and control, rather than policy, tend to pursue largercoalitions, as suggested by Downs. Those with astronger concern for promoting a policy agenda tendto form coalitions just large enough to win and nolarger. Because of this difference, the theory ofminimalwinning coalitions not only makes predictions aboutthe size of legislative or electoral groupings, but alsoprovides clues for discerning the motives of leadersfrom their strategies for gaining support to win andhold office.

See also: Agenda-setting; Electoral Systems; GameTheory; Game Theory: Noncooperative Games; Ra-tional Choice in Politics; Voting: Tactical

Bibliography

Axelrod R M 1970 Conflict of Interest; A Theory of DiergentGoals with Applications to Politics. Markham, Chicago

Browne E, Franklin M 1973 Aspects of coalition payoffs inparliamentary democracies. American Political Science Reiew67: 45369

Bueno de Mesquita B 1978 Coalition payoffs and electoralperformance in European democracies. Comparatie PoliticalStudies 11: 6181

Bueno de Mesquita B, Morrow J D, Siverson R, Smith A 2000Political institutions, political survival, and policy success. In:Bueno de Mesquita B, Root H L (eds.) Goerning forProsperity. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT, pp. 5984

De Swaan A 1973 Coalition Theories and Cabinet Formations.Elsevier, Amsterdam

Downs A 1957 An Economic Theory of Democracy. Harper, NewYork

Groseclose T, Snyder J M Jr 1996 Buying supermajorities.American Journal of Political Science 90: 30315

Laver M, Schofield N 1990 Multiparty Goernment: The Politicsof Coalition in Europe. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK

Laver M, Shepsle K A 1996 Making and Breaking Goernments:Cabinets and Legislatures in Parliamentary Democracies.Cambridge University Press, New York

Riker W H 1962 The Theory of Political Coalitions. YaleUniversity Press, New Haven, CT

Stokman F N, Van den Bos J 1992 A two-stage model of policymaking with an empirical test in the US energy policy domain.In: Moore G, Whitt J A (eds.) The Political Consequences ofSocial Networks. Research in Politics and Society, Vol. 4, JAIPress, Greenwich, CT

Strom K 1990 Minority Goernment and Majority Rule. Cam-bridge University Press, New York

B. Bueno de Mesquita

Minnesota Multiphasic Personality

Inventory (MMPI)

The MMPI, the Minnesota Multiphasic PersonalityInventory, was developed in the 1940s as a means ofevaluating mental health problems in psychiatric and

medical settings. The test authors, Starke Hathawayand J. C. McKinley, thought that it was important inevaluating patients problems to ask them about whatthey felt and thought. Their instrument was a self-report inventory that included a very broad range ofproblems and could be answered with a sixth-gradereading level. The MMPI was developed according torigorous empirical research methods and rapidlybecame the standard personality instrument in clinicalsettings (Hathaway and McKinley 1940). The popu-larity of the true-false personality inventory was inlarge part due to its easy-to-use format and to the factthat the scales have well-established validity inassessing clinical symptoms and syndromes (Butcher1999). The MMPI underwent a major revision in the1980s resulting in two forms of the testan adultversion, the MMPI-2 (Butcher et al. 1989) and anadolescent form, MMPI-A, (Butcher et al. 1992). TheMMPI-2 is the most widely researched instrument andis used for the evaluation of clinical problems in abroad range of settings including mental health, healthpsychology, correctional settings, and personnelscreening, and in many forensic applications such aschild custody and personal injury (Lees-Haley et al.1996, Piotrowski and Keller 1992).

The MMPI-2 contains 567 truefalse questionsaddressing mental health symptoms, beliefs, andattitudes. The items on the MMPI-2 are grouped intoscales (clusters of items) that address specific clinicalproblems such as depression or anxiety. After theinventory is completed, the items are scored orgrouped according to the scales that have beendeveloped. An MMPI scale allows the clinician tocompare the responses of the client with those ofthousands of other people. Initially, the scores arecompared to the normative sample, a large represen-tative sample of people from across the USA, in orderto determine if the persons responses are differentfrom people who do not have mental health problems.If the person obtains scores in the extreme ranges, forexample on the depression scale, compared with thenormative sample then they are likely to be experi-encing problems comparable to the clinical samples ofdepressed clients that have been studied.

