Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inentory (MMPI)

and control, rather than policy, tend to pursue larger

coalitions, as suggested by Downs. Those with a
stronger concern for promoting a policy agenda tend
to form coalitions just large enough to win and no
larger. Because of this difference, the theory of minimal
winning coalitions not only makes predictions about
the size of legislative or electoral groupings, but also
provides clues for discerning the motives of leaders
from their strategies for gaining support to win and
hold office.
See also: Agenda-setting; Electoral Systems; Game
Theory; Game Theory: Noncooperative Games; Rational Choice in Politics; Voting: Tactical

Bibliography
Axelrod R M 1970 Conflict of Interest; A Theory of Diergent
Goals with Applications to Politics. Markham, Chicago
Browne E, Franklin M 1973 Aspects of coalition payoffs in
parliamentary democracies. American Political Science Reiew
67: 45369
Bueno de Mesquita B 1978 Coalition payoffs and electoral
performance in European democracies. Comparatie Political
Studies 11: 6181
Bueno de Mesquita B, Morrow J D, Siverson R, Smith A 2000
Political institutions, political survival, and policy success. In:
Bueno de Mesquita B, Root H L (eds.) Goerning for
Prosperity. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, pp. 5984
De Swaan A 1973 Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations.
Elsevier, Amsterdam
Downs A 1957 An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harper, New
York
Groseclose T, Snyder J M Jr 1996 Buying supermajorities.
American Journal of Political Science 90: 30315
Laver M, Schofield N 1990 Multiparty Goernment: The Politics
of Coalition in Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK
Laver M, Shepsle K A 1996 Making and Breaking Goernments:
Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies.
Cambridge University Press, New York
Riker W H 1962 The Theory of Political Coalitions. Yale
University Press, New Haven, CT
Stokman F N, Van den Bos J 1992 A two-stage model of policy
making with an empirical test in the US energy policy domain.
In: Moore G, Whitt J A (eds.) The Political Consequences of
Social Networks. Research in Politics and Society, Vol. 4, JAI
Press, Greenwich, CT
Strom K 1990 Minority Goernment and Majority Rule. Cambridge University Press, New York

B. Bueno de Mesquita

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality

Inventory (MMPI)
The MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inventory, was developed in the 1940s as a means of
evaluating mental health problems in psychiatric and

medical settings. The test authors, Starke Hathaway

and J. C. McKinley, thought that it was important in
evaluating patients problems to ask them about what
they felt and thought. Their instrument was a selfreport inventory that included a very broad range of
problems and could be answered with a sixth-grade
reading level. The MMPI was developed according to
rigorous empirical research methods and rapidly
became the standard personality instrument in clinical
settings (Hathaway and McKinley 1940). The popularity of the true-false personality inventory was in
large part due to its easy-to-use format and to the fact
that the scales have well-established validity in
assessing clinical symptoms and syndromes (Butcher
1999). The MMPI underwent a major revision in the
1980s resulting in two forms of the testan adult
version, the MMPI-2 (Butcher et al. 1989) and an
adolescent form, MMPI-A, (Butcher et al. 1992). The
MMPI-2 is the most widely researched instrument and
is used for the evaluation of clinical problems in a
broad range of settings including mental health, health
psychology, correctional settings, and personnel
screening, and in many forensic applications such as
child custody and personal injury (Lees-Haley et al.
1996, Piotrowski and Keller 1992).
The MMPI-2 contains 567 truefalse questions
addressing mental health symptoms, beliefs, and
attitudes. The items on the MMPI-2 are grouped into
scales (clusters of items) that address specific clinical
problems such as depression or anxiety. After the
inventory is completed, the items are scored or
grouped according to the scales that have been
developed. An MMPI scale allows the clinician to
compare the responses of the client with those of
thousands of other people. Initially, the scores are
compared to the normative sample, a large representative sample of people from across the USA, in order
to determine if the persons responses are different
from people who do not have mental health problems.
If the person obtains scores in the extreme ranges, for
example on the depression scale, compared with the
normative sample then they are likely to be experiencing problems comparable to the clinical samples of
depressed clients that have been studied.

