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- IELTS Reading Yes/No/Not Given Questions
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IELTS Reading Passage: Psychology and personality assessment
Psychology and personality assessment
A
Our routine lives are mostly made up of contact with other people, during which we are always making judgments of their characters and obliging our behavior to them in granting these judgments. A normal meeting of neighbors on the street, an employer giving orders to an employee, a mother telling her children how to act, a journey in a train where outsiders eye one another without exchanging a word- all these involve mutual explanation of personal qualities.
B
Success in many professions mostly depends on skill in sizing up people. It is major not only to such ace as the clinical therapist, the psychoanalyst or the social worker, but also to the doctor or lawyer in negotiation with their clients, the businessman trying to outwit his rivals, the salesman with possible consumers, the educationist with his pupils, not to speak of the pupils judging their educationist. Social life, indeed, would be unfeasible if we did not. To some limit, understand, and react to the reasons and qualities of those we meet; and clearly we are sufficiently correct for most empirical purposes, although we also accept that misconceptions easily arise – especially on the part of others who judge us!
C
Fallacy can frequently be corrected as we go along. But whatever we are attached down to a specific decision about a person, which cannot easily be revised through his ‘feed-back’, the insufficiency of our judgments become evident. The cohost who mistakenly thinks that the Smiths and the Joneses will get on well together can do little to recover the success of her party. A school or a business may be a burden for years with a disagreeable member of staff, because the executive committee which interviewed him for a quarter of an hour miscalculated his personality.
D
Even though the procedure is so familiar and taken for granted, it has caused little technical interest until recently. Playwright, writers and artists throughout the centenary have surpassed in the portrayal of character, but have rarely stopped to ask how they, or we, get to know people, or how correct is our knowledge. But, the vogue of such illogical systems as Lavater’s physiognomy in the eighteenth century, Gall’s phrenology in the nineteenth, and of handwriting explanations by handwriting experts, or palm- readings by romani, show that people are awake of frailty of their judgments and desiring of better procedure of identifications. It is natural that they should turn to psychology for help, in the faith that clinicians are experts in ‘human nature’.
E
This faith is barely justified: for the prime aim of psychology had been to begin the common laws and principles of fundamental behavior and thinking, rather than to apply these to real issues of the individual person. A huge many specialist clinician still consider it as their major function to study the nature of learning, acumen and motivation in the absentminded or average human being, or in lower organisms, and consider it untimely to put so young a science to practical uses. They would deny the ownership of any superior skill in judging their people. To be sure, being more conscious of the troubles than the non-clinician, they may be more unwilling to commit themselves to definite forecasting or decisions about other people. Nevertheless, to an enhancing extent clinician are moving into educational, work, clinical and other applied fields, where they are called upon to use their skill for such purposes as fitting the education or job to the child or adult, and the person to the job. Thus a sizable proportion of their activities consists of personality evaluation.
F
The achievement of clinician in personality evaluation has been limited, in contrast with what they have succeeded in the field of abilities and training, with the result that most fellow-men continue to depend on illogical procedure of evaluation. In recent times there has been a huge amount of work on personality tests, and on carefully controlled exploratory studies of personality. Inquiry of personality by Freudian and other ‘depth’ clinicians have an even longer history. And yet psychology looks to be no nearer to issuing society with realistic methods which are reliable and correct to win common acceptance. The reliability of the procedure of clinician in the field of personality evaluation and the value of their work are under continual fire from other clinician, and it is far from easy to prove their worth.
G
The improvement of psychology has helped liable members of society to become more conscious of the trouble of evaluation. But it is not much use revealing employers, teachers and judges how erroneously they identify the personalities with which they have to deal unless psychotherapists are sure that they can give something finer. Even when university psychotherapists themselves nominate a new member of staff, they nearly always resort to the traditional methodology of evaluating the applicants through interviews, past records, and references, and probably make at least as many bad sessions as other employers do. But, a huge amount of exploratory evolution of finer methods has been carried out since 1940 by a class of psychotherapists in the Armed Services and in the Civil Service, and by such firms as the (British) National Institute of Industrial Psychology and the American Institute of Research.
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IELTS Reading Questions: psychology and personality assessment
Questions 1-7
Reading passage has seven paragraphs A-Q. Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-x in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
List of Headings
i The advantage of an intuitive approach to personality assessment
ii Overall theories of personality assessment rather than valuable guidance
iii The consequences of poor personality assessment
iv Differing views on the importance of personality assessment
v Success and failure in establishing an approach to personality assessment
vi Everyone makes personality assessments
vii Acknowledgement of the need for improvement in personality assessment
viii Little progress towards a widely applicable approach to personality assessment
ix The need for personality assessments to be well judged
x The need for a different kind of research into personality assessment
1 Paragraph A
2 Paragraph B
3 Paragraph C
4 Paragraph D
5 Paragraph E
6 Paragraph F
7 Paragraph G
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Question 8
Choose THREE letters A-F. Write your answers in box 8 on your answer sheet. Which THREE of the following are stated about psychologists involved in personality assessment?
A ‘Depth’ psychologist is better at it than some other kinds of psychologist.
B Many of them accept that their conclusions are unreliable.
C They receive criticism from psychologists not involved in the field.
D They have made people realize how hard the subject is.
E They have told people what not to do, rather than what they should do.
F They keep changing their minds about what the best approaches are.
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Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 21 in boxes 9-13 on your answer sheet write
YES if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
9 People often feel that they have been wrongly assessed.
10 Unscientific systems of personality assessment have been of some use.
11 People make false assumptions about the expertise of psychologists.
12 It is likely that some psychologists are no better than anyone else at assessing personality.
13 Research since 1940 has been based on acceptance of previous theories.
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Psychology and personality assessment Reading Answers
1. vi
2. ix
3. iii
4. vi
5.ii
6.viii
7.v
8.C D E
9. yes
10. Not given
11. yes
12. yes
13. No
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