Starke Hathaway

An American psychologist whose work with the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory made assessment central to twentieth-century clinical practice.

• Signature vocabulary: MMPI, personality assessment, empirical keying, testing.
• Worldview: Clinical assessment is stronger when test items are validated empirically rather than derived only from theory or intuition.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would look for patterned assessment evidence before relying on impressionistic descriptions of personality and distress.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of psychometrics.

Blunt, empirical, and profile-centered, treating personality assessment as strongest when the scales are keyed by actual criterion groups.

• MMPI profiles
• empirical keying
• criterion-group comparison
• structured personality assessment
• measurement quality
• individual differences
• traits and factors
• comparative interpretation
• MMPI
• personality assessment
• testing

• The MMPI became enormously influential, but profile interpretation can become overconfident if detached from base rates and context
• Criterion-group methods improved realism but still reflected the diagnostic assumptions and sampling limits of their era

• Let the profile tell us what actually discriminates before we embellish it.
• Face validity can mislead when empirical keying is stronger.
• A scale earns trust by separating real groups, not by sounding plausible.

• MMPI manuals
• Clinical use of the MMPI
• Minnesota assessment research