Arguably, employee appraisal has become the cornerstone of any organisation (Beckmann and Wood 2017, p.1489). Importantly, direct and albeit effects of personal differences and assessment have increasingly become core target; its necessity rises big day by day. Employee assessment is crucial to growth, achievement, and general realisation of a firm’s objectives and visions, as it helps in identifying right kind of people to fit available position (Uher 2013, p.3).
Needless to emphasise, activities such as recruitment and selection process are commonly known to utilise personal assessment, as there is a need to understand individual differences (Beckmann and Wood 2017, p.1493). Additionally, it is necessary, since many companies adopt diversity in their workplace; to effectively manage it, it is vital to understand differences between employees for high performance; it can only be achieved through personal assessment (Barbot 2018, p.4). The factors cardinal in conducting it and having a direct impact on personal differences include demographic aspects, intelligence, and personality.
In order to understand the variance in the latter and perform an individual assessment, there are many methods and approaches which have been developed, with nomothetic approach being among them (Beltz et al. 2016, p.448). Consequently, this paper will assess effectiveness and drawbacks of nomothetic approach in performing a personal assessment by giving a brief review of the technique, discussing benefits and disadvantages, and recapitulating with a conclusion of the submissions made.
Nomothetic Approach to Personality Overview
Commonly, personality denotes what individuals do and say; it essentially reflects the manner in which people do what they opt to do (Barbot 2018, p.2). Since personality is determined by heredity as well as environmental factors, it is not constant, and thus, the character of an individual is likely to change. Therefore, to understand personality, there are two main theories developed, one of which is known as nomothetic. Evidentially, many psychologists have advocated for the use of the approach to assess the personality of individuals (Barbot 2018, p.4).
Primarily, nomothetic approach is grounded on premise that individual exhibits similar traits and can be comparable and whole explainable why they tend to differ periodically. Its core assumption is based on extroversion of different personality traits; their distinctiveness is due to the common traits they exhibit (Beltz et al. 2016, p.454). Proponents of nomothetic approach presume that identity is largely predicated through inheritance and easily determined by genetics or biochemistry of brains (McAdams 2006, p.11). As a result, the supporters argue that personality and individual characters which ought to be assessed are biological and cannot be altered less if not by life experiences and social impacts (Beckmann and Wood 2017, p.1502).
Generally, the approach is characterised by different blocks or traits used in performing the assessment. The first tenant is known as extroversion vs. introversion applied in measuring the extent to which a person is oriented in relation to outside world (Lyon et al. 2017, p.567). The next trait is conscientiousness which attempts to explain and assess how a person is organised. Agreeableness is the next block used to evaluate the degree to which an individual can be regarded as being friendly, reliable, or co-operative socially (Barbot 2018, p.3).
Fourthly, there is emotional stability utilised to assess tolerance of person to stress and ambiguity. For instance, during personal evaluation, it is assumed that individuals with emotional stability are presumed to be calm, safe, and self-confident. The last component is individual openness in relation to experience. In performing a personal assessment, psychologists assume that open personality has higher tendency of exposing creativity and are deemed to be highly curious (Hallquist and Wright 2014, p.257). To recapitulate, nomothetic personal assessment is concerned with establishing a common law through scientific means which can later be generalised to a group of individuals.
The concept utilises quantitative methods to analyse data, and experiment, psychometric tests, and correlations are used to perform personal assessments. Additionally, the aspect of comparability in regard to traits is highly valuable, as it adopts that psychological traits have same implications across the board (Hallquist and Wright 2014, p.261). Accordingly, the theory assumes that individuals differ only in terms of each trait; thus it is the uniqueness they possess (Uher 2013, p.34).
Benefits of Using Nomothetic Approach in Personality Assessment
Nomothetic approach is regarded as being scientific in nature (McAdams 2006, p.14). Generally, it has been termed as a social science. Thus, the method utilises scientific method to collect, analyse, and perform personal assessment (Hunsley and Meyer 2003, p.446). Cardinally, the strength of this approach in performing personal easement is embedded in its ability to use scientific methods especially quantitative techniques as well as a controlled measurement to predict individual behaviour with precession.
For instance, Milgrim’s experiment has been credited with its ability to replicate to a different group of persons, and the results have been used to predict the law of obedience among individuals (Lamiell 1998, p.24). Moreover, application of science means that controlled experiment exists, and valid results have been established upon which replicability of assessment can be made. Moreover, since nomothetic approach is scientific in nature, meaning that it collects and analyses human behaviour scientifically through tested methods, it is less subjective and is regarded as being objective in obtaining precise outcomes (Lamiell 1998, p.27).
