Identifying Personality Characteristics and Psychopathology 285CPI
A significant spin-off of the MMPI resulted from the efforts
of Harrison Gough, who was interested less in identifying
patterns of psychopathology among patients than in assess-
ing personality characteristics in nonclinical populations.
Using a combination of empirical and logical keying meth-
ods, and borrowing from the MMPI many items that were
interpersonal in nature and not symptom-oriented, Gough
began in 1948 to develop scales that were published as the
California Psychological Inventory, currently in its third edi-
tion (Gough, 1957; Gough & Bradley, 1996). Whereas the
MMPI scales had been named with diagnostic labels (e.g.,
depression, schizophrenia), Gough named his scales with
commonly used terms that most people would be likely
to recognize and understand (e.g., independence, responsi-
bility). The essence of Gough’s purpose was captured in a
review by Thorndike (1959), who referred to the CPI as “the
sane man’s MMPI.”
Whereas the MMPI has been used primarily in clinical,
forensic, and health care settings, the CPI has been applied
mainly in counseling, educational, and organizational set-
tings, as a way of facilitating decisions concerning career
choice, academic planning, personnel selection, and the reso-
lution of normal range adjustment problems. The CPI has
also found considerable use as a research tool in studies of
personality dimensions associated with achievement, leader-
ship, and creativity.
MCMI
In a mode similar to Gough’s, Theodore Millon developed
the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory using a combination
of empirical and logical keying procedures. As a major
difference from both the MCMI and the MMPI, however,
Millon’s scales were derived from a comprehensive theory of
personality and psychopathology that he had formulated
prior to turning his attention to developing a measuring in-
strument (Millon, 1969). First published in 1977 (Millon,
1977), the MCMI was standardized on patients receiving
mental health care and, like the MMPI, is intended for pur-
poses of psychodiagnostic screening and clinical assessment,
rather than for use with nonpatient populations. Unlike the
MMPI, however, which was designed primarily to measure
symptomatic concerns corresponding to Axis I disorders
in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the
American Psychiatric Association (2000), the MCMI is
scaled mainly to reflect disorders in personality function
as categorized on Axis II of the DSM.Although some
symptom-related scales are included in the MCMI, and some
personality disorder scales are available for the MMPI, these
are not usually regarded as a strength of either, and many
practitioners have found some advantage in using both in-
struments together in complementary fashion.
The original MCMI has been revised twice, with the
current version, the MCMI-III, having been published in
1994 (Millon, 1994; see also Millon, 1996). Millon also
extended his test downward to include an adolescent form,
originally known as the Millon Adolescent Personality In-
ventory (MAPI) and currently in revised form as the Millon
Adolescent Clinical Inventory (MACI) (Millon & Davis,
1993; Millon, Green, & Meagher, 1982).16PFAs an approach to constructing self-report inventories en-
tirely different from the empirical and logical keying that
characterized the MMPI, CPI, MCMI, and their predeces-
sors, Raymond Cattell (1905–1998; no relation to J. McK.
Cattell) began in the 1940s to apply factor analytic methods
to personality test construction. After drawing on a large pool
of adjectives describing personality characteristics to build a
long list of trait names, he obtained ratings on these traits
from samples of nonpatient adults. By factor analyzing these
ratings, he extracted 15 factors that he identified as “the
source traits of personality.” To these 15 factors, he added a
short measure of intelligence to produce the Sixteen Person-
ality Factors Questionnaire (16PF), which was originally
published in 1949 and most recently revised in 1993 (R. B.
Cattell, Cattell, & Cattell, 1993).
From Cattell’s perspective, his factors captured the entire
domain of trait characteristics that underlie human personal-
ity and, in common with Gough, he intended his test to serve
as a measure of normal personality functioning, and not of
the presence or extent of psychopathology. Nevertheless, as
demonstrated by Karson and O’Dell (1989), the 16-PF can be
used by practitioners to identify aspects of personality in
disturbed as well as normally functioning persons.NEO-PICattell’s factor analytic approach from the 1940s, in addition
to being still visible in continued use of the 16-PF, had a con-
temporary renaissance in the work of Paul Costa and Robert
McCrae. Like Millon, Costa and McCrae were guided in their
test construction by a theoretical formulation of personality
functioning, in this case the Five Factor Model (FFM), some-
times referred to as the “Big Five.” The FFM emerged from