Personality Testing:
Objective Tests
Module 15
Islamic Online University
Kashmala Qasim
Class Outline
Intro to Objective Testing
MMPI – Content & Administration
History & Development
Norms
Reliability & Validity
10 Subscales
Limitations
Islamic Perspective
Readings
Objective Tests
Usually self-report inventories
Paper-pencil format, requires individuals to
answer questions about their typical behaviour
MMPI
Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory was
developed in the 1940s and revised in the 1980s
Revised version is called MMPI-2
Contains a list of 567 questions
Clients must answer these questions with true,
false or cannot say
Has 10 clinical subscales and 4 validity scales
Subscales & Content
There are 10 clinical/personality subscales (refer
to Table 7.1 in textbook; pg. 214)
Content of the majority of the MMPI questions
are quite obvious and deal mainly with
psychiatric, neurological or physical symptoms
However, some questions are obscure – on the
surface some questions on the surface don’t look
like they are testing for depression
Administration
Can be administered to individuals 16 years of age or
older
Ask the client to be as honest as possible
Completion time is approx. 90 min
If two or more hours are required to the MMPI-2 then
clinician must consider the following:
1. major psychological disturbance
2. obsessive indecision
3. below average IQ or poor reading inability (lack of
educational background)
4. Cerebral impairment
History & Development
Began in 1939 at the University of Minnesota by
Starke R. Hathaway and J. Charnley McKinley
Wanted an instrument that could help in the
case work of adult patients during psychiatric
checkups
Wanted to develop an objective assessment to
see the change produced by psychotherapy
and other variable’s in one’s life
Norms
The test was administered to a group of normally
functioning adults and psychiatric patients
Each item that correctly differentiated between
the two groups was included in the resulting
clinical scale
Example: Much of the time, my head seems to
hurt all over (patients with hypochondriasis
answered true 12% of the time vs. 4% for normal
adults)
Norms continued…
MMPI has been translated into more than 50
languages
Has been used in a wide range of different
cultural contexts
Reliability & Validity
Moderate levels of reliability and internal consistency
Reliability scores range from .71 to .84
However, the inter-correlation between the scales is
quite high, resulting in overlap (i.e. the same item will be
used simultaneously for the scoring of several different
scales)
Why does this happen? Items were selected based on
their differentiation from normal populations from
various psychiatric populations rather than on the
differentiation of one psychiatric population from
another
Subscales: Hypochondriasis
The Hypochondriasis scale taps a wide variety of
vague and nonspecific complaints about bodily
functioning.
These complaints tend to focus on the abdomen
and back, and they persist in the face of
negative medical tests.
There are two primary factors that this subscale
measures — poor physical health and
gastrointestinal difficulties. The scale contains 32
items.
Depression
The Depression scale measures clinical
depression, which is characterized by poor
morale, lack of hope in the future, and a general
dissatisfaction with one’s life.
The scale contains 57 items.
Hysteria
The Hysteria scale primarily measures five
components — poor physical health, shyness,
cynicism, headaches and neuroticism. The
subscale contains 60 items.
Psychopathic Deviate
The Psychopathic Deviate scale measures
general social maladjustment and the absence
of strongly pleasant experiences.
The items on this scale tap into complaints about
family and authority figures in general, self
alienation, social alienation and boredom.
The scale contains 50 items.
Masculinity/Femininity
The Masculinity/Femininity scale measures
interests in vocations and hobbies, aesthetic
preferences, activity-passivity and personal
sensitivity.
It measures in a general sense how rigidly a
person conforms to very stereotypical masculine
or feminine roles.
The scale contains 56 items.
Paranoia
The Paranoia scale primarily measures
interpersonal sensitivity, moral self-righteousness
and suspiciousness.
Some of the items used to score this scale are
clearly psychotic in that they acknowledge the
existence of paranoid and delusional thoughts.
This scale has 40 items.
Psychasthenia
The Psychasthenia scale is intended to measure
a person’s inability to resist specific actions or
thoughts, regardless of their maladaptive nature.
―Psychasthenia‖ is an old term used to describe
what we now call obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD), or having obsessive-compulsive thoughts
and behaviors. This scale also taps into abnormal
fears, self-criticisms, difficulties in concentration
and guilt feelings.
This scale contains 48 items.
Schizophrenia
The Schizophrenia scale measures bizarre
thoughts, peculiar perceptions, social alienation,
poor familial relationships, difficulties in
concentration and impulse control, lack of deep
interests, disturbing question of self-worth and
self-identity, and sexual difficulties.
This scale has 78 items, more than any other scale
on the test
Hypomania
The Hypomania scale is intended to measure
milder degrees of excitement, characterized by
an elated but unstable mood, psychomotor
excitement (e.g., shaky hands) and flight of ideas
(e.g., an unstoppable string of ideas).
The scale taps into over-activity — both
behaviorally and cognitively — grandiosity,
irritability and egocentricity
This scale contains 46 items
Social Introversion (SI)
The Social Introversion scale measures the social
introversion and extroversion of a person.
A person who is a social introvert is
uncomfortable in social interactions and typically
withdraws from such interactions whenever
possible.
They may have limited social skills, or simply
prefer to be alone or with a small group of
friends.
This scale has 69 items.
Validity Scales
The MMPI-2 is not a valid measure of a person’s
psychopathology or behavior if the person taking
the test is dishonest
A person may decide to over-report
(exaggerate) or underreport (deny) the behavior
being assessed by the test.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2
(MMPI-2) contains four validity scales designed to
measure a person’s test-taking attitude
L Scale
The Lie scale is intended to identify individuals
who are deliberately trying to avoid answering
the MMPI honestly
The scale measures attitudes and practices that
are culturally acceptable, but rarely found in
most people
In other words, people who make these items are
often trying to make themselves look like a better
person than they really are
The scale contains 15 items
F Scale
the ―F‖ does not stand for anything, although it is
mistakenly sometimes referred to as the Infrequency or
Frequency scale
intended to detect unusual ways of answering the test
items, like if a person were to randomly fill out the test.
It taps a number of strange thoughts, peculiar
experiences, feelings of isolation and alienation, and a
number of unlikely or contradictory beliefs, expectations
and self-descriptions.
If a person answers too many of the F items incorrectly, it
will invalidate the entire test.
Contrary to some descriptions of the scale, F scale items
are scattered throughout the entire test up until around
item 360.
The scale contains 60 items.
Back F
The Back F scale measures the same issues as the
F scale, except only during the last half of the
test.
The scale has 40 items.
K Scale
designed to identify psychopathology in people
who otherwise would have profiles within the
normal range
measures self-control, and family and
interpersonal relationships, and people who
score highly on this scale are often seen as being
defensive.
The scale contains 30 items.
Limitations
MMPI does not provide much information related
to normal populations
Scale labels might be misleading: for example, a
person might read a scale such Schizophrenia
and infer that a person with a high score on that
scale fits the diagnosis of schizophrenia
Islamic Perspective
A Muslim’s worldview could influence his/her
approach to personality tests and result in non-typical
responses when compared to Western norms
Example: pondering over death, showing little interest
in the material world could result in higher scores on
the Depression scale whereas these are praiseworthy
characteristics in our deen
Belief in angels or the world of the ―unseen‖ could be
deemed as a thought disorder
Readings
[Link]
multiphasic-personality-inventory-mmpi/2/
