The various ways of looking at personality-trait, psychoanalytic, social learning, and humanistic theories- have led, because of the nature of their constructs, to different approaches to assessment.

Humanistic theorists, for example, may use projective techniques such as the Rorschach and TAT (designed originally to uncover hidden motives) to measure creative potential. The MMPI, a personality inventory that measures traits, had widespread use in research guided by all four theoretical viewpoints.