The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI-2) is the most used personality test in clinical settings in the United States; it is also the only personality test the results of which are recognized and used by that country's courts of law. Using 567 true or false questions, it rates the tester on 130 categories (validity scales included). Once validity of the answers is established, a profile is created employing the 10 Clinical Scales:
- Hypochondriasis (Hs)
- Depression (D)
- Hysteria (Hy)
- Psychopathic deviate (Pd)
- Masculinity/femininity (Mf)
- Paranoia (Pa)
- Psychathenia (Pt)
- Schizophrenia (Sc)
- Hypomania (Ma)
- Social introversion (Si).
Each of these is in itself composed of various other sub-scales and has a further Obvious versus Subtle division. The scales are typically referred to by their number, with Si being numbered as 0, as shown in the image below.
Be aware that a high score on the "Psychopathic Deviant" scale does not mean you are a psychopath or would even fit that sort of profile. All it means is that you are fighting something or that you are not willing to conform to societal rules and traditions. Individuals who studied as far as graduate school are expected to have moderately elevated scores. In fact, the profile for a psychopath typically does not include a high score on this scale Pd scale. I have no idea why they don't simply change that scale's name given that both words that compose the present nomenclature are highly offensive.
Note that the MMPI-2 produces T-Scores and Raw Scores. What you will be paying attention to are the T-Scores, not the Raw Scores, unless otherwise specified. T-Scores are not percentages, but may be translated into percentages. Usually, anything above a 75 T-Score denotes a very high ranking on that scale, that is, within the top 1% of the population. Likewise, anything above a T-Score of 65 falls outside the normal range (among the top 3 to 5% of the general population). On the lower bound, any T-Score below 35 would not be considered normal. This general guideline notwithstanding, keep in mind that these point ranges aren't rigid, that is, that some scales accept certain T-Scores as normal while other scales consider the very same scores abnormal.
How to interpret your own MMPI-2 results?
- Step 1: Verify that your results are valid, and identify what bias, if any, your profile displays.
- Step 2: Once determined to be valid, see how your profile compares to the rest of the population on the 10 Clinical Scales, and analyze your strengths and weaknesses on each scale by looking at its components.
- Step 3: Pinpoint your dominant psychological defense mechanisms.
- Step 4: Use the supplementary scales to better understand yourself and your current psychological tendencies.
Click here for instructions on how to do Step 1, Verifying Validity, which is indubitably the hardest and most technical part of interpreting your own MMPI-2 results.
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| Click to Enlarge. This is the kind of graph that you would be given by a certified
psychologist in an official MMPI-2 interpretation report.
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Pearson's Clinical Assessment Group - the commercial distributor of the MMPI family of products, as well as hundreds of other psychological tests, including the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the WAIS and WISC IQ tests, and the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI) - has taken it upon itself to rid the Internet of every online version of all of the tests that they sell. Only last year, I had to replace the test linked to here on three separate occasions, finally arriving at the file you see below which is a coded program with a Creative Commons License. Pearson, by the way, does not own the copyright of the MMPI, the University of Minnesota does; what they own is the license to profit from the sale of the different forms of the test and several interpretative softwares. The code below is not owned by Pearson or by the University of Minnesota.
For those of you that care about Copyright Law, know that what I have done here is completely legal and entirely ethical. As a result, this is now the only site available on the Internet where you can find the MMPI-2 and take it without ever being asked for money. The legality of this site is such that not only have I not received a letter from Pearson or has Google taken this site down, but also it has made this page rank #1 on the first page of Google for most related searches (above Pearson and Wikipedia) throughout the entire world! In a twist of irony, and further proof of the legal status of this page, Pearson now regularly advertises many of their product lines here on Cognitive Dynamics.
You will not find an online version of this test anywhere on the Internet; if you think you did, be prepared to be asked for money before being given your scores after finishing your answers many hours later, which is infuriating.
The following are instructions for downloading the test code such that you can take the MMPI-2 for free, in long and short form. I suggest you take the long versions because of its increased accuracy. Moreover, these instructions carry the added bonus that you can take it in the privacy of your own device, without bouncing around your results via unsecure international servers.
Just do the following:
- Download THIS TEXT FILE. (NOTE: No site will open when you click on that link; rather, clicking on the link automatically downloads the text file.) If your browser opens the text file instead of downloading it, either use the browser's function to save it to your local memory OR copy the code from your browser and paste it directly into the simplest word processor that you have, like Notepad or WordPad.
- Open the .txt file and use 'Save As' to change its extension to .html by choosing your preferred folder and renaming the file, for example, "MMPI2.html". To do this, you must make sure that below the tab immediately below where you place the new name says All Files because it usually will say text files, which means that writing "MMPI2.html" will only result in a file called "MMPI.html.txt" being created, which means that you achieved nothing and have to start the process all over again. The image below provides an example of what you should see to complete this step correctly.
Click to Enlarge.
This is what you should see to create your MMPI-2 test file successfully. - Open your new .html file using your regular web browser (with JavaScript enabled).
- Answer all the questions and click 'Score' at the bottom. NOTE: If you want to make sure that your computer is properly set up, answer a few questions, click score to check if all the scales appear; then close the file, reopen it, and take the test!
As soon as you open the .html file, you will see the complete test, long and short form, and clicking 'Score' below (ONCE!) will provide you with your complete results.
Know yourself!
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Other psychological personality tests you may enjoy:
The Enneagram Personality Test
Lüscher Color Test (Updated with expanded information!)
The Defense Style Questionnaire
