Acquiescence and the factorial interpretation of the MMPI.

Abstract

The operation of reliable response sets or stylistic consistencies has been frequently noted on personality and attitude scales with a true-false or agree-disagree format (cf. Cronbach, 1946, 1950; Fricke, 1956; Messick & Jackson, 1958). It has recently been conjectured (Jackson & Messick, 1958) that the major common factors in personality inventories of this type are interpretable primarily in terms of such stylistic consistencies rather than in terms of specific item content. The present paper attempts to annotate the influence of two response styles, the tendency to agree or acquiesce and the tendency to respond in a desirable way, using the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) as an example of inventories with this general response form. In particular, a high correlation will be noted between factor loadings on the largest factor, as obtained in several published factor analyses of the MMPI, and certain indices of acquiescence. Barnes (1956b), in evaluating the Berg (1955) deviation hypothesis on the MMPI, found that the tendency to answer atypically or deviantly true was highly correlated with