Psychophysiological assessment of personality using films as stimuli

Abstract

Daily life situations are represented with standardized films and used as stimuli to study autonomous physiological measures, presumably relevant for the personality domain. A comparative study is reported in which physiological reactions are compared directly with two other modes: self-reports and observations of overt behavior. The results indicate that physiological reactions are more consistent across different situations than the other two modes. On single occasions, reactivity to films appears to be dominated by motivational response specificity (MRS) rather than individual response specificity (IRS). However, repeated exposure of subjects to the same films reveals greater stability for IRS patterns than for MRS patterns. The results are discussed in the context of psychophysiological personality assessment and some strategic implications of the present study are outlined.