1. Ealuating Cooperatie Responding

In some situations clients might be motivated to
present personality characteristics and problems in
ways that are different than they actually are. For
example, if people are being tested to determine
whether or not they are sane enough to stand trial in
a criminal court case they might attempt to exaggerate
symptoms or problems in order to avoid responsibility. Alternatively, people being evaluated in preemployment psychological evaluation might be inclined to present themselves in an extremely positive
way to cover up problems. It is important, in MMPI2 profile interpretation, to evaluate the way in which
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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inentory (MMPI)

people approach the task of self-revelation. Are they
sufficiently cooperative with the testing to produce a
valid result?
There are several indices on the MMPI-2 to address
honesty and cooperativeness in responding to the
items (Baer et al. 1995):

1.1 Cannot Say Score

This index is simply the total number of unanswered
items. If the client leaves out many items on the test
(e.g., 30 items), the profile may be invalidated. A high
score on this index suggests that clients have not
cooperated sufficiently to provide a clear picture of
their personality functioning.

1.2 The L Scale

The L or Lie scale is a measure of the clients
willingness to acknowledge personal faults or
problems. Individuals who score high on this scale are
presenting an overly virtuous picture of themselves.
They claim virtue and positive characteristics that are
not typically found among people in general. The L
scale is particularly valuable in situations where the
individual has something to gain by not appearing to
have problems, such as in personnel screening or in
child-custody disputes. In these cases, people might try
to put their best foot forward and present themselves
as better adjusted than they actually are.

1.3 The K Scale

The K scale was developed as a means of evaluating
the tendency that some people have to minimize
problems. This scale is also used as an index for
correcting some clinical scales that have been shown to
be affected by defensiveness; that is, it serves as a
correction factor to compensate for the tendency of
some people to deny problems. Empirically derived
percentages of the K scale score are added to five of the
clinical scales in order to improve test discrimination.

1.4 The Infrequency Scales

The MMPI-2 contains three measures to assess the
tendency of some people to exaggerate their problems
or fake the test by over-responding to extreme items
(the F or Infrequency scale, the Back F or F(B) scale,
and the P(p) scale). Each scale performs a somewhat
different function in interpretation. The items on these
scales are very rare or bizarre symptoms. Individuals
who endorse a lot of these items tend to exaggerate
symptoms on the MMPI-2, perhaps as a way of trying
to convince professionals that they need to have
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psychological services. Some people who have a need

to claim problems in order to influence court decisions
will tend to elevate the infrequency scales. The
infrequency scales can be elevated for several possible
reasons: the profile could be invalid because the client
became confused or disoriented or responded in a
random manner. High F and F(B) scores are commonly found among clients who are malingering or
producing exaggerated responses in order falsely to
claim mental illness (Graham et al. 1991).

1.5 TRIN AND VRIN scales

Two scales to assess inconsistent responding have
been developed for the MMPI-2. These scales were
derived by examination of the individuals responses
to pairs of items that have similar content. A particular
response to one of the items in the pair requires that
the other item be endorsed in a given way in order to
be consistent: for example, a pair of items that contains
content that cannot logically be answered in the same
direction if the subject is responding consistently to the
content.

2. Profile Interpretation
The assessment of clinical problems is approached by
examining the clients responses to the items using
several strategies. We will examine three types of scales
that comprise the MMPI-2s problem measures: the
traditional clinical scales and profile codes, the MMPI2 content scales, and the supplemental or specificproblems scales.

2.1 The MMPI-2 Clinical Scales

Hathaway and McKinley developed the original
MMPI clinical scales to classify empirically or group
patients into problem types. For example, they developed scales to assess hypochondriasis (the Hs scale),
depression (the D scale), hysteria (the Hy scale),
psychopathic deviation (the Pd scale), paranoid thinking (the Pa scale), psychasthenia (the Pt scale),
schizophrenia (the Sc scale), and mania (the Ma scale).
In addition, two other scales were included on the
basic profile to address problems of sex-role identification (the Mf scale) and social introversion and
extraversion (the Si scale). These scales have clearly
defined correlates or empirical relationships. If a scale
is elevated in the significant range, the individual is
considered to possess the attributes measured by the
scale.
Some clients have only one of the clinical scales
elevated in their profile. In these cases, the profile
interpretation is straightforwardthe clinician simply
examines the published correlates for that scale and

