Personality Assessment in Legal Contexts: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

This special issue addresses a major gap in the literature by providing comprehensive, credible reviews of the psychometric evidence for and legal status of some of the most commonly-used psychological and personality assessment measures used in forensic evaluations. It responds to Neal and colleagues’ (2019) call for research to improve the state of and access to knowledge about psychological assessments in legal contexts, and encourages critical thinking about forensic assessment in the spirit of improvement. These articles offer clarity about the strengths and weaknesses of a number of assessment instruments to inform psychologists’ preparation for expert testimony, lawyers’ preparation for direct and cross-examination, judges’ evidence admissibility determinations, and scholars’ future research. We assembled teams of authors with different perspectives and areas of expertise to review each tool fairly, including several adversarial collaborations. Articles on the Rorschach and R-PAS, MMPI-3, PCL-R, MCMI-IV and MACI-II, PAI and PAI-A, SIRS-2, HCR-20^V3, TSI and TSI-2, and the MacCAT-CA, ECST-R, and CAST*MR are included. To increase visibility, accessibility, and impact, this issue is published as free access, meaning the articles are available to download without charge. We anticipate these articles will be widely read and useful to scholars and practitioners in both psychology and law.

Video Abstract

Read the transcript

Watch the video on Vimeo

© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Lauren Hilger and Catherine MacKenzie at Taylor and Francis, and Nathan Victoria, Executive Director at the Society for Personality Assessment for their support and assistance with this Special Issue.

The two editors who also appear as co-authors on articles published in this special issue (Martin Sellbom and Corine de Ruiter) were not involved in the peer-review or editorial processes for their articles: Tess Neal handled the peer-review process for the MCMI-IV/MACI-II article with Virgil Zeigler-Hill who served as Special Editor-in-Chief, and Martin Sellbom handled the peer-review and editorial processes for the Rorschach/R-PAS article. Martin Sellbom is a paid consultant to the University of Minnesota Press, publisher of the MMPI and MPQ instruments. He receives continuous grant funding from the publisher to support his MMPI and MPQ research. Corine de Ruiter does not have any financial interests in the HCR-20, but has been involved in the translation of versions 2 and 3 of the HCR-20 into the Dutch language.