1 - Hypochondriasis (Hs): High: Preoccupation about one's health, a tendency to exaggerate physical symptoms, demanding, whiny, immature, little psychological mindedness, poor prognosis for any kind of treatment. As with any personality scale, it does not rule out organic disease. But nor does disease rule out the need to exaggerate and complain- which scale 1 measures very well.
Low: Healthy, insightful, optimistic.
Correlates mainly with Hysteria (3) .79.
2 - Depression (D): High: Clinical depression, pessimism, guilt feelings.
Low: Absence of depression, cheerful, competitive.
This is still the best scale of clinical depression.
Correlates .93 with Depression- Obvious, .90 with D1 Subjective Depression, .83 D4 Mental Dullness, and .77 with D5 Brooding.
3 - Hysteria (Hy): High: Tendency to convert conflicts concerning dependency, sexuality or aggression, and express them as physical symptoms. Psychologically immature, self-centered, narcissistic, and insightless. Superficially friendly and naive but manipulative.
Low: Overly constrictive, conventional and distrusting.
An excellant scale that measures somatization, conversion reactions, denial, naivete and manipulativeness. Correlates .79 with Hypochondriasis, .60 with Hysteria-Obvious, .56 with Hy4 . Somatic Complaints, .51 with Hysteria-Subtle, and .49 with Paranoia-Subtle.
4 - Psychopathic Deviate (Pd): High: Poor impulse control, disidentification with societal standards, authority conflicts, marital and family conflicts, inconsiderate, narcissistic, poor judgment, extroverted, self-confident, hostile and externalizes blame.
Low: Overly conventional and conforming, passive, trusting and non-competitive.
Correlates .72 with Pd-O, .63 with Pd5 Self Alienation, .63 with Schizophrenia, and .60 with D1 Subjective Depression. Pd is a great characterological scale of narcissism, externalization of blame, exploitiveness, and hostility. The subscales for Pd are very important in understanding elevations in Pd. Elevations in Pd can be due to a hostile, exploitive and truly psychopathic mentality, or an extroverted normal going through a divorce, or a normal teenager. If Pd-O is greater than Pd, then the more pathological interpretaions should be used. If Pd-S is higher than Pd, then the more benign interpretations should be used. It is helpful to also look at the content scales of anger, authority problems, family problems etc. to help understand elevations in Pd.
5 - Masculinity-Femininity (Mf): High:(For Males) Passive, aesthetic and artistic interests, intelligent, sensitive to others, tolerant and has good controls. If very high - possible sex role identity problems.
(For Females) Rejects the traditional female role, masculine interests in work and hobbies, and may be aggressive and dominating.
Low: (For Males) Limited intellectual ability, narrow range of interests, practical, aggressive, and has traditional male interests.
(For Females) Passive, submissive, constricted and sensitive. Not correlated to any scales of psychopathology. Masculinity-Femininity reliably comes up as an independent factor of MMPI items. Mf is only slightly correlated to the new Gender Role scales on the MMPI-2. This is the weakest basic MMPI/MMPI-2 scale. Highly educated sensitive males usually score high. The new MMPI-2 norms reflect the changes in traditional sex roles since 1940. The female norm did not change, but the male norm is a whole standard deviation higher in the MMPI-2 as compared to the MMPI mean. The MMPI-2 sample is also very highly educated. What ever the reason, on the MMPI-2, Ph.D. psychologists will look less like latent homosexuals. The best part of this scale is the subscale Mf1 Narcissism-Hypersensitivity which has been omitted on the MMPI-2.
6 - Paranoia (Pa): High: Suspicious, hostile, overly sensitive, ideas of reference, delusions of persecution or grandiosity, vengeful, and utilizes projection.
Low: Insensitive, defensive, and shy.
Correlates .77 with Pa-O, .73 with Pa2 Poignancy, .67 with Psychasthenia, .65 with Pa1 Persecutory Ideas, .62 with Hy-O, .62 with Wiggins Psychoticism, and .57 with Pa-S. A good scale of persecutory paranoia. It does not assess the other types of non-bizarre delusions, i.e. Erotomanic (delusional fanatical love), Grandiose, Jealous and Somatic. The only false positives are when, in reality, they have someone out to get them. This is the only scale I know where high scores or low scores could mean the same thing, paranoia.
