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Can Intelligence Be Predicted from the MMPI? An Out-of-Sample Validation Study
Emil O. W. Kirkegaard
Published: 2024/09/01
Abstract
A prior study found that general intelligence (g) is highly predictable from the items of the MMPI-2 (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory), achieving a cross-validated correlation of .85 in the Vietnam Experience Study, a sample of American military men. Here, the validity of a reduced version of this prediction model with 107 MMPI items was tested in a true out-of-sample dataset using a newly collected online (Prolific) sample of American adults (n = 499) who took a 226-item English vocabulary test. The model had an accuracy of r = .55 compared to the .81 in the original sample. There was some evidence of prediction bias by sex, which is not surprising because the model was trained only on men. A retrained version of the model was fit on the current dataset and achieved an accuracy of .65. Potential applications are discussed. Keywords: Machine learning, Personality, Psychopathology, Intelligence
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