The deviance from human perceptions and intuition in this approach ensures that empirical evidence regarding human behaviour is evaluated in relation to how different persons respond to the same tests. Subsequently, while conducting the personal assessment, the objectivity of the entire process is vital, as it attempts to examine the change of behaviour and trait among people who are subjected to same test and assessment, so that the best candidate is selected (Lamiell 1998, p.29).
Furthermore, objectiveness of approach has played a major role in assisting psychologists to develop personality assessment theories which can be empirically and scientifically validated, thus helping those concerned with personality test robust methods to evaluate their teams (Hunsley and Meyer 2003, p.448). Lastly, scientific methods are concerned with ideal generalisation across groups of the individuals for easy evaluation. As a result, the aim of using the nomothetic approach in personality assessment is to generate the trait as well as behaviour which can be used to generalise conduct of a given group of the people for easy assessment (Lyon et al. 2017, p.568).
Disadvantages of Using Nomothetic Approach in Personality Assessment
Although science has pervaded every aspect of life and plausibly helping in doing sophisticated researchers which have direct effects and implication on the human life ranging from food, technology, and medicine among other areas where it is profoundly regarded essential. However, it is not the best way to give answers to questions, giving their explanations and definitely using a causal relationship to predict the relationship between individual traits through assessment (Lyon et al. 2017, p.569). Therefore, it is inappropriate to vividly quantify the benefits of science in providing answers and explanations and causal relationship in regard to personality assessment. Consequently, propositions which challenge effectiveness of the nomothetic approach in conducting the personality tests are discussed below (McAdams 2006, p.17).
Essentially, science assumes that in a given set up, objective inferences or decisive conclusions can be attained inasmuch as the researcher, and in this case, the person carrying out the study or a given observation is purely objective meaning that this individual fully disregards his or her emotions (Lyon et al. 2017, p.570). Conversely, it is fallacious, as it is difficult at any given point in time separate a person from the activity being done; hence, his or her behaviour always impacts the process in one way or another. Human behaviour is an automatic effect which naturally comes out and thus influencing a given scientific answer for an explanation (Kirwan, Lounsbury and Gibson, 2014, p.2).
Needless to say, science has encouraged the researchers to remain objective at all times; no sufficient guaranty is placed on it that it will be an ideal position and thus cannot be capitalised on to answer questions and explain the causal relationship in traits (Uher 2013, p.42). Secondly, science assumes that causal relationship and resultant effects can empirically be measured by human traits and behaviour (Lyon et al. 2017, p.572). The assumption is unsubstantiated, because there is no way a given trait will relate to the same group of people as time goes by.
The correlation between personality traits at one point in time is usually contingent upon given conditions which might not be present in a separate set up, and as such, generalising and assuming that such relationships can be measured or tested without focusing on the changes in variables over time is unrealistic (Kirwan et al. 2014, p.5). Consequently, a causal relationship cannot be effectively quantified, as in nature, there are diverse realities which are continually changing and, therefore, hitches in accurately established causes from effects in human behaviour which influences the overall personal assessment and thus performance (Lyon et al. 2017, p.572).
Thirdly, science assumes that every aspect of nature or a phenomenon can be subjected to test and measurements which are gauged against already consistent measurement so that the treatments are standardised too (Lyon et al. 2017, p.574). It is also improbable and cannot be relied on; in nature, there are several aspects and realities which can be holistically studied and subsequently hard to predict them or subject to the experimental standards which have been developed many centuries ago. In so doing, flexibility in personality traits is totally precluded from being taken care of, as science gives no room for such changes in behaviour or traits to be explained and is thus incompatible in giving answers and explanations for an effective personal assessment (Hunsley and Meyer 2003, p.451).
Fourthly, ideal trait assessment can only be achieved in the laboratory set up under the perfect conditions which are established within a room. However, in the real world, these circumstances are seldom to be attained. Consequentially, human behaviour and traits are vulnerable to change and thus unsuitable for conducting the personal assessment (Lyon et al. 2017, p.577).
Conclusion
Finally, the premise of this paper was to evaluate the benefits and disadvantages associated with nomothetic approach in relation to personality assessment. In doing so, the paper reviewed some of the benefits of using the approach to conduct personality test which include scientific data collection and analysis, ability to generalise scientifically assessed evidence over a group of people, the objectivity of the approach in assessing trait dissimilarity among individuals, and lastly, the ability of the method to replicate the assessment of different personal blocks over time. Likewise, the disadvantages were discussed; they include overgeneralisation of traits during assessment and unrealistic assumption about human behaviour.
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