Behavior: Face-Lift for a Famous Test

After 44 years, psychologists revise the Minnesota Multiphasic

Chicago Psychiatrist Sidney Weissman derisively calls it "the old Sears catalog" of psychological tests. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory is indeed one of the oldest, longest and most cumbersome tests in use today. Millions of people in at least 46 countries, from psychotics to normal job seekers to Soviet cosmonauts, have puzzled their way through its seemingly endless array of odd and eerie statements (samples: "Much of the time my head seems to hurt all over"; "My soul sometimes leaves my body"; "In walking, I am very careful to step over sidewalk cracks"). Now, at age 44, the archetypal test is...

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