“Demand Effects” in psychological evaluation–
I continue to be interested in individual behavior in the psychological assessment situation. Fine article in the new Journal of Personality Assessment on the impact of demand characteristics in psychological testing. John Exner did some research on the differences in Rorschach response productivity between standard evaluation conditions and situations where the examiner was familar with […]
Use it or lose it–adverse cognitive effects of early retirement?
Taking Early Retirement May Retire Memory, Too (excerpts from the NY Times, Online, October 11, 2010) The two economists call their paper “Mental Retirement,” and their argument has intrigued behavioral researchers. Data from the United States, England and 11 other European countries suggest that the earlier people retire, the more quickly their memories decline… Researchers […]
New MMPI-2-RF research
Two interesting and useful articles on the MMPI-2 and MMPI-2-RF validity scales in Psychological Assessment emhasize the importance of the “F family” of scales in overreporting — “used in detecting negative response bias asociated with symptom exaggeration, particularly overreported symptoms of severe psychopathology.” The Sellbom article used the SIRS–the Cadillac of malingering measures–as an external […]
Can Psychologists Predict Future Behavior?
I was always taught that psychology is about the description and prediction of behavior. Description? Easy. I can do that! Prediction? Well, er….not so fast. But isn’t description also prediction? If I say that John has an IQ of 100, it is clearly a description, subject of course to a whole bunch of caveats based […]