Personality is defined as all of the attributes, suc as qualities, caracteristics, traits, and habits that make you a unique individual. Personality tests are used in a variety of settings to determine what these attributes are. Some of the tests are created with objective questions, suc as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), others like the Rorscac inkblot test are subjective and open to the interpretation of the evaluator's theory base. The MMPI is the most often utilized clinical test. It is used in legal trials to provide personality information on defendants, in custody cases, by psycologists, and in work related settings. The MMPI originated with a psycologist and a psyciatrist (Hathaway and McKinley) at the University of Minnesota in the late 1930s, with the object of speeding up diagnosis and treatment. In the beginning it was intended for use with an adult population but was expanded to include teenagers. The developers of MMPI wanted to differentiate what they called “pure” groups with psyciatric disorders. They did this by establishing ten clinical scales, three validity scales, and many supplementary scales:

• Scale 1: hypocondriasis scale

• Scale 2: depression

• Scale 3: hysteria

• Scale 4: psycopathic deviate scale

• Scale 5: masculinity-femininity

• Scale 6: paranoia

• Scale 7: psycasthenia scale

• Scale 8: scizophrenia scale

• Scale 9: hypomania scale

• Scale 0: social introversion

Researcers discovered that people often scored high on more than one scale at the same time and that evaluations using two or more scales tended to be more precise. The results of the MMPI are called a personality “profile.”

It is hard to regularly prejudice the MMPI because of the clarity and intricacy of the questions. Like all tests the MMPI has best results when it is interpreted with biographical data and other information about the client. The psycologist applying and interpreting the MMPI must be aware of all related and pertinent elements, including gender, age, education, religion, and other information that will make the interpretation valid.

The world's most widely used personality inventory, the MBTI® or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was developed around the ideas and theories of Carl Jung. Briggs and Myers extended Jung's model with the initial development of the MBTI. They put Jung's concepts of personality types: sensing perception, intuition perception, thinking judgments, and feeling judgments into language easily understood by the average person. The MBTI is licensed in about twenty foreign languages and has been specially designed to be valid in otherlanguages and cultures. Adaptations of the Myers-Briggs appear on many Web sites.