Locating Forensic Personality Assessment Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D., ABPP

1. Locating Forensic Personality Assessment Marvin W. Acklin, Ph.D., ABPP Society for Personality Assessment Chicago, Illinois March 6, 2009

2. Personality Assessment The application of psychological evaluation methods to the description of the way people perceive, think, feel, and act. Personality assessment is both descriptive, explanatory,and predictive, encompassing the range of human behavior from subjective experience to the actuarial prediction of behavior.

3. Psychological Testing Meyer, et al.: Psychological testing is a relatively straightforward process wherein a particular scale is administered to obtain a specific score. Subsequently, a descriptive meaning can be applied to the score on the basis of normative, nomothetic  findings.

4. PsychologicalAssessment Meyer, et al.--Psychological Assessment is concerned with the clinician who takes a variety of test scores, generally obtained from multiple test methods, and considers the data in the context of history, referral information, and observed behavior to understand the person being evaluated, to answer the referral questions, and then to communicate findings to the patient, his or her significant others, and referral sources.

5. Psychological Assessment • The Purposes and Appropriate Uses of Psychological Assessment –Reflecting the clinical focus of traditional psychological assessment, Meyer et al (2001) state: Some of the primary purposes of assessment are to (a) describe current functioning, including cognitive abilities, severity of disturbance, and capacity for independent living; (b) confirm, refute, or modify the impressions formed by clinicians through their less structured interactions with patients; (c) identify therapeutic needs, highlight issues likely to emerge in treatment, recommend forms of intervention, and offer guidance about likely outcomes; (d) aid in the differential diagnosis of emotional, behavioral, and cognitive disorders; (e) monitor treatment over time to evaluate the success of interventions or to identify new issues that may require attention as original concerns are resolved; (f) manage risk, including minimization of potential legal liabilities and identification of untoward treatment reactions; and (g) provide skilled, empathic assessment feedback as a therapeutic intervention in itself.

6. Forensic Personality Assessment In contrast, the application of personality assessment methods to issues pertinent to the legal context—civil and criminal (assessment of criminal and civil competencies, mental state at the time of the offense examinations, fitness to stand trial) but also administrative issues (fitness for duty, extreme hardship, etc.). The domain of forensic personality assessment must encompass conceptual issues that include actuarial approaches to behavior and “yes/no” types of decisions.

7. Admissibility Issues • One of the hallmarks of forensic psychological evaluation is addressing legal standards reliably, relevantly, according to standards of proof (“to a reasonable degree of psychological certainty”), with a focus, often, on dispositional decision-making. In order to meet legal standards for admissibility, forensic personality assessment must meet fundamental behavioral science criteria to insure that evidence is reliable (in legal terms). This raises questions about the organization and quality of personality assessment as a behavioral science. As might be imagined, critics have raised important concerns about the state of science in assessment psychology (Grove, Garb, and others).

8. Critical Questions • Critical questions: Although many forensic issues are not predictive (e.g., mental state at time of the offense), many are, including dangerous determinations, recidivistic risk assessments, return to work, sentencing mitigation, conditional release, and custody decisions. How do we develop and defend the role of personality assessment in light of scientific and admissibility standards? How do our conceptions of personality play a role in developing evidence that is relevant to legal decision-making?

9. Critical Questions • What is the relationship between personality and behavior? • Are personality assessments descriptive, explanatory, predictive, or all of the above? • Is it meaningful to conceive of traditional personality assessment in actuarial terms? • Can we/do we predict behavior? • To what degree of accuracy? • To what level of confidence?

10. More Critical Questions • Does personality assessment add incremental validity to other forms of clinical decision-making? • What is the relationship between the nomothetic and idiographic personality factors as applied to risk assessment? • Can personality assessment reliably address forensically relevant categories? • Can we, or do we want to say that a person is more likely than not to behave in a certain manner?

11. More Critical Questions • Is the statement, “John Doe’s score of 100 (50th percentile rank) on the IQ test indicates cognitive abilities in the average range,” descriptive, predictive, or both? • John Doe obtained a T score of 70 on PCL-R Factor 2. • The forensic opinion: To a reasonable degree of psychological certainty, under ordinary circumstances John is more likely than not to…

12. Person Factors • Personality disposition—the propensity to behave in a characteristic manner under average expectable stimulus conditions, ----expressed as a probability statement—more likely that not • Forensic personality assessment is the assessment of dispositions in reference to some specific legal standard to a reasonable degree of psychological certainty (forensic opinion)

13. Situation Factors • The MacArthur violence risk study emphasized the importance of the environment that discharged psychiatric patients returned in their probability of future violence. • Situations may be poorly specified—”the average expectable environment” • The average expectable environment encompasses “a broad range of stimulus conditions” (T. Widiger, personal communication). • Facilitating and constraining environments

14. Using Psychological Tests • Psychological testing, particularly measures of personality traits or functioning, have been roundly criticized in most areas of forensic psychological assessment.

15. Using Psychological Tests • Interestingly, although the MMPI-2 is one of the most commonly used assessment instruments, “assessors must be cautious in the use of this instrument for informing decisions about risk given the lack of recent data regarding its predictive validity for violence.” “Measures assessing constructs unrelated or irrelevant to violent outcomes tend to perform poorly as predictors of violent recidivism.”

16. Integrating Information • A recent meta-analysis examined the comparative efficacy of five types of integrations of clinical information in risk assessment: 1) unstructured professional judgment, 2) empirical actuarial (VRAG), 3) mechanical, 4) adjusted actuarial, and 5) structured professional judgment (HCR-20, SVR 20).

17. Integrating Information • Empirically derived actuarial measures were more accurate than unstructured professional judgment for all outcomes. Structured professional judgment was intermediate between the accuracy found for actuarial measures and for unstructured professional judgment.

18. Structured Professional Judgment • A recent meta-analysis examined self-report, actuarial, and structured clinical risk protocols with respect to estimation of violence risk. As a group, second generation risk instruments (developed from statistical procedures, contained primarily static items, and atheoretical in nature) were the strongest predictors of institutional violence. In contrast, third generation risk instruments (theoretically based, inclusion of dynamic items, and concerned with measuring changes in risk, provide the strongest effect sizes for the prediction of violent recidivism in the community.

19. On the Edge • How do we reconcile the methods of traditional personality assessment with requirements of behavior science? • Is personality description merely hermeneutical leaving the heavy lifting to the actuarial tables? • Are there unheretofore bridging concepts between descriptive and predictive domains, for example, linking the subjective and objective aspects of behavior: the normative/actuarial and the idiographic/dynamic domains of decision-making.

20. Case Studies • Focus on personality assessment methods in relation to a legal standard in three cases—child custody evaluation, personal injury, and homicide. We have the pleasure of Dr. Irving Weiner to provide discussion of the papers.