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inentory (MMPI)

incorporates these into the psychological report. However, some clients might have several of the clinical
scales elevated in their profile. The full pattern or
profile configuration needs to be interpreted. Fortunately, extensive research has been undertaken to
evaluate complex profiles or code types. These profile
types result from having two or more of the clinical
scales elevated in the interpretive range. In these cases,
the practitioner refers to published code books which
provide empirical descriptions for the various patterns
that have been studied.
2.2 Content-based Scales
The MMPI-2 contains a number of scales that assesses
content themes that the individual endorsed in the
item pool. The content scales are homogeneous item
clusters that summarize themes and represent direct
communications about problems to the practitioner.
There are 15 content scales measuring different symptom areas and problems: for example, Antisocial
Practices (ASP), Bizarre Mentation (BIZ), and Low
Self Esteem (LSE).
2.3 Special-problem or Supplemental Scales
Several supplemental scales have been developed to
assess specific problems such as the potential to
develop problems of addiction (the MacAndrew Addiction scale or MAC-R and the Addiction Potential
scale or APS) and whether or not the individual
acknowledges having problems with drugs or alcohol.
Another scale, the Marital Distress scale, addressed a
clients attitudes toward their marital relationship.
The MMPI-2 supplemental scales provide the practitioner with the means of evaluating specific problems
(such as post-traumatic stress disorder) that are not
addressed in the clinical or content scales.

3. Applications of the MMPI-2

Contemporary uses of the MMPI-2 include such
activities as evaluating clients following their admission to an inpatient psychiatric facility; providing
personality information about clients problems and
attitudes in the early stages of psychological treatment
to assess treatment amenability; providing personality
information for therapists to employ in giving the
client feedback in psychotherapy; and providing information that would aid the clinician in arriving at an
appropriate clinical diagnosis. The MMPI-2 is also
widely used in medical settings to provide psychological adjustment information on patientsfor
example, in rehabilitation programs as a measure of
behavior problems and symptoms following a stroke
as part of the neuropsychological evaluation; or in the
evaluation of drug treatment effects.

A great deal of contemporary personality assessment research is also aimed at further exploring the
MMPI-2 test variables. The two most active research
areas involve further exploration into the external
validity of the MMPI-2 scales, and the translation and
adaptation of the instrument for other languages and
cultures. For example, research carried out in the mid1990s has further explored the validity of the test in
diverse settings such as personnel screening (Butcher
1995); forensic assessment (Megargee 1997); and test
correlates with outpatients (Graham et al. 2000).
Several studies have explored the use of MMPI-2based personality descriptions in providing test feedback to psychotherapy clients. This research has
shown that providing psychological test feedback in
treatment increases the effectiveness of treatment
(Finn 1996, Finn and Tonsager 1992, Newman and
Greenway 1997).
The MMPI-2 is also widely used as a cross-cultural
research technique to study psychopathology across
cultures. The MMPI-2 items and scales have shown
remarkable resilience when used in other languages
and cultures (Butcher 1996), and computer-based
interpretation of the MMPI-2 has been shown to be
highly effective in describing clinical patients in other
cultures (Butcher et al. 1998).

4. Conclusion
The MMPI-2 is the most widely used and most
versatile clinical personality instrument that clinical
psychologists have available. It is a self-report personality questionnaire that provides the test user with
scores on a number of scales that address important
clinical problem areas. In addition the MMPI-2
provides mental health professionals with information
that allows them to appraise the clients willingness
and frankness in the appraisalkey information
about the clients response attitudes that allows for a
determination of the credibility of the clients selfreport. Once cooperation in the assessment is assured,
the MMPI-2 clinical measures can be effective in
delineating the mental health symptoms, personality
traits, and special problems that the client is likely to
be experiencing.
See also: Personality Assessment; Personality Theories

Bibliography
Baer R A, Wetter M W, Nichols D S, Greene R, Berry D T R
1995 Sensitivity of MMPI-2 validity scales to underreporting
of symptoms. Psychological Assessment 7: 41923
Butcher J N 1995 Users Guide for The Minnesota Report:
Reised Personnel Report. National Computer Systems,
Minneapolis, MN
Butcher J N 1996 International Adaptations of the MMPI-2.
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN

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Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inentory (MMPI)

