Come integrare i risultati dei test self-report e dei test di tipica performance? Il caso del Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) e del test di Rorschach

[Autom. eng. transl.] Within the psychological assessment literature, the study of the relationship between the results of selfreport tests and typical performance tests finds ample space (eg Sultan and Chudzik, 2010). Paradigmatic is the case of the joint use of two of the most widespread and internationally used tests in their various versions and revisions: the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory self-report test (MMPI, Hathaway and McKinley, 1943; MMPI-2, Hathaway and McKinley, 1989; MMPI-2-RF, BenPorath and Tellegen, 2008; MMPI-A, Butcher et al., 1992; MMPI-A-RF, Archer, Handel, Ben-Porath and Tellegen, 2016) and the typical test Rorschach performance (Rorschach Comprehensive System, Exner, 1996; R-PAS, Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard and Erdberg, 2011). The research has shown that the level of agreement between MMPI-2 and Rorschach, like that generally between self-report tools and typical performance tests, can be very low (Meyer, 1999). As partial justification of this apparent correlation defect, several authors have focused on the influence of specific external variables. On the one hand, the results of self-report tests could be influenced by personal attitudes towards the assessment. On the other hand, responses to a projective test may be ambiguous or affected by the patient's mood. The research on the subject has also highlighted other possible intervening variables, such as a) the degree of awareness of the person with respect to his own personality traits (Lecˇbych and Seitl, 2013) and b) the degree of openness that people have during the compilation of self-report scales (Berant, Newborn and Orgler, 2008). With respect to these dimensions, Meyer (1997, 1999) stated that the MMPI-2 and the Rorschach test can correlate with each other when the client interfaces to the tests with the same attitude and has identified five prototypical modes of interaction between patient and psychological test (deliberate constructive defense, defensiveness-constraint as a personality structure, optimal range, exaggeration-deliberate dilation, exaggeration-dilation as a personality structure). The author has shown that when patients use a similar style of response in both tests, conceptually related constructs tend to correlate positively. Conversely, when patients use a different attitude in the two tests, the same psychological constructs tend to correlate negatively with each other. Bornstein (2002) has instead connected the low correlation to the different nature of the two psychological tests, contextualizing the low correlation coefficients within a "heteromethod convergence problem" (p. 47), ie the problematic evaluation of correlation when methods are used different to investigate the same construct. On the basis of these contributions it therefore seems important, to understand the problem of the discrepancy between the test results, to analyze both the attitude that the respondent expresses towards the test, and the different nature of psychological tests. In this work the integration model of the results obtained at the MMPI-2 and the Rorschach test elaborated by Stephen E. Finn (1996, 2007) 1 will be presented. This model accounts for the concordances and discrepancies between the two psychological tests taking into consideration both the different nature of the instruments and the attitude of the client towards them. Finally, the clinical use of this model will be illustrated in two clinical cases.