10 Clinical Scales of the MMPI-2: Definitions

MMPI-2 Scoring Chart with Clinical Scales, Lie,
Infrequency, and K correction, similar to
what appears on the report a test-taker keeps.

The main Clinical Scales of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory are almost always referred to via the numbers assigned to each (i.e., the numbers provided below to the right of the abbreviated lettering that appears on the free, online version linked to on this site). The following are succinct descriptions of what each scale attempts to approximate:

(1) Hs —  Hypochondriasis

Though hypochondriasis is nowadays synonymous with a constant psychosomatic generation of physical illness, the term hypochondriasis comes from the Ancient Greek "ὑποχόνδριος" (hypokhondrios), which denotes "the soft parts between the ribs and navel".  The gut, in fact, carries out a large amount of our emotional processes, containing the vast majority of our serotonin neurotransmitters, which play a big role in mood regulation.  Most people feel excessive preocupation, anxiety, or multiple low-intensity fears in their bellies, as a queazy feeling or unnerving nausea.  It is precisely this preocupation that the Hs scale intends to measure.

Scale 1 gets a K-correction applied to it during computation, with only the most exceedingly expensive versions of the test giving the evaluator both a K-corrected and a non-K corrected score, the reason being that peer-reviewed articles have accumulated that conclude that more often than not the non-K corrected scores are more accurate. This embarrassing tidbit (one that applies to all dimensions explicitly marked below as K-corrected) is still a subject of debate, but the fact that Pearson is charging extra for a result more basic than the one it always includes ought to provide a hint as to which side of the debate is likely to persevere ultimately.

Personally, I've noticed in my very limited experience that the higher a person scores on a K-corrected scale, the more necessary and accurate said alteration becomes; and the reason for this is simple: the more a personality uses these traits involved in the K validity scale, the more likely they are to attempt hiding them, which is why the K-correction validity scale exists to begin with.

It needs to be noted, however, that, even though the Hs scale seeks to indicate preoccupation with physical illnesses, it more broadly records a person's perception and recognition of their body's illnesses; because of this, someone suffering from many medical conditions will score highly on this scale even if they aren't very preoccupied about these.   Therefore, medical histories need to be considered when interpreting this scale.

(2) D — Depression

No definition necessary.  Click on the link above for further information about the scale and the several subscales that directly influence its interpretation.

No K-correction is applied to D.

It is only worth noting here that the majority of the people that take the MMPI-2 produce D as the highest T-score among the 10 clinical scales. With few exceptions, when scale 2 (D) displays the highest score, this ought not to lead to an interpretation where depression is deemed to be the leading driver of the rest of the elevated scores. To the contrary, depression ought to be seen as both an effect of the dynamics of other factors and as a cause of certain other features, usually leading to a vicious cycle that, if unattended, may cripple the mind-body and, generally, damage the quality of life of the test subject, sometimes over the long-term or even permanently. If the person carrying out the interpretation has a solid grasp of how human minds function, it ought to be an easy task figuring out which are the causes and which are the effects from the scores of all of the scales (subscales and research scales included).  The test itself, however, won't provide such a level of understanding.

(3) Hy — Hysteria

 Hysteria refers to the general malaise that arises from a persistent state of nausea, usually caused by stress or internal strife.

Scale 1 (Hs) takes both the bodily dysfunction and the resulting general malaise into its computation.  Unlike Hs, clinical scale 3 (Hy) attempts to ascertain is the tendency of the people who live with this general state of physical discomfort to use their complaints as a way to obtain affection and attention from those around them.  It is this opportunistic attention seeking that defines the hypochondriac, but in the MMPI-2 terminology, this is what is meant by hysteria.

The reason for this behavior to be the core of the concept is that, whenever their malaise-driven complaints, it rewards the entire functional chain (nausea --> malaise --> complaining to seek affection) such that, with each successful iteration, the individual becomes more prone to belly pains and these provoke even stronger feelings of internal weakness, and therefore trigger even more powerful attention-seeking wailing that carries, usually, a more compelling delivery, as would be predicted from the practice of any form of acting.

The word hysteria comes from the ancient Greek word for uterus [hystera (ὑστέρα)], but the word hysteria itself wasn't used in ancient times.  Despite the fact that it's modern appearance and usage is clearly marked by extremely sexist overtones and, adding insult to injury, strikingly demeaning intent, neither the developers nor the distributors (i.e., Pearson) of the MMPI family of tests have moved to replace the term, a change that would require no recalibration as it is just a lable that can be readily overwritten with a more accurate and appropriate nomenclature that actually refers to what the scale measures.

No K-correction is applied to the Hy scale.

