Feigning post-traumatic stress disorder on the PAI

multiscale personality inventories have been used to detect dissimulation o f PTSD. The Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI) is a self-report invento ry which has validity indicators that may be used to detect dishonest or bi ased self-report. The accuracy of these validity indicators was tested by c omparing non-traumatized individuals instructed to fake PTSD with patients diagnosed as having PTSD and normal controls. Twenty-five individuals compl eted the PAI with the instruction to feign PTSD. The PAI results of these p articipants were compared to a cohort of 19 patients diagnosed as suffering from PTSD and 21 controls. Eleven of the 25 individuals instructed to fake PTSD on the PAI produced a profile consistent with this diagnosis. However , more than half of the faked profiles were correctly identified as feigned by the validity indicators. Specificity of the validity indicators was ver y high. The results of this study indicate that the PAI can be one useful s ource of information for the clinician when assessing for the possible dist ortion of PTSD symptoms. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.