Public Lecture:
Understanding Your Personality

Professor Fanny M. Cheung
Chair and Professor of Psychology, Department of Psychology, CUHK

The Chair of our Department, Professor Fanny M. Cheung, delivered this first public lecture as the kick-off event for the celebration of our Department's 20th Anniversary on 16 March 2002. In the lecture, Professor Cheung explained what personality is and introduced methods used by psychologists in assessing personality, including interview, observation, rating and personality testing. She further explained to the audience how to determine whether a personality test is good in terms of its reliability and validity.

Professor Cheung also highlighted the accomplishment of our Department in developing the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory (CPAI). In the early 90's, our Department collaborated with the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China to develop the CPAI. Personality features specifically relevant to the Chinese culture were included in the CPAI and two large-scale standardization studies showed that this additional factor of the CPAI would increase the predictability of Chinese social behaviors and fills the gap in conventional western personality psychology.