Assessing antisocial characteristics in females: Can the Bender-Gestalt test provide clinically meaningful information?

The Bender-Gestalt test is one of the most widely used psychological instruments in clinical practice, especially for inferring psychological and behavioral characteristics, but lacks empirical data supporting some of the specific projective hypotheses set forth by clinicians (e.g., Lerner, 1972). The present study examined the validity of seven Bender distortions that were hypothesized to measure antisocial characteristics and compared them to Scale 4 on the MMPI. The results generally revealed that while four Bender distortions showed moderate discriminative validity, they did not add incrementally to Scale 4, and the diagnostic accuracy for the Bender distortions was poor. Clinicians should be cautious about using them to measure antisocial characteristics.