Butcher J N 1999 The MMPI-2: A Beginners Guide. American
Psychological Association, Washington, DC
Butcher J N, Berah E, Ellertsen B, Miach P, Lim J, Nezami E,
Pancheri P, Derksen J, Almagor M 1998 Objective personality
assessment: Computer-based MMPI-2 interpretation in international clinical settings. In: Belar C (eds.) Comprehensie
Clinical Psychology: Sociocultural and Indiidual Differences.
National Computer Systems, Minneapolis, MN, pp. 277312
Butcher J N, Graham J R, Dahlstrom W G, Tellegen A M,
Kaemmer B 1989 Minnesota Multiphasic Personality
Inentory-2 (MMPT-2): Manual for Administration and
Scoring. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
Butcher J N, Williams C L, Graham J R, Tellegen A, BenPorath Y S, Archer R P, Kaemmer B 1992 Manual for
Administration, Scoring, and Interpretation of the Minnesota
Multiphasic Personality Inentory for Adolescents: MMPI-A.
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
Finn S E 1966 Assessing feedback integrating MMPI-2 and
Rorschach findings. Journal of Personality Assessment 67:
54357
Finn S E, Tonsager M 1992 Therapeutic effects of providing
MMPI-2 test feedback to college students awaiting therapy.
Psychological Assessment 4: 27887
Graham J R, Ben-Porath Y S, McNulty J 2000 Using the MMPI2 in Outpatient Mental Health Settings. University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN
Graham J R, Watts D, Timbrook R 1991 Detecting fake-good
and fake-bad MMPI-2 profiles. Journal of Personality Assessment 57: 26477
Hathaway S R, McKinley J C 1940 A multiphasic personality
schedule (Minnesota): 1. Construction of the schedule. Journal
of Psychology 10: 24954
Lees-Haley P R, Smith H H, Williams C W, Dunn J T 1996
Forensic neuropsychological test usage: An empirical survey.
Archies of Clinical Neuropsychology 11: 4551
Megargee E I 1977 Using the Megargee MMPI-based classification system with the MMPI-2s of female prison inmates.
Psychological Assessment 9: 7582
Newman M L, Greenway P 1997 Therapeutic effects of providing MMPI-2 test feedback to clients at a university
counseling service: A collaborative approach. Psychological
Assessment 9: 12231
Piotrowski C, Keller J W 1992 Psychological testing in applied
settings: A literature review from 19821992. Journal of
Training and Practice in Professional Psychology 6: 7482

J. N. Butcher

Minorities
A minority group is usually defined as a group of
people with common interests or characteristics which
distinguish them from the more numerous majority of
the population of which they form a part or with
whom they live in close proximity within a common
political jurisdiction. Minorities may be composed of
people with common interests in a range of activities
such as sports, environmental issues, professional

occupations, and leisure pursuits. The term minority

interest is often used to suggest that a particular
activity attracts the interest of less than a majority of
the relevant population.

1. Social Science Definition

In social science and more widely in public discourse,
the term has come to mean groups that have a minority
status that is relatively long-lasting or permanent and
is based on ethnic or cultural attributes. Minority is
thus a term used to define people with distinct ethnic,
national, religious, or linguistic affiliations. People
belonging to minorities are thus often recognizable by
their dress, language, place of residence, special
cultural practices, or ethnicity. Minority status may be
imposed on a group of people by majority prejudice
and discrimination. Thus gypsies are defined as minorities in many European countries by majorities who
disapprove of their lifestyle and modes of behavior.

2. Minorities and Power

An important characteristic of minorities is that they
are assumed to have less power than the majority
group. The term minority thus not only implies a
numerical minority but political powerlessness as well.
Minorities are assumed to be weak and inferior, often
discriminated against by the majority, and excluded
from sharing political power. The description of a
group as a minority thus reflects their lack of power
and inferior status as much or more than their
numerical status. A majority group, by contrast, is
assumed to be politically, economically, and ideologically dominant, and references to it as a majority
reflect its political ascendancy. The majority may use
its numerical and political superiority to try to
eliminate the minority by forcing its members to adopt
the language, religion, and customs of the majority.
However, such pressures usually have the reverse
effect, in strengthening the identity of the minority, its
internal cohesion, and its pride in its cultural traditions. Oppressed minorities are capable of fierce and
prolonged resistance to majority pressure as can be
seen by the long civil war in the Sudan and the
nationalist campaign in Northern Ireland.

3. Minorities and Democracy

In democracies, minorities are often considered to
deserve special protection against the arbitrary actions
of the majority. This is partly a recognition that
minorities should be allowed to contribute to the
policy-making process if they are to be subject to its

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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences

ISBN: 0-08-043076-7