuses of Lund and Malmö University and consisted of self-ratings from 439 participants. Using structural equation modelling... (More)
Examining the relationship between personality and positive psychology can when using a standard measure of personality produce spurious correlations, due to socially desirable responding (aka the evaluative factor). In this study Big Five measures of personality were related to the five most common measures of positive psychology. Using both an evaluative and an evaluatively neutralised measure of personality the study aimed to separate the evaluative factor from personality and show that predicting variance with the evaluative factor separately produces results that better fit the data. Data was collected on the campuses of Lund and Malmö University and consisted of self-ratings from 439 participants. Using structural equation modelling it was found that using the evaluative factor as a predictor
resulted in better fit to the data and correlations were generally lower with a neutralised measure. In other words, personality was still an important predictor although less so than when the evaluative factor was not accounted for in the statistical model. These findings indicate that part of what would normally be considered Big Five factor variance in a standard Big Five personality measure is in fact not and helps further our understanding of how personality is related to positive psychology. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Persson, Hampus LU
supervisor
organization
course
PSYP01 20231
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
Personality, Positive Psychology, the Evaluative Factor, Evaluative Neutralisation, Structural Equation Modelling, PERMA
language
English
id
9139978
date added to LUP
2023-12-06 10:41:04
date last changed
2023-12-06 10:41:04
@misc{9139978,
  abstract     = {{Examining the relationship between personality and positive psychology can when using a standard measure of personality produce spurious correlations, due to socially desirable responding (aka the evaluative factor). In this study Big Five measures of personality were related to the five most common measures of positive psychology. Using both an evaluative and an evaluatively neutralised measure of personality the study aimed to separate the evaluative factor from personality and show that predicting variance with the evaluative factor separately produces results that better fit the data. Data was collected on the campuses of Lund and Malmö University and consisted of self-ratings from 439 participants. Using structural equation modelling it was found that using the evaluative factor as a predictor 
resulted in better fit to the data and correlations were generally lower with a neutralised measure. In other words, personality was still an important predictor although less so than when the evaluative factor was not accounted for in the statistical model. These findings indicate that part of what would normally be considered Big Five factor variance in a standard Big Five personality measure is in fact not and helps further our understanding of how personality is related to positive psychology.}},
  author       = {{Persson, Hampus}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Personality, Positive Psychology and Evaluatively Neutralised Measurements}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}