7 - Psychasthenia (Pt): High: Obsessive-compulsive anxiety, tendency towards phobias, irrational fears, highstrung, difficulty concentrating, lack of self-confidence, rigidly moralistic, perfectionistic and dependent.
Low: Well adjusted, free from anxiety, self-confident, and a wide range of interests.
Correlates .81 with Schizophrenia,.80 with Depression-Obvious,.77 with D1, and .75 with Hy-O. Scale 7 measures anxiety which is a common element to several scales. That's why there is so much overlapp with Schizophrenia (8), Depression (2) and Hysteria (3). When scale 7 is at least 10 T scores over scale 8, there is more compensation and a better prognosis, than the other way around. Since scale 7 is so homogenous and obvious, it has no subscales, and needs all the raw scores of K to correct for defensiveness.
8 - Schizophrenia (Sc): High: breakdown of reality testing, feelings of unreality, insecurities, schizoidal trends, alienation, shy, generalized anxiety, over-investment in fantasy, sexual preoccupation, non-conforming, immature and disorganized thinking.
Low: Friendly, reasonable, conventional, practical, and unimaginative.
Correlates .81 with Pt, .73 with Hy-O, .72 with Sc1 Social Alienation, .72 with Wiggins Psychoticism, .70 with Sc5 Defective Inhibition, and .69 Depression-Obvious. One of the best scales anywhere of serious psychopathology. When scale 8 is one of the highest elevated scales on the profile, consider a borderline or psychotic personality structure. Sc is made up of all obvious items, and as with Pt, requires all the raw scores of K to correct for defensiveness.
9 - Hypomania (Ma): High: Hyperactive, impulsive, difficulty in delaying gratification, narcissistic, irritable and extroverted.
Low: Low energy and activity level, fatigue, depression and withdrawn.
Correlates .83 with Hypomania-Subtle, .73 with Ma2 Psychomotor Acceleration,.71 with Hypomania-Obvious, .66 with Ma4 Ego Inflation, .61 with Wiggins Hypomania, and .53 Ma1 Amorality.
Note that scale 9 (Ma) is the only scale where the Subtle items correlate more with the scale than the Obvious items. Hypomania is a fairly subtle scale. It can be the only elevated scale in a defensively submerged profile. It will detect narcissistic, paranoid (grandiose type), psychopathic, hystrionic personality traits, and a hypomanic affective state. The subscales are very helpful. Ma-O is very pathological, while Ma-S and Ma3 are not necessarily pathological. Scale 9 is known to activate the other scales, leading to an acting out of the disturbed ideation.
0 - Social Introversion (Si): High: Timid, shy, uncomfortable with members of the opposite sex, hard to get to know, overly-sensitive, over-controlled, submis sive, conventional, cautious, rigid and moody.
Low: Socially extroverted, talkative, energetic, interest in status and recognition, competitive, narcissistic, superficial, and manipulative.
Correaltes .94 with Si1 Inferiority-Personal Discomfort, .89 with Wiggins Social Maladjustment, -.83 with Pd3 Social Impertubability, .81 with Si2 Discomfort with Others, and .75 with Wiggins Poor Morale. A very reliable personality trait that many researchers believe is at least partly a matter of genes. The test retest correlation after 30 years is .74 (Gynther, 1979). The more Si is greater than Sc the better; the more likely the person is avoidant rather than schiziod. Low scores can sometimes be the only sign of narcissism on the profile. The subscales aren't very helpful, since Si is so homogeneous. They keep saying, "shy". Serkownek's subscales are useful in helping to determine the degree of pathology in an elevated Si. Si1, Si4, S15 and Si6 are more pathological than Si2 and Si3. The former assess more schizoid, depressed and paranoid traits, and the latter assess more neurotic traits. The three new MMPI-2 subscales for Si seem even less clearly differentiated than Serkownek's subscales. There isn't data on the new Si subscales in the MMPI-2 Manual (1989). They should be considered as experimental scales.
Bookmarks