Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory

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The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is one of the most frequently used personality tests in the mental health fields.[1] This assessment, or test, was designed to help identify personal, social, and behavioral problems in psychiatric patients. The test helps provide relevant information to aid in problem identification, diagnosis, and treatment planning for the patient.

The test has also been used for job screening and other non-clinical assessments, which is considered controversial and is in some cases illegal.

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[edit] History and use

The original MMPI was developed at the University of Minnesota Hospitals and first published in 1942. The original authors of the MMPI were Starke R. Hathaway, PhD, and J. C. McKinley, MD. The MMPI is copyrighted by the University of Minnesota, therefore a fee is assessed for each use of the test.

The current standardized version for adults 18 and over, the MMPI-2, was released in 1989, with a subsequent revision of certain test elements in early 2001. The MMPI-2 has 567 items, or questions (all true or false format), and takes approximately 3 hours to complete. There is a short form of the test that is comprised of the first 370 items on the long-form MMPI-2.

Ten clinical scales (as found in the original MMPI) are used in assessment, and are as follows: hypochondriasis, depression, hysteria, psychopathic deviate, masculinity-femininity, paranoia, psychasthenia, schizophrenia, mania, and social introversion.

There are an additional three validity scales; (i.e., if the test-taker was truthful, answered cooperatively and not randomly) and to assess the test-taker's response style (i.e., cooperative).

There is also a version of the inventory for adolescents between the ages of 14 to 18, known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent (MMPI-A). The inventory is composed of 478 True or False items, and includes the same 13 scales of the MMPI and MMPI-2, as well as a few additional validity and content scales.

The MMPI has been used for a range of assessments:

  • Criminal justice and corrections
  • Evaluation of disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, clinical depression and schizophrenia
  • Identification of suitable candidates for high-risk public safety positions such as nuclear power plant workers, police officers, airline pilots, medical and psychology students, firefighters and seminary students
  • Assessment of medical patients and design of effective treatment strategies, including chronic pain management
  • Evaluation of participants in substance abuse programs
  • Support for college and career counseling
  • Marriage and family counseling
  • International adoption parent screening

[edit] Criticism and controversy

Personality tests like graphology, Rorschach inkblot test, and Myers-Briggs Type Indicator have come under fire more often than MMPI[citation needed], but critics have raised issues about the ethics and validity of administering MMPI, especially for non-clinical uses[citation needed].[2]

By the 1960s, the MMPI was being given by companies to employees and applicants as often as to psychiatric patients. Sociologist William H. Whyte was among many who saw the tests as helping to create and perpetuate the oppressive groupthink of mid-century corporate capitalism.

Ethical use of psychological tests means that results must be interpreted in the context of other information about the individual, i.e., personal history, reason for assessment, the intended uses of the report about the results, who made the referral for assessment (e.g., self, family, physician, lawyer). Many of the controversies have been in situations of inappropriate test use, such as deciding the results are infallible, can stand on their own in isolation from other information about the test taker.[3] Psychological assessment requires the use of psychological tests, background information about the individual, clinical interviews such as a mental status examination, so as to put test results into appropriate context. This is called "test interpretation".

    • {The following paragraphs refer to legal and legislative issues in the United States of America. The situation and legislation may differ in other countries.}

A 1990 Office of Technology Assessment report[4] noted:

In 1965 the Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the Committee on the Judiciary, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin, and the House Special Subcommittee on Invasion of Privacy of the Committee on Government Operations, chaired by Representative Cornelius E. Gallagher, held hearings to determine whether the questions asked on psychological tests used by the Federal Government were an unjustified invasion of the respondent’s psyche and private life. The Subcommittees also investigated the validity of these tests and the due process issues involved in test administration. The reactions of the press and public were very critical of the types of questions asked on these psychological tests.

In 1966, Senator Ervin introduced a bill to sharply curtail the government's use of the MMPI and similar tests, comparing them to McCarthyism. Ervin's bill failed.

Annie Murphy Paul, a former senior editor of Psychology Today, charges that personality tests "are often invalid, unreliable, and unfair." Others have accused that MMPI can "overpathologize" certain demographic groups, notably teenagers and non-white test takers. However, recent empirical research suggests that the modern day family of MMPI instruments does not overpathologize certain demographic groups.[5] The MMPI is no longer offered for sale and has been replaced with the MMPI-2, which is only designed for use with individuals ages 18 and over. There is no compelling evidence that the current adolescent version of the MMPI, the MMPI-A, overpathologizes adolescents.[6] Further, several recent peer-reviewed empirical studies have failed to find support for the hypothesis that the MMPI-2 overpathologizes members of minority groups.[5]

Numerous successful lawsuits have argued that giving the test to job applicants is an invasion of privacy, and that there is no evidence linking test results to job performance.

