title: The impact of exposure to Internet-based information about the Rorschach and the MMPI-2 on psychiatric outpatients' ability to simulate mentally healthy test performance.
abstract: To examine the impact of Internet-based information about how to simulate being mentally healthy on the Rorschach (Exner, 2003) and the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989), 87 psychiatric outpatients completed the tests under 4 conditions: uncoached and Internet-coached outpatients under faking healthy instructions (faking patients and Internet-faking patients) and patients and nonpatients under standard instructions (standard patients and standard nonpatients). On the Rorschach, faking patients and Internet-faking patients did not manage to portray healthy test performance and, like standard patients, revealed a significantly greater number of perceptual and cognitive disturbances than standard nonpatients. Faking patients scored in the psychopathological direction on most variables. Internet-faking patients produced constricted protocols with significantly higher F% (57%) and lower use of provoking and aggressive contents than the other groups. On the MMPI-2, faking patients and Internet-faking patients were able to conceal symptoms and, like standard nonpatients, scored in the normal range on the clinical scales. The validity scale L successfully detected the faking patients and the Internet-faking patients, whereas the F scale only distinguished the Internet-faking patients and K only the faking patients. We conclude that Internet-based information could threaten test validity.
authors: a Department of Psychology , University of Oslo , Norway.
authors: Ellen
authors: E
authors: Hartmann
authors: Terje
authors: T
authors: Hartmann
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D008192:Deception; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D008950:MMPI / Q000592:standards*; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010045:Outpatients / Q000523:psychology; D010552:Personality Assessment / Q000592:standards*; D011897:Random Allocation; D012392:Rorschach Test / Q000592:standards*; D055815:Young Adult