Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (Mmpi/Mmpi-2)

Paul A. Arbisi & James N. Butcher

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI/MMPI-2) is a 567-item true-false questionnaire that is currently the most widely used objective measure of psychopathology and personality in the world. Psychologist S. R. Hathaway and psychiatrist J. C. McKinley developed the original MMPI in the late 1930s at the University of Minnesota. The MMPI was constructed through a series of empirical studies that statistically identified items distinguishing groups of patients with various psychiatric conditions from a normative group (visitors to the University of Minnesota Hospital). This process yielded a set of 10 dimensional scales that measured facets of emotional disturbance such as somatic preoccupation, depression, antisocial attitudes and behaviors, persecutory ideation, anxiety, and thought disorder as well as personality traits such as introversion and gregariousness. Scores that fell 2 (1.5 for the MMPI-2) standard deviations above the mean of the normative group were designated clinically significant. Importantly, scales that identified general defensiveness and ...

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