1. Ealuating Cooperatie Responding

In some situations clients might be motivated topresent personality characteristics and problems inways that are different than they actually are. Forexample, if people are being tested to determinewhether or not they are sane enough to stand trial ina criminal court case they might attempt to exaggeratesymptoms or problems in order to avoid responsi-bility. Alternatively, people being evaluated in pre-employment psychological evaluation might be in-clined to present themselves in an extremely positiveway to cover up problems. It is important, in MMPI-2 profile interpretation, to evaluate the way in which

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people approach the task of self-revelation. Are theysufficiently cooperative with the testing to produce avalid result?

There are several indices on the MMPI-2 to addresshonesty and cooperativeness in responding to theitems (Baer et al. 1995):

1.1 Cannot Say Score

This index is simply the total number of unanswereditems. If the client leaves out many items on the test(e.g., 30 items), the profile may be invalidated. A highscore on this index suggests that clients have notcooperated sufficiently to provide a clear picture oftheir personality functioning.

1.2 The L Scale

The L or Lie scale is a measure of the clientswillingness to acknowledge personal faults orproblems. Individuals who score high on this scale arepresenting an overly virtuous picture of themselves.They claim virtue and positive characteristics that arenot typically found among people in general. The Lscale is particularly valuable in situations where theindividual has something to gain by not appearing tohave problems, such as in personnel screening or inchild-custody disputes. In these cases, people might tryto put their best foot forward and present themselvesas better adjusted than they actually are.

1.3 The K Scale

The K scale was developed as a means of evaluatingthe tendency that some people have to minimizeproblems. This scale is also used as an index forcorrecting some clinical scales that have been shown tobe affected by defensiveness; that is, it serves as acorrection factor to compensate for the tendency ofsome people to deny problems. Empirically derivedpercentages of the K scale score are added to five of theclinical scales in order to improve test discrimination.

1.4 The Infrequency Scales

The MMPI-2 contains three measures to assess thetendency of some people to exaggerate their problemsor fake the test by over-responding to extreme items(the F or Infrequency scale, the Back F or F(B) scale,and the P(p) scale). Each scale performs a somewhatdifferent function in interpretation. The items on thesescales are very rare or bizarre symptoms. Individualswho endorse a lot of these items tend to exaggeratesymptoms on the MMPI-2, perhaps as a way of tryingto convince professionals that they need to have

psychological services. Some people who have a needto claim problems in order to influence court decisionswill tend to elevate the infrequency scales. Theinfrequency scales can be elevated for several possiblereasons: the profile could be invalid because the clientbecame confused or disoriented or responded in arandom manner. High F and F(B) scores are com-monly found among clients who are malingering orproducing exaggerated responses in order falsely toclaim mental illness (Graham et al. 1991).

1.5 TRIN AND VRIN scales

Two scales to assess inconsistent responding havebeen developed for the MMPI-2. These scales werederived by examination of the individuals responsesto pairs of items that have similar content. A particularresponse to one of the items in the pair requires thatthe other item be endorsed in a given way in order tobe consistent: for example, a pair of items that containscontent that cannot logically be answered in the samedirection if the subject is responding consistently to thecontent.

2. Profile Interpretation

The assessment of clinical problems is approached byexamining the clients responses to the items usingseveral strategies. We will examine three types of scalesthat comprise the MMPI-2s problem measures: thetraditional clinical scales and profile codes, theMMPI-2 content scales, and the supplemental or specific-problems scales.

2.1 The MMPI-2 Clinical Scales

Hathaway and McKinley developed the originalMMPI clinical scales to classify empirically or grouppatients into problem types. For example, they de-veloped scales to assess hypochondriasis (theHs scale),depression (the D scale), hysteria (the Hy scale),psychopathic deviation (the Pd scale), paranoid think-ing (the Pa scale), psychasthenia (the Pt scale),schizophrenia (the Sc scale), and mania (the Ma scale).In addition, two other scales were included on thebasic profile to address problems of sex-role identifi-cation (the Mf scale) and social introversion andextraversion (the Si scale). These scales have clearlydefined correlates or empirical relationships. If a scaleis elevated in the significant range, the individual isconsidered to possess the attributes measured by thescale.

Some clients have only one of the clinical scaleselevated in their profile. In these cases, the profileinterpretation is straightforwardthe clinician simplyexamines the published correlates for that scale and

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incorporates these into the psychological report. How-ever, some clients might have several of the clinicalscales elevated in their profile. The full pattern orprofile configuration needs to be interpreted. For-tunately, extensive research has been undertaken toevaluate complex profiles or code types. These profiletypes result from having two or more of the clinicalscales elevated in the interpretive range. In these cases,the practitioner refers to published code books whichprovide empirical descriptions for the various patternsthat have been studied.

