ADDITIONAL MATERIAL FOR SECTION B OF INVENTION DISCLOSURE IMPLICIT ASSESSMENT OF MULTIFACTOR TRAITS ("Multifactor Trait IAT") Inventor:

The Multifactor Trait IAT (MFT–IAT) is designed for implicit assessment of traits that are currently assessed in explicit (self-report) form by multi-item personality inventories. The most widely used such inventories include one known popularly as the “Big Five” and the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The problem in developing Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures of these traits is that, in most such inventories, each distinct major trait involves the contrast of a positive pole (e.g., agreeable) with a negative pole (e.g., disagreeable). When such positive–negative contrasts are used in the IAT, the IAT is effectively converted to an implicit measure of self-esteem rather than an implicit measure of association of self with the more specific target trait. The MFT–IAT’s solution to this problem is to provide a test construction strategy that will generally enable contrasting each focal trait of a multifactor collection with the full set of other like-valenced traits in the collection. The problem solved by this invention arises frequently when attempting to construct an implicit measure of personality traits using the Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Traits are personal characteristics that are assumed (a) to be characteristic of individuals and (b) variable across individuals. Alternately stated, trait names identify dimensions along which persons differ. These dimensions are also known as individual difference dimensions. For example, self-esteem designates an individual difference dimension, or trait, for which people can differ by having more or less positive attitude toward self. Explicit self-esteem is often measured by self-report measures (e.g., Rosenberg, 1965), whereas implicit self-esteem can be measured by the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald & Farnham, 2000). There are other procedures for measuring implicit selfesteem than the IAT. However, no other procedure is as psychometrically strong (Bosson, Swann, & Pennebaker, 2000). The IAT’s method of assessing implicit selfesteem is shown schematically in Figure 1.