Marital MMPI characteristics: a test of Arnold's signs.

Investigated the usefulness of Arnold's Signs (certain MMPI personality characteristics) in examining marital discord among three clinical groups of married couples (N = 72). Couples who were parents of children brought to a mental health facility, couples who were seeking marital counseling, and couples in the process of divorce. While it was predicted that the divorcing group would reveal the most amount of discord, results revealed that the counseling group was consistently higher on all of the signs that reached significance. Possible explanations and recommendations for the use of Arnold's Signs are made.