(4) Pd — Psychopathic Deviate

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 external that is attempting to regulate your behavior or that you are not willing to conform to societal rules or traditional ways of thinking.  Individuals with undergraduate degrees tend to show elevated scores, and those that attempted or completed graduate degrees average even higher scores.  The same applies to some minority groups having experienced systematic oppression, but that is too complex a matter to explain here; the sheer number of ethnic backgrounds proves forbidding.





If you graduated from a ranked [first tier, second tier, or third tier] four year college, your t-score for Pd is expected to be in the 60s.  If you carried out further graduate scores, a t-score of 65 is no longer considered elevated.  In those cases, you need a 70 or 75 t-score to reach any significance.  Note that a t-score of 75 is usually considered quite high.

In fact, the profile for a psychopath is typically articulated by sets of other scales, not Pd itself.  However, the Pd subscales can do a fine job of indicating potential problematic dynamics that are best interpretated in conjuction with the content, supplemental, and reseach scales.  Stated another way, even if a high Pd is very often not a matter of concern (in opposition to what the scale's name might prima facie bias one to believe), this is not to say that a high score on this scale cannot be approximating a very dangerous underlying dynamic.

The K-correction applied to Pd can be very useful in a careful analysis.

(5) Mf—  Masculinity-Femininity - Male / Mf Masculinity-Femininity - Female

Mf is not a K-corrected scale.

In the free, online version of the test, this clinical test appears twice.  One of the two appearances will always show the result UNDEFINED because the form requires you to place your sex as male or female and the result is computed factoring in that datum.

This scale computes against a strong gender stereotype.  A low score indicates adherence to traditional gender roles and their stereotypical functions; a high scores marks a rejection of such roles.

The results I have had the pleasure of looking at in the past have more or less shown that I have little interest in what relates to this scale.  However, I do understand why this scale exists to begin with, even if it's very existence can seem disconcerting nowadays, so many decades later.  Anyone who has had any experience as to what goes on within the populations inside mental hospitals is well aware of the large proportions of individuals therein who have sexual and gender dilemmas as central factors of the psychopathologies that have brought—or otherwise keep them—there.  Since the MMPI-2 was originally developed based on the input of psychiatric inpatient populations, the aforementioned fact, in and of itself, accounts for the existence of this scale.  There is also the added fact that gender-based problems frequently serve to trigger or accelate certain forms of psychopathologies, a topic the complexities of which far exceeds the matters of concern here.  Understand also that, when the MMPI-2 was developed, homosexuality was a diagnosable psychological disorder, and at present transgender frames of mind are diagnosable as gender dysphoria.




(6) Pa — Paranoia

The Pa scale is not K-corrected.

There isn't much to define when it comes to this scale.  It is perhaps the most straighforward measure among the clinical scales.  It simply approximates suspiciousness and distrust, and also sensitivity in relation to these.

There is a twist to the interpretation of this scale that I will not state here because it would damage the validity of the test.  Also, I am not a fan of helping people try to cheat the MMPI-2, which is a pretty pointless endeavour anyway as almost everyone that tries it fails miserably in their attempts and comes across worse than they would have otherwise.  However, it is such an obvious dynamic inasmuch as it is a direct effect of paranoia that anyone with any common sense can readily spot it if they ever came across it.  So... why ruin the fun?

(7) Pt — Psychasthenia

The psychasthenia scale is a K-corrected measure that, in the most precise sense, targets the subject's tendency toward the use of compulsion.  Understanding this, please do not confuse psychasthenia with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and not just because the MMPI-2 doesn't straighforwardly provide clinical diagnosis, though it is often use in conjunction with other methods to arrive at diagnoses.  If nothing else, note that most elevated Pt scores, including extreme elevations, aren't produced by people suffering OCD.

In a more lax sense, especially when the subscales and the supplemental scales are taken into account, beyond the mere tendency towards compulsion the Pt scale attempts to approximate anxiety, preoccupations, doubts, and as a result also graze at the trait of obsessiveness.  But this is only because compulsion carries some degree of obsessiveness by definition.  The MMPI-2 has a separate scale for obsessiveness (Obs) among its supplemental scales.  High Pt scores occur all the time alongside average and even low Obs scores.

The Pt scale is perhaps the most perilous of those included in this personality inventory.  Obviously, it isn't as dangerous or as detrimental to someone's wellbeing as the schizophrenia scale, even not as much as paranoia, hypomania, hysteria, or hypochondria, under most conditions of extreme elevation.  However, psychasthenia is usually accompanied by two features that, in my opinion, lead this scale to be often the most damaging of the bunch.

