The Munich Personality Test (MPT)--a short questionnaire for self-rating and relatives' rating of personality traits: formal properties and clinical potential

Abstract

The Munich Personality Test (MPT) is a brief questionnaire for the assessment of six personality dimensions proper (Extraversion, Neuroticism, Frustration Tolerance, Rigidity, Isolation Tendency, Esoteric Tendencies), one additional scale (Schizoidia, composed of the two shortest scales, Isolation Tendency and Esoteric Tendencies); an Orientation towards Social Norms, which might bias the rating, and the Motivation to perform the rating adequately can be ascertained by means of two control scales. There are two test versions, one for self-rating, the other one for a rating by a key person from the subject's social surroundings ("relatives' rating"). The instruction of both scales explicitly relates to times of mental and physical health in order to reduce the influence of symptoms of a disease on the values of the scales. The data presented indicate a highly consistent factorial structure of self-ratings and relatives' ratings, a significant concordance of both kind of ratings, a sufficient to marked degree of internal consistency of the test scales depending on the number of items in the scales, a fair degree of retest reliability after approximately 1 year and also, though less markedly, after around 7 years in psychiatric patients, and significant differences between groups of psychiatric patients and healthy subjects in all personality scales proper, partially depending on the type of the mental disorder. Judging from relatives' ratings and from other authors' data obtained in recovered patients, these differences cannot be fully explained by the influence of symptoms on the ratings. On the other hand, secondary changes of personality after brain damage have been demonstrated by other authors using a modified testing procedure. On the whole, the MPT offers a fairly differentiated picture of the personality structure in mental patients and healthy subjects.