The Relationship of Self-Reported Delinquency to Scales of the CPI and MMPI

Reviews of studies of personality attributes of delinquents and criminals have shown that the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) have quite consistently differentiated offenders from non-offenders.' Of the studies reviewed by Scheussler and Cressey and Waldo and Dinitz, those using the MMPI have been successful 30 out of 33 times, while those using the CPI have been successful 8 out of 8 times in discriminating offenders from non-offenders.Hathaway, Monachesi, and their associates have exhaustively studied the relationship of the MMPI to police and court records of delinquents. 2 In a 1960 study, Hathaway, Monachesi and Young, examined the MMPI profiles of more than 11,000 adolescents who had been tested as ninth -grade pupils in the 1953-1954 academic year.'As had been found in previous studies, high scores on certain combinations of the Psychopathic Deviate, the Schizophrenia, and the Hypomania Scales, tends to be associated with high rates of delinquency.Hence, these scales of the MMPI have been referred to by Hathaway, et al., as Excitory Scales.The boys who scored high on the Excitory Scales had delinquency rates 20 percent greater than the average rate in the male sample; among the girls, those who scored high on the Excitory Scales had delinquency rates 50 percent higher than the average rate in the female sample.These findings are typical of those using the MMPI. 4 Gough has done extensive research in the area of delinquency in connection with his development