The first of the two features is that what is targetted by Pt operates as a catalyst: psychasthenia has a way of catapulting other clinical scales farther along their scales, so to speak.  I have personally found it useful to read this scale as more causal than the rest.  If associated supplementary scales suggest it, I find that it is useful to treat a very high elevation of Pt as being more prominent than other clinical scales that show even higher elevations when deciphering the codetype to be used to frame a particular set of results.  I am sure, however, that this is my preference and not likely to be part of the rules used by the interpretative software or of the dogma underlying a psychologist "official" interpretation.  I mention it here, like I do many of my personal observations, because it may prove useful to you as you analyze your own scores.  This is a do-it-yourself article after all.  [In the interest of full disclosure, prior to Google deleting the hundreds of comments in all the articles here, many people used to request that I help them interpret their own results, which I would do publicly (mainly out of a combination of curiosity, desire to help, and boredom), and my observations come from that limited experience in combination with my own extensive research into the human mind, research carried out with ZERO any relation to the MMPI-2 test itself.  I am not and have never been in the business of unethically charging copious sums of money to interpret MMPI-2 results and provide what typically read as pages of unfettered insults.]

Second, high psychasthenia levels typically lead to a poor prognosis, that is, people scoring highly on this measure are usually categorized as lacking susceptibility to treatment.  Stated differently, a psychologist that has a workload that is is sufficient might come to the conclusion that treatment would be a waste of his or her time.  This, in turn, may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though I am not usually sympathetic to the plight of the psychologist, this is one of the rare occassions where I can hardly blame them.  Working with someone with compulsion at the center of their pathology is not only exhausing to put it mildly but also often pointless.  There are many reasons why this is so.  Chief among these is the fact that compulsions are extremely repetitive behaviors; therefore, the reinforcing nature of compulsions is so strong that it can barely be influenced in the format of hourly sessions, whether once a month or five times a week.  Additionally, at this point in human history anxiety disorders are the most common family of conditions perhaps because there aren't any treatment protocols that have been proven to have any significant efficacy over and above a person's willingness to be in treatment for them, which is why medication is usually the route taken, and comparison's between drug effectiveness and placebo effects are not very inspiring either (a fact that takes us back to the bit about a person's willingness to treat the issues).

Anxiety is the product of multiple fears that have lost their triggers and has generalized, that is, spread across the brain, permeating most of a subjects functional chains.  As such, the elimination of anxiety is a Gestalt-type transmutation that will alter a person to their very core.

(8) Sc —  Schizophrenia

Sc is a K-corrected scale.  The K-correction might be very important if the subject has very strong spiritual beliefs.  Oddly enough, if a person's spiritual beliefs are very strong AND they accord to a set of beliefs regarded as valid by their culture or subculture, this fact serves to shield them from a damaging interpretation of this scale.  That is to say that religious folk are more often than not forgiven, pun intended, moderate or even high elevations on this scale.

The schizophrenia main scale attempts to approximate odd perceptual experiences, odd perceptual processes, odd thinking, defectively odd behaviors, and to gage damage to the individual's wellbeing—a necessary condition needing to by satisfied by any diagnosis under the DSM-5 (click this link for an article where you may find a complete Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, Fifth Version)—it also includes a strong social alienation component.

Because it targets what is probably the most damaging of the families of psychological pathology, out of all the clinical scales the Sc score is computed using the most questionnaire items, with a total of 78 items.  To put that into perspective, hypochondriasis uses the least items of all, 30 in total, and paranoia computes 40 items.  The second top clinical scale when it comes to total of items used is, not coincidentally associated, social introversion with 69 questionnaire items, followed in third place by hysteria using 60 answers.

Keep in mind that very high elevations on this scale do not mean that the subject is suffering from schizophrenia.  A diagnosis of schizophrenia or any other form of disorder within the very large psychosis family of DSM-5 codetypes can only be arrived at if the requisites for any of these are known to be met.  This scale, like all other clinical scales in the MMPI-2, seeks to ascertain tendencies in an individual's personality, not clinical diagnoses.

(9) Ma — Hypomania

Ma is among the scales subjected to a K-correction.

Hypomania is by far the most fun of the states of mind targetted by the MMPI's clinical scales; nevertheless, it is also the potentially the most dangerous.  Do not conflate hypomania with mania as these are two distincts animic processes.  Hypomania is dangerous because it can suddenly and without warning transform into a manic episode.  This jump is likely among the quickest and largest leaps any human mind is capable of, and also one of the hardest to revert, be it immediately by the individual in minimal seconds during which takes hold or by professionals in the weeks, months, or years that follow the moment after a manic state occurs.  The potential damage of such a transformation is compounded by the fact that most people that live a mania and manage to come down from it end up in mania once again within the following two years.  Furthermore, often enough someone that went through a mania or psychosis will actually long for its reocurrence.

