Research on Ability Measurement
Ability measurement has a history of more than a century in scientific psychology and it is one of its success stories, both with respect to the quality of assessment procedures as well as its practical utility in almost any domain of human life. Theoretical models (e.g., the Cattel-Horn-Carroll model) and an abundance of intelligence tests have been developed and successfully applied in scientific research and practice. By far the most of such established tests only cover more classic or academic fields of intelligence, like logical thinking, short-term memory, and mental speed, for example. Factors of intelligence that are situated in the interpersonal context (emotions, personality, social relations) are very rarely included. This may be considered to be surprising as most people are convinced that intelligent behavior in interpersonal context does exist and is highly important for almost any aspect of social life. The still largely unresolved methodological, psychometric and conceptual challenges associated with assessing these forms of intelligence have hampered progress. They have also led to the interest of the scientific community to tackle the issue waxing and waning. Particularly, but not exclusively, the research domain of emotional intelligence has established itself in the last 25 years and it looks like that it is here to stay this time around.
Emotional Intelligence / Emotional Understanding
Emotional Intelligence is an ability construct that augments established intelligence theories with emotion-based abilities. This form of intelligence comprises abilities such as the accurate perception of emotions, the ability to understand the causes and consequences of emotions (Emotional Understanding), and the ability to regulate emotions effectively (Emotion Management). Within this domain, our research activities focus on the construction of new maximum performance tests, particularly for Emotional Understanding, using new assessment approaches. In addition, our main methodological focus is on addressing the vexing issue of finding and justifying the scoring keys for items.
One approach to specify a scoring key that does not depend on data is to deduce correct item responses from existing established emotion theories for the assessment of emotional knowledge. This approach has been used in the literature for years now. For example, the development of the now quite prominent Situational Test of Emotional Understanding (STEU) is based on this scoring rationale. A different more recent approach is a construction principle that is based on logic: the Acquisition-Application (AcquA) task design (formerly referred to as Empathic Agent Paradigm, EAP). The AcquA task design has become the main focus of our research efforts in the interpersonal domain. This is possible, because the principle is not tied to the domain of emotions but can be applied to almost any aspect of interpersonal behavior and cognition, including the personality of others and social behavior.
Interested in collaborating with us? Considering a Bachelor or Master Thesis in Psychology or an internship in this area? Great! Please contact us -> Prof. Dr. Ralf Schulze & Dr. Maike Pisters
Personality Understanding
Judgments about other people’s personalities and predictions about their typical behavior are not only common in daily life but also constitute a relevant (research) topic in various areas of psychology (e.g., psychological assessment, test construction, and personnel selection). Such judgments and predictions may turn out to be right or wrong. Whether they are right or wrong depends, at least in part, on the judging person’s ability, which primarily involves making correct inferences about other people’s personalities.
Most currently available approaches to assess this ability can be criticized because of issues pertaining to the criteria used to determine whether the personality judgments are correct or not (i.e., the scoring key). This issue parallels the scoring problems in the domain of Emotional Intelligence to some extent.
Our research activities focus on the construction and evaluation of a new maximum performance test using a novel (AcquA) task design. In this test, the target person’s typical behavior is presented first. Following this, the target person is presented in a new situation, and the test takers are then asked to rate possible reactions of the target person. The basic task design has already been successfully used in studies aimed at the assessment of Emotional Understanding. In our current research efforts, we are extending this approach to the domain of personality in order to enrich the extant set of methods for assessing the ability to understand other people's personality traits.
Interested in collaborating with us? Considering a Bachelor or Master Thesis in Psychology or an internship in this area? Great! Please contact us -> Prof. Dr. Ralf Schulze & Dr. Maike Pisters
Social Understanding
Successfully navigating the social world is a common challenge that everyone faces on a daily basis. State-of-the-art theories of social intelligences specify multiple components that are expected to play a major role in this context. For example, one such theory is the conception associated with the Magdeburg Test of Social Intelligence (MTSI), where Social Understanding appears to play a central role.
In our research efforts, we focus on the assessment of Social Understanding. Here, as is the case in other domains as well, finding and justifying the correct response in maximum performance tests situated in social contexts is one of the major challenges for empirical research. The Acquisition-Application Task Design provides a scoring rationale around which our research efforts revolve.
Interested in collaborating with us? Considering a Bachelor or Master Thesis in Psychology or an internship in this area? Great! Please contact us -> Prof. Dr. Ralf Schulze, Nadine Wolf & Dr. Maike Pisters
Self-Estimates of Abilities
There are many classical intelligence tests that provide reliable and valid means to objectively determine an individual’s general intelligence, for example. Given the fact that individuals receive direct or indirect feedback on their cognitive abilities both in absolute terms as well as relative to others repeatedly in life (in school, on the job, etc.), it may seem plausible that self-estimates are almost as valid as such objective tests. Alas, this is not the case. In fact, the correlation between self-estimates of intelligence and test results has been reported since the 1980s as roughly around r = .30, with considerable heterogeneity between studies, though. The self-assessment of one’s own capabilities is obviously not a trivial task and subject to a number of biases. This is an unfortunate state of affairs because self-estimates of abilities, as an important part of one’s (academic) self-concept, co-determine successful job selection and satisfaction, among other decisions in everyday life.
In our research in this field, we investigate the importance of potential determinants for the accuracy of self-estimates. In addition to assessing explanatory variables of the accuracy, the structure of self-estimates, interventions to enhance their accuracy, and their generalizability across ability domains are also under investigation.
Interested in collaborating with us? Considering a Bachelor or Master Thesis in Psychology or an internship in this area? Great! Please contact us -> Prof. Dr. Ralf Schulze & Marie Brenke
Situational Judgment Tests
Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) are a special format for task types of psychological tests that can be used to assess personality traits, as well as abilities and knowledge. In an SJT, the test takers are typically presented with a text- or multimedia-based description of a specific situation, along with several options that represent different ways of responding to that situation. In this way, the test format enables the presentation of more complex and situationally embedded stimulus material. In SJTs constructed to assess personality traits, the test takers are asked to select the option that best represents the behavior they would most likely show in the given situation. In contrast, in SJTs aimed at assessing abilities or knowledge, the test takers must select the option that is best, that is, the one that represents what one should do in the situation. Alternatively, test takers may be asked to rate the likelihood or effectiveness of each response option. Hence, the SJT format is a rather flexible task type that can be used for many different constructs and diverse response types as well.
Our research activities focus on the construction and evaluation of new SJTs for the assessment of different abilities and traits that require more complex and situationally embedded stimulus material (e.g., socio-emotional abilities and traits). In this context, we address issues related to determining the best or correct answer in a described situation and the calculation of the test takers’ item scores.
Interested in collaborating with us? Considering a Bachelor or Master Thesis in Psychology or an internship in this area? Great! Please contact us -> Prof. Dr. Ralf Schulze & Dr. Maike Pisters
