Date of Award

8-11-2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Thomas V. Petros

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether highly motivating instructional conditions on MMPI-2 had a differential effect on the resulting MMPI-2 profiles of undergraduate aviation and psychology majors, particularly on the validity, clinical, and content scales. Of particular interest was the effect that instructional condition had on Superlative Self-Presentation (S) scale scores among aviation majors. One hundred and thirty-two upper-level undergraduate psychology and aviation majors at the University of North Dakota were randomly assigned to complete the MMPI-2 under one of two instructional conditions, "High Motivation" (HM) or "Standard Instructions" (SI). Results of the study showed that HM instructions resulted in increased standard scores on validity scales measuring under-reporting for all groups, but did not result in increases on any of the clinical or content scales for any group. Aviation majors demonstrated no differential effect of instructional condition on any clinical or content scales, whereas the effect among psychology majors was more pronounced. Additional effects of instructional condition on validity, clinical, and content scales are discussed, as are this study's implications and limitations.

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