Someone in a hypomanic state can literally just snap from one minute to the next.  Psychosis and mania can take many forms and most of them aren't pretty, be it for any outside observer or for the person living it.  The gama of possibilities for what can occur is so wide that I cannot even begin to describe it here, not least of all because it can bring positive symptoms (i.e., things added to perception [not positive as in good, mind you], like sensory hypersensitivity, superhuman strength, etc.) and negative symptoms (things removed from mental functioning; e.g., loss of ability to speak, loss of memory, etc.), and any combination of positive and negative symptoms imaginable.

When a state of hypomania leads into a mania or psychosis the former is referred to as a prodrome to the ladder.  If you have any reason to suspect that you are currently in a prodrome, SEEK OUT HELP IMMEDIATELY wherever you may find it, be it in the form of seeking professional attention or by reaching out to friends or family or to whatever support system is at your disposal.  The rapid nature of the potential outcome and the risks associated with it are too large to warrant hesitation.

Well, it now may seem strange that I began this section stating that the mental state targetted by this scale is the most fun out of all the clinical states.  Just because it is the most fun doesn't mean that it can't also be the riskiest.  Skydiving is more fun that diving off a high board into an olympic swimming pool.  Hypomania, by itself, is not problematic.  In fact, living in hypomania, constantly or intermittently, can be quite conducive to a productive life if the energy is channeled properly into healthy efforts or into an individual's field of employ.

Have you ever had a long period in your live (say, several days or a few weeks) when you were brimming with energy, you felt that you didn't need to sleep so much in order to feel rested, your reasoning and memory were sharp, you were happy and euphoric, and your could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch with more detail and precision?  That's hypomania.

(0) Si — Social Introversion

The Si measurement tries to quantify orientation away from or towards social interactions at the time of testing.  It does this by inquiring into the person's beliefs about interpersonal relations, their willingness to engage in these, what the person feels after a social situation, and whether these seldom occur or are numerous.  It isn't, therefore, merely a measure of introversion as a matter of preference because it also factors in whether social alienation occurs as a matter of fact.

The real value of this clinical scale lies in its relation to the other clinical scales.  Social introversion is obviously not problematic in and of itself.  Although social introversion isn't as valued in the cultures where the MMPI-2 is used as it is in many other parts of the world, it is still a considered a personality trait with value in and of itself.  But introversion, particularly in the extremes, can become—and play a major role as—a cause of, a catalyst to, and an effect of psychopathologies.

Social introversion may become a causal component of a pathology if it serves to remove an individuals social support or safety net.  When an individual finds that there is nowhere to turn to, this readily becomes a major stressor that serves to precipitate the occurrance of new psychopathology as well as the exascerbation of any existing ones.

Social introversion can be a powerful catalyst to psychopathology when the scarcity of interpersonal interaction leads to a lack of perspective or an absence access to the experience of others against which to compare one's own experience.  For example, such a scenario is greatly problematic when schizophrenic tendencies cement themselves as perceptual process or cognitive functions.  Without others around to confirm or disprove one's own experience, delusions go mostly unchecked and hallucinations cannot be understood as being such.

Additionally, pathological processes can readily drive an individual towards introversion, be it for fear of the very real consequences society exacts or as a herculean (yet nonetheless futile) effort by the mind as it strives for self-preservation.

The three functional pathways delineated above almost always operate in tandem, such that what functioned as a cause renders an introversion operating as a catalyst and/or an effect in such a way that it alters or fortifies it's role as a cause, and so on.  The analytic distinction made herein quickly becomes important only for the purpose of analysis, the phenomena being much more functionally intertwined as a matter of fact in the life of an individual.  Thus, it is these relations as they refer to the other scales that you ought to consider as you interpret your own MMPI-2 results.


-----------

Other psychological personality tests you may enjoy:

• Attachment Style Test (contains a link to a full version of the DSM V)
• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
• The Enneagram Personality Test
• Lüscher Color Test
• The Defense Style Questionnaire

Related MMPI-2 information:

• MMPI-2 personality test free online
• MMPI-2 Validity Scales
• How to interpret MMPI-2 scores: Do it yourself
• 10 Clinical Scales of the MMPI-2: Definitions 
• Supplementary, Content, & Research Scales: Definitions 

• Clinical Scale 1 of the MMPI-2: Hypochondriasis
• Clinical Scale 2 of the MMPI-2: Depression
• Clinical Scale 3 of the MMPI-2: Hysteria
• Clinical Scale 4 of the MMPI-2: Psychopathic Deviate
• Clinical Scale 5 of the MMPI-2: Masculinity-Femininity
• Clinical Scale 6 of the MMPI-2: Paranoia 
• Clinical Scale 7 of the MMPI-2: Psychasthenia 
• Clinical Scale 8 of the MMPI-2: Schizophrenia 
• Clinical Scale 9 of the MMPI-2: Hypomania
• Clinical Scale 0 of the MMPI-2: Social Introversion

And the Free MMPI-2 link.