Starke R. Hathaway (August 22, 1903 – July 4, 1984) was an American psychologist who co-authored the psychological assessment known as the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI).
During his time there, he was also influenced by outstanding psychologists via stimulating debates about psychological matters and approaches, such as Karl Lashley, B. F. Skinner, Edna Heidbreder, and Donald G. Paterson.
The concurrent training of psychologists and psychiatrists was with little conflict as Hathaway's approach incorporated rigorous quantification to mental health based on empirical principles.
[4] Hathaway was credited with designing an ideal psychiatric facility and building amplification equipment to measure neuromuscular potentials for research conducted at the hospital, the psychogalvanometer.
[2] Although he did not view himself as a promoter of the MMPI and did not accept invitations to conduct workshops or hold lectures, he was much more interested in extending the use of the instrument to other cultures and making it available in other languages.
Further, throughout his time at UMN, Hathaway trained several influential graduate students, including Paul E. Meehl, Harrison G. Gough, W. Grant Dahlstrom, and Howard Hunt.
[5] The MMPI was developed specifically with an empirical criterion approach to operationalize clinical phenomena derived by selecting items known to be endorsed by patients with certain pathologies.
Acceptance of the test grew steadily (Dahlstrom, 1992) until by the late 1950s, the MMPI had become the most widely used objective measure of personality and psychopathology, and the subject of both basic and applied research.
[2] In addition to extensive use in clinics and hospitals, the test was being administered to patients in general medical settings, to inmates in correctional facilities, to military personnel, and to candidates for positions involving high stress and responsibility for public safety.
The control group for its original testing consisted of a very small number of individuals, mostly young, white, and married people from rural Midwestern geographic areas.
[13][14] The initial scales included: hypochondriasis (Hp), depression (D), hysteria (Hy), psychopathic deviate (Pd), paranoia (Pa), psychasthenia (Ps), schizophrenia (Sc), mania (Ma).
Shortly after the MMPI was published, research began to be conducted on its use with adolescents, and in the mid-50s Hathaway and Monachesi, intending to expand use of the test by employing it to predict delinquency among adolescents, conducted a series of longitudinal studies and reported their findings in a book, organizing coded profiles for juveniles based on adult atlas of profiles [15][11][16][17] Consistent with his life-long interests and background, Hathaway's early work focused on developing mechanical and electrical devices to measure psychological processes.
Its content and definitions are determined by its raison d'etre; namely, by the need felt by psychologists working in the fields of general, clinical, and animal psychology for an enriched vocabulary and for a simplified by fundamentally workable grounding in the allied biological sciences.
[2] Along with his mechanical proclivities, Hathaway was an avid fisherman and he spent a great deal of time at his cabin in northern Minnesota, fishing for walleyes.
Well for me there is a kaleidoscopic glitter of images and memories, all unforgettable: his eyes, kindly and penetrating; the unsettling frequency of his mind-reading in clinical settings; his absent-minded combing of a brain model as he paced and lectured in physiological psychology, with a scrap of comb rescued from the floor; unmatched shoes cocked uncomfortably on a VA desk-top; his quiet encouragement of an uncertain student, and his skillful reshaping of a brash one; white duck trousers made greasy from crawling under a car just before the lecture; incisive cuts through words to the essence of things.
[2]With the collaboration of J. C. McKinley, Hathaway brought a desperately needed personality assessment that provided and objective portrayal of clinical symptoms and problems.
Although Hathaway was not the first psychologist to address the impact of response bias on the quality of data obtained, his work with Paul Meehl on the development of the L, F, and K scales represented a major contribution to the science of personality assessment.
[2][19] On the occasion honoring Hathaway's contribution in 1969, Harry Harlow wrote: I have always been pleased by the fact that it took an experimental-physiological psychologist to create the most meritorious personality test ever achieved.
[19] Specifically, he let patterns, or profile types, of the MMPI that differed from the general population serve as identifiers of traits and clinical symptoms as well as predictors of behavior.
[2]Hathaway had expressed disappointment with what he saw as a lack of progress in the field, and openly challenged researchers and academics to strive for innovation and to improve personality assessment through empirical iterative processes.