A Meta-Analytic Review of Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory—2nd Edition (MMPI-2) Profile Elevations Following Traumatic Brain Injury

Psychologists often use the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) and, more recently, its successor, the MMPI-2, to assess personality and psychological disturbances following traumatic brain injury (TBI). The present meta-analysis examined the pattern of mean Hedges’ d values on MMPI-2 validity (L, F, K) and clinical (1–4, 6–0) scales in individuals with TBI. Database keyword searches yielded ten studies providing post-TBI MMPI-2 profiles. Studies were required to include a pure TBI sample, individuals who were ≥18 at injury, and means and standard deviations for most MMPI-2 clinical scales. Analyses showed large effects for MMPI-2 scales F, 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8. Using Q statistics, moderating effects were found for TBI severity on scale 7 and for compensation-seeking/litigation status on scales 1, 2, 3, and 7. No significant effects were found for time post-injury. The available information was insufficient to examine the effect of lesion location, pre-injury personality and psychopathology, or time post-injury for samples with differing injury severities on MMPI-2 profiles. Results suggest that individuals with TBI report significant levels of psychopathology that may be moderated by TBI severity and compensation-seeking/litigation status. Discussion includes a literature critique given the meta-analytic findings and implications for future study of personality following TBI.     

The single most polymorphic STR Locus: SE33 performance in U.S. populations

The STR locus SE33 (ACTBP2) located on chromosome 6 (6q14) is arguably the most polymorphic marker examined thus far by the forensic community with a heterozygosity of >0.95 in some populations. Three different primer sets were utilized in this study in order to assess the possibilities of primer binding site mutations. Population variation was measured in 460 U.S. Caucasian, 445 African American, 336 Hispanic, and 202 Asian samples along with mutation rates from almost 400 father–son pairs. In addition, the 10 genomic DNA components in NIST Standard Reference Material SRM 2391b were sequenced and found to exhibit a variety of additional base changes, insertions, and deletions outside of the SE33 repeat region.     

Use of the SIRS in Compensation Cases: An Examination of Its Validity and Generalizability

The Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms (SIRS; Rogers et al., Structured interview of reported symptoms (SIRS) and professional manual, 1992) is a well-validated psychological measure for the assessment of feigned mental disorders (FMD) in clinical, forensic, and correctional settings. Comparatively little work has evaluated its usefulness in compensation and disability contexts. The present study examined SIRS data from 569 individuals undergoing forensic neuropsychiatric examinations for the purposes of workers’ compensation, personal injury, or disability proceedings. Using bootstrapping comparisons, three primary groups were identified: FMD, feigned cognitive impairment (FCI), genuine-both (GEN-Both) that encompasses both genuine disorders (GEN-D) and genuine-cognitive presentation (GEN-C). Consistent with the SIRS main objective, very large effect sizes (M Cohen’s d = 1.94) were observed between FMD and GEN-Both groups. Although not intended for this purpose, moderate to large effect sizes (M d = 1.13) were found between FCI and GEN-Both groups. An important consideration is whether SIRS results are unduly affected by common diagnoses or clinical conditions. Systematic comparisons were performed based on common disorders (major depressive disorder, PTSD, and other anxiety disorders), presence of a cognitive disorder (dementia, amnestic disorder, or cognitive disorder NOS), or intellectual deficits (FSIQ < 80). Generally, the magnitude of differences on the SIRS primary scales was small and nonsignificant, providing evidence of the SIRS generalizability across these diagnostic categories. Finally, the usefulness of the SIRS improbable failure-revised (IF-R) scale was tested as a FCI screen. Although it has potential in ruling out genuine cases, the IF-R should not be used as a feigning screen.

Contradictions in Judicial Support for Capital Punishment in India and Bangladesh: Utilitarian Rationales

India and Bangladesh share a common history, and each has developed somewhat similarly since partition. However, while both countries now have relatively low murder rates, India has seen a decline in the rate of executions, while Bangladesh continues to impose death sentences and carry out executions at a higher rate. There have been challenges to the death penalty in India, restricting its use to exceptional cases. The same has not occurred in Bangladesh. Yet in both countries, systemic flaws in the criminal process are evident. This article draws on two original empirical research projects that explored judges’ opinions on the retention and administration of capital punishment in India and Bangladesh. The data expose justice systems marred by corruption, incompetence, abuses of due process, and arbitrary and inconsistent treatment of defendants from arrest through to conviction and sentencing. It shows that those with the power to sentence to death have little faith in the integrity of the criminal process. Yet, a startling paradox emerges from these studies; despite personal knowledge of its flaws, judges have trust in the death penalty to deter crime and to realise other sentencing aims and feel retention benefits society. This is explained by reference to utilitarian values. Not only did our judges express strongly utilitarian justifications for sentencing people to death, in terms of their erroneous belief in its deterrent effect, but some also articulated utilitarian justifications for misconduct in pre-trial processes, suggesting that it was necessary to break the rules to secure convictions when the system was dysfunctional and ineffective.

     

Presidential Address: “A Thousand Petty Fortresses”: Administrative Burden in U.S. Immigration Policies and Its Consequences

Contradictory elements in U.S. immigration policy, reflecting a long‐time struggle between inclusionary and exclusionary views, have resulted in federal legislation filled with compromises and tradeoffs that, at state and sub‐state levels, play out in unclear interpretations and uneven, highly discretionary administration and enforcement of immigration law and policy. This research describes a tool of discretionary administration—administrative burden—that is increasingly used in enforcing immigration law and policies at state and sub‐state levels and presents a theoretical frame for more fully investigating and addressing its consequences. The application and implications of administrative burden are explored empirically and qualitatively in a case study analysis of an enforcement‐oriented policy change in Texas that denied access to birth certificates for some citizen‐children born to Mexican immigrants. To better understand the potential consequences of this and related policies, interviews with immigrant parents and longitudinal data from a survey of children of immigrants are analyzed to assess both short‐term and later outcomes of children who are denied economic assistance and other benefits under policies that impose barriers to their integration into society. The study findings point to serious, adverse consequences for citizen children of state and sub‐state immigration policies that create administrative burden and perpetuate racial discrimination, while simultaneously diminishing the transparency, fairness, and effectiveness of public administration.     

Liberation movements and stalled democratic transitions: reproducing power in Rwanda and South Africa through productive liminality

The lack of convergence towards liberal democracy in some African countries reflects neither a permanent state of political aberration, nor necessarily a prolonged transitional phase through which countries pass once the “right” conditions are met. Examining the cases of two ruling parties, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) and the African National Congress in South Africa, we develop the concept of productive liminality to explain countries suspended (potentially indefinitely) in a status “betwixt and between” mass violence, authoritarianism, and democracy. On the one hand, their societies are in a liminal status wherein a transition to democracy and socio-economic “revolution” remains forestalled; on the other hand, this liminality is instrumentalized to justify the party’s extraordinary mandate characterized by: (a) an idea of an incomplete project of liberation that the party alone is mandated to fulfil through an authoritarian social contract, and (b) the claim that this unfulfilled revolution is continuously under threat by a coterie of malevolent forces, which the party alone is mandated to identify and appropriately sanction.