[edit] MMPI-2 trait scales

The ten trait scales on the MMPI-2 are:

Scale 1 — Hypochondriasis
Neurotic concern over bodily functioning.
Scale 2 — Depression
Poor morale, lack of hope in the future, and a general dissatisfaction with one's own life situation. High scores are clinical depression whilst lower scores are more general unhappiness with life.
Scale 3 — Hysteria
Hysterical reaction to stressful situations. Often have 'normal' facade and then go to pieces when faced with a 'trigger' level of stress. People who tend to score higher include brighter, better educated and from higher social classes. Women score higher too.
Scale 4 — Psychopathic Deviation
Measures social deviation, lack of acceptance of authority, amorality. Adolescents tend to score higher.
Scale 5 — Masculinity-Femininity
This scale was originally developed to identify homosexuals, but did not do so accurately. Instead, it is used to measure how strongly an individual identifies with the traditional (pre-1960's) masculine or feminine role. Men tend to get higher scores. It is also related to intelligence, education, and socioeconomic status.
Scale 6 — Paranoia
Paranoid symptoms such as ideas of reference, feelings of persecution, grandiose self-concepts, suspiciousness, excessive sensitivity, and rigid opinions and attitudes.
Scale 7 — Psychasthenia
Originally characterized by excessive doubts, compulsions, obsessions, and unreasonable fears, it now indicates conditions such as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It also shows abnormal fears, self-criticism, difficulties in concentration, and guilt feelings.
Scale 8 — Schizophrenia
Assesses a wide variety of content areas, including bizarre thought processes and peculiar perceptions, social alienation, poor familial relationships, difficulties in concentration and impulse control, lack of deep interests, disturbing questions of self-worth and self-identity, and sexual difficulties.
Scale 9 — Hypomania
Tests for elevated mood, accelerated speech and motor activity, irritability, flight of ideas, and brief periods of depression.
Scale 0 — Social Introversion
Tests for a person's tendency to withdraw from social contacts and responsibilities.

The authors also developed four Validity Scales to detect "deviant test-taking attitudes" and gauge the accuracy of the other scales.

The "Cannot Say" scale
This is the simple frequency of the number of items omitted or marked both true and false. Large numbers of missing items call the scores on all other scales into question.
The L scale
Originally called the "Lie" scale, this was an attempt to assess naive or unsophisticated attempts by people to present themselves in an overly favorable light. These items were rationally derived rather than criterion keyed.
The F scale
This is a deviant, or rare response scale. The approach was to look at items which are rarely endorsed by normal people. If less than 10 percent of the normals endorse the item, but you do, your F count goes up. For example "All laws should be eliminated."
The K scale
This scale was an attempt to assess more subtle distortion of response, particularly clinically defensive response. The K scale was constructed by comparing the responses of a groups of people who were known to be clinically deviant but who produced normal MMPI profiles with a group of normal people who produced normal MMPI profiles (no evidence of psychopathology in both). The K scale was subsequently used to alter scores on other MMPI scales. It was reasoned that high K people give scores on other scales which are too low. K is used to adjust the scores on other scales. K-corrected and uncorrected scores are available when the test results are interpreted.

There are additional validity scales developed via research and incorporated into computer scoring services (whether used in office or sent to a service for scoring).

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Hogan TP (2003). Psychological Testing: A Practical Introduction, 1st, Wiley, 504–12. ISBN 0-4713-8981-1. 
  2. ^ Paul AM (2004). The Cult of Personality: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves. Free Press. ISBN 0-7432-4356-0. 
  3. ^ Bennett, Drake. "Against types", Boston Globe, 12 September 2004. Retrieved on 2007-01-19.
  4. ^ The Use of Integrity Tests for Pre-Employment Screening (PDF). OTA-SET-442 NTIS order #PB91-107011. Congress of the United States Office of Technology Assessment (Septemer 1990). Retrieved on 2007-01-19.
  5. ^ a b Arbisi P, Ben-Porath Y, McNulty J (2002). "A comparison of MMPI-2 validity in African American and Caucasian psychiatric inpatients". Psychol Assess 14 (1): 3-15. PMID 11911047. 
  6. ^ Archer RP (2005). MMPI-A: Assessing Adolescent Psychopathology. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0-8058-5187-9. 

[edit] External links

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