Effect of Altered Instructions on the MMPI-2 Profiles of College Students Who Are Not Motivated to Distort Their Responses

Research has shown that when the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) is administered with instructions designed to make people aware of the validity indexes and when people are encouraged to respond honestly rather than invalidate the test through defensiveness, their scores on validity scales suggest a more candid responding. Before such modified administration procedures can be broadly used to increase the validity of the MMPI (Hathaway & McKinley, 1943) profiles, it is necessary to have more information about the effect of the altered instructions on test performance of people in general. This study involved administering the MMPI-2 to a group of 218 "normals" (college students) with instructions that differed from traditional instructions. Specifically, the test instructions were altered to explain more about the test and the presence of validity scales to apprise participants that disingenuous responding can be detected. The responses of college students taking the test under altered instructions were compared with those of a similar sample of 150 college students who took the test under standard instructions. Although under altered conditions there was a statistically significant tendency for measures assessing defensiveness (L, K, and S) to be lower for some participants (women but not men), the differences were trivial. Modified instructions made little practical difference in test performance when people who were not motivated to deceive on the test were informed of the presence of validity checks on the test.