Search

The article discusses that while there have been four attempts to build Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scales to assess "tendency to hostile behavior," there is little evidence as to the effectiveness of these scales. Three of these scales were constructed by the procedure of a priori item selection by experienced judges. Both the Iowa Hostility Inventory (Iowa) of Moldawsky and the Manifest Hostility Scale of Siegel were constructed in this manner. More recent studies have yielded negative results. Researchers compared the MMPI hostility scale scores of prisoners convicted for crimes of varying degrees of hostility.

The article a study on measurement of hostility. This experiment was a pilot study to determine the feasibility of measuring hostility by objective tests. Three different measures of hostility, a word association test, a picture sorting test, and the Cook hostility scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory were administered and low but significant correlations found between them. It informs that further research is needed on hostility and the degree of its compartmentalization before we can hope to have highly valid, reliable instruments for its measurement.

This article provides a cross-validation of several control/hostility scales by comparing mental health center patients who later were arrested for felony crimes with those who were not. A number of experimental Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scales have been developed for the measurement of hostility and control. To date, no experimental data have been reported on the ability of the MMPI special scales to predict criminality. The subjects consisted of 47 male applicants for outpatient treatment at the Hennepin County Mental Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.