Discuss how interviews are used to assess personality, including the difference in the two types of interviews, two advantages of using interviews, and the four limitations of the interview method
What will be an ideal response?
Answer will include that an interview involves direct questioning to learn about a person's life history, personality traits, or current mental state. In an unstructured interview, conversation is informal and topics are taken up freely as they arise. In a structured interview, information is gathered by asking a planned series of questions. Interviews are used to identify personality disturbances; to select people for jobs, college, or special programs; and to study the dynamics of personality. Interviews also provide information for counseling or therapy. In addition to providing information, interviews make it possible to observe a person's tone of voice, hand gestures, posture, and facial expressions. Such "body language" cues are important because they may radically alter the message sent, as when a person claims to be "completely calm" but trembles uncontrollably. Interviews give rapid insight into personality, but they have at least four limitations. (1) Interviewers can be swayed by preconceptions, so people being interviewed can be misjudged because of the interviewer's personal biases. (2) An interviewer's own personality, or even gender, may influence a client's behavior. When this occurs, it can accentuate or distort the person's apparent traits. (3) People sometimes try to deceive interviewers. (4) Another problem is the halo effect, which is the tendency to generalize a favorable
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