The ability of minnesota multiphasic personality inventory - 2 validity scales to detect fake-bad responses in psychiatric inpatients

The effectiveness of P. A. Arbisi and Y. S. Ben-Porath's (1995) Infrequency-Psychopathology Scale, F(p), in discriminating between groups of psychiatric inpatients who were administered the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory - 2 (J. N. Butcher, W. G. Dahlstrom, J. R. Graham, A. Tellegen, and B. Kaemmer, 1989) under 2 scripted conditions, honest and fake bad, was examined. The F(p) scale's incremental validity, in reference to the Infrequency (F) scale, was tested with 74 Minneapolis Veteran Affairs Medical Center inpatients (64 men and 10 women). The results support the use of F(p) in the detection of malingering in psychiatric patients and indicate that in settings characterized by high base rates of psychopathology, F(p) outperforms F and accounts for all the predictive power when distinguishing between psychiatric inpatients responding honestly and attempting to fake bad.