2.2 Content-based Scales

The MMPI-2 contains a number of scales that assessescontent themes that the individual endorsed in theitem pool. The content scales are homogeneous itemclusters that summarize themes and represent directcommunications about problems to the practitioner.There are 15 content scales measuring different symp-tom areas and problems: for example, AntisocialPractices (ASP), Bizarre Mentation (BIZ), and LowSelf Esteem (LSE).

2.3 Special-problem or Supplemental Scales

Several supplemental scales have been developed toassess specific problems such as the potential todevelop problems of addiction (the MacAndrew Ad-diction scale or MAC-R and the Addiction Potentialscale or APS) and whether or not the individualacknowledges having problems with drugs or alcohol.Another scale, the Marital Distress scale, addressed aclients attitudes toward their marital relationship.The MMPI-2 supplemental scales provide the prac-titioner with the means of evaluating specific problems(such as post-traumatic stress disorder) that are notaddressed in the clinical or content scales.

3. Applications of the MMPI-2

Contemporary uses of the MMPI-2 include suchactivities as evaluating clients following their admis-sion to an inpatient psychiatric facility; providingpersonality information about clients problems andattitudes in the early stages of psychological treatmentto assess treatment amenability; providing personalityinformation for therapists to employ in giving theclient feedback in psychotherapy; and providing in-formation that would aid the clinician in arriving at anappropriate clinical diagnosis. The MMPI-2 is alsowidely used in medical settings to provide psycho-logical adjustment information on patientsforexample, in rehabilitation programs as a measure ofbehavior problems and symptoms following a strokeas part of the neuropsychological evaluation; or in theevaluation of drug treatment effects.

A great deal of contemporary personality assess-ment research is also aimed at further exploring theMMPI-2 test variables. The two most active researchareas involve further exploration into the externalvalidity of the MMPI-2 scales, and the translation andadaptation of the instrument for other languages andcultures. For example, research carried out in the mid-1990s has further explored the validity of the test indiverse settings such as personnel screening (Butcher1995); forensic assessment (Megargee 1997); and testcorrelates with outpatients (Graham et al. 2000).Several studies have explored the use of MMPI-2-based personality descriptions in providing test feed-back to psychotherapy clients. This research hasshown that providing psychological test feedback intreatment increases the effectiveness of treatment(Finn 1996, Finn and Tonsager 1992, Newman andGreenway 1997).

The MMPI-2 is also widely used as a cross-culturalresearch technique to study psychopathology acrosscultures. The MMPI-2 items and scales have shownremarkable resilience when used in other languagesand cultures (Butcher 1996), and computer-basedinterpretation of the MMPI-2 has been shown to behighly effective in describing clinical patients in othercultures (Butcher et al. 1998).

4. Conclusion

The MMPI-2 is the most widely used and mostversatile clinical personality instrument that clinicalpsychologists have available. It is a self-report per-sonality questionnaire that provides the test user withscores on a number of scales that address importantclinical problem areas. In addition the MMPI-2provides mental health professionals with informationthat allows them to appraise the clients willingnessand frankness in the appraisalkey informationabout the clients response attitudes that allows for adetermination of the credibility of the clients self-report. Once cooperation in the assessment is assured,the MMPI-2 clinical measures can be effective indelineating the mental health symptoms, personalitytraits, and special problems that the client is likely tobe experiencing.

See also: Personality Assessment; Personality The-ories

Bibliography

Baer R A, Wetter M W, Nichols D S, Greene R, Berry D T R1995 Sensitivity of MMPI-2 validity scales to underreportingof symptoms. Psychological Assessment 7: 41923

Butcher J N 1995 Users Guide for The Minnesota Report:Reised Personnel Report. National Computer Systems,Minneapolis, MN

Butcher J N 1996 International Adaptations of the MMPI-2.University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN

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Butcher J N 1999 The MMPI-2: A Beginners Guide. AmericanPsychological Association, Washington, DC

Butcher J N, Berah E, Ellertsen B, Miach P, Lim J, Nezami E,Pancheri P, Derksen J, Almagor M 1998 Objective personalityassessment: Computer-based MMPI-2 interpretation in inter-national clinical settings. In: Belar C (eds.) ComprehensieClinical Psychology: Sociocultural and Indiidual Differences.National Computer Systems, Minneapolis, MN, pp. 277312

