New Frontiers in Psychometrics Seminar November 2020

At last year’s New Frontiers seminar, Hugh reported Robert Plomin’s controversial views on the relative immutability of IQ.  However, he recently discovered strategies based on ‘Relational Frame Theory’ claiming to enhance mental ability.  Hugh demonstrated two such strategies and shared the reported evidence for their effects. Following a career in HR and Management assessment & development, Hugh has written series for Psyche and Assessment and Development Matters (ADM) charting the histories of personality, intelligence and implicit motives testing.  These followed an earlier series on the Big Five and managerial effectiveness.  Amongst his recent interests is the stability in adulthood, of what is measured by psychometrics and he concluded that it probably made more sense to work on changing behaviour and habits than the Big Five personality factors.

The groundbreaking Periodic Table of Personality (PTP) developed by Prof. Steve Woods is based on the Big Five personality factors and has the great advantage that science and practice use a common and standardised language to categorise personality scales.  Rainer outlined the development trajectory of the PTP, sharing his own research results and reflecting on the findings based on a number of personality questionnaires.  Mapping scales of three HOGAN tools on the PTP reveals how dark side HDS scales are often located alongside bright side HPI scales and that the location of MVPI values scales are less well defined on the TPT.  Mapping the 48 facets of HUCAMA Personality Factors provided an introduction to this exciting new tool.  Mapping of the corresponding 48 facets of HUCAMA Competency Factors explored to what extent the PTP can also classify criterion constructs.  Webinar participants were offered the opportunity to complete the tools and receive a report free-of charge prior to the seminar.

Carl holds a master’s degrees in Education and Occupational Psychology and is a Chartered Psychologist and a Registered Occupational Psychologist holding a Practicing Certificate with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC).  Originally an aerospace engineer, Carl had a 17-year career with the Royal Air Force, retiring as Officer Commanding Training Support at the RAF College Cranwell. After leaving the RAF Carl worked as a lecturer in Maths, Science, Electronic Engineering and Psychology in both Colleges and Universities.  Carl has worked for psychometric test publishers for twenty years and thus has broad experience in testing and assessment matters.  Further, Carl worked as Head of Learning and Development for a large multinational consultancy company, supporting training and organisational development projects in the UK and Internationally.

Adding to the cacophony surrounding the pandemic are a multitude of news and fake-news stories including those related to issues that can be informed by work psychology. In this talk Carl highlighted how different personality traits are likely to make people more (and less) effective at operating in work-environments affected by Covid-19.

In this session Stewart explored research findings on the impact of COVID-19 and lockdown on our personalities and mental health.  Based on quantitative and qualitative global data, with n = 4,414, he went on to look at how the last eight months has changed the context in which we live and work as well as:

• our thoughts
• our feelings/emotions
• our everyday behaviour
• our response to stress

Stewart is an experienced Business Psychologist, the CEO and founder of Lumina Learning, and the author of the innovative Lumina Spark psychometric.  He has a PhD in Business Psychology which has shown that adaptive and ‘maladaptive’ traits can be measured at both ends of the Big Five’s polarities.  He created the hugely successful Lumina Spark psychometric which is used with clients across the globe.  Stewart has a passion for building a community of like-minded professionals innovatively applying Lumina Learning’s suite of Products and Solutions.  He is particularly focused on looking at how personality can help and hinder people’s application and effectiveness in terms of innovation, leadership, engagement and dealing with pressure.