Butcher J N, Graham J R, Dahlstrom W G, Tellegen A M,Kaemmer B 1989 Minnesota Multiphasic PersonalityInentory-2 (MMPT-2): Manual for Administration andScoring. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN

Butcher J N, Williams C L, Graham J R, Tellegen A, Ben-Porath Y S, Archer R P, Kaemmer B 1992 Manual forAdministration, Scoring, and Interpretation of the MinnesotaMultiphasic Personality Inentory for Adolescents: MMPI-A.University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN

Finn S E 1966 Assessing feedback integrating MMPI-2 andRorschach findings. Journal of Personality Assessment 67:54357

Finn S E, Tonsager M 1992 Therapeutic effects of providingMMPI-2 test feedback to college students awaiting therapy.Psychological Assessment 4: 27887

Graham J R,Ben-Porath Y S,McNulty J 2000 Using theMMPI-2 in Outpatient Mental Health Settings. University ofMinnesota Press, Minneapolis, MN

Graham J R, Watts D, Timbrook R 1991 Detecting fake-goodand fake-bad MMPI-2 profiles. Journal of Personality As-sessment 57: 26477

Hathaway S R, McKinley J C 1940 A multiphasic personalityschedule (Minnesota): 1. Construction of the schedule. Journalof Psychology 10: 24954

Lees-Haley P R, Smith H H, Williams C W, Dunn J T 1996Forensic neuropsychological test usage: An empirical survey.Archies of Clinical Neuropsychology 11: 4551

Megargee E I 1977 Using the Megargee MMPI-based classifi-cation system with the MMPI-2s of female prison inmates.Psychological Assessment 9: 7582

Newman M L, Greenway P 1997 Therapeutic effects of pro-viding MMPI-2 test feedback to clients at a universitycounseling service: A collaborative approach. PsychologicalAssessment 9: 12231

Piotrowski C, Keller J W 1992 Psychological testing in appliedsettings: A literature review from 19821992. Journal ofTraining and Practice in Professional Psychology 6: 7482

J. N. Butcher

Minorities

A minority group is usually defined as a group ofpeople with common interests or characteristics whichdistinguish them from the more numerous majority ofthe population of which they form a part or withwhom they live in close proximity within a commonpolitical jurisdiction. Minorities may be composed ofpeople with common interests in a range of activitiessuch as sports, environmental issues, professional

occupations, and leisure pursuits. The term minorityinterest is often used to suggest that a particularactivity attracts the interest of less than a majority ofthe relevant population.

1. Social Science Definition

In social science and more widely in public discourse,the term has come to mean groups that have a minoritystatus that is relatively long-lasting or permanent andis based on ethnic or cultural attributes. Minority isthus a term used to define people with distinct ethnic,national, religious, or linguistic affiliations. Peoplebelonging to minorities are thus often recognizable bytheir dress, language, place of residence, specialcultural practices, or ethnicity. Minority status may beimposed on a group of people by majority prejudiceand discrimination. Thus gypsies are defined as mino-rities in many European countries by majorities whodisapprove of their lifestyle and modes of behavior.

2. Minorities and Power

An important characteristic of minorities is that theyare assumed to have less power than the majoritygroup. The term minority thus not only implies anumerical minority but political powerlessness as well.Minorities are assumed to be weak and inferior, oftendiscriminated against by the majority, and excludedfrom sharing political power. The description of agroup as a minority thus reflects their lack of powerand inferior status as much or more than theirnumerical status. A majority group, by contrast, isassumed to be politically, economically, and ideo-logically dominant, and references to it as a majorityreflect its political ascendancy. The majority may useits numerical and political superiority to try toeliminate the minority by forcing its members to adoptthe language, religion, and customs of the majority.However, such pressures usually have the reverseeffect, in strengthening the identity of the minority, itsinternal cohesion, and its pride in its cultural tradi-tions. Oppressed minorities are capable of fierce andprolonged resistance to majority pressure as can beseen by the long civil war in the Sudan and thenationalist campaign in Northern Ireland.

3. Minorities and Democracy

In democracies, minorities are often considered todeserve special protection against the arbitrary actionsof the majority. This is partly a recognition thatminorities should be allowed to contribute to thepolicy-making process if they are to be subject to its

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Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7