What is the SMILE test and how does it help to assess a person’s mental state?

Psychologist-consultant, ORCT-therapist and expert of the online school of psychological professions “Psychodemia”

“The SMILE test is used in personnel selection, in forensic examination and scientific research – it is a voluminous and multifaceted questionnaire that can reflect the features of behavior, emotional state, level of social adaptation of a person, as well as determine how much of his answers are true. So how does this text work, what are its advantages and disadvantages?”

What is the SMILE

SMIL (standardized multifactor method of personality research) is a widespread technique for determining the individual characteristics of a person’s personality, as well as analyzing his mental state.

Answers to the questions contained in it allow you to get an idea of a person’s habits, his reactions in various life situations, the level of his self-esteem and peculiarities of motivation in work and life. And also to analyze the mood of the questioned person and the current psychological state.

History of the development of the SMILE methodology

Today, the SMIL test is one of the most studied and well-known psychodiagnostic techniques, which is used by psychologists, hr-specialists and sociologists.

However, initially the test was developed exclusively for differentiated diagnosis of mental illnesses. The basis of the modern SMILE test is the MMPI methodology, developed in 1941 in Minnesota in a psychiatric clinic under the guidance of psychologist S. Hathaway and psychiatrist J. McKinley.

Initially, the testing included 550 questions. The format of the questionnaire was also unusual: the subject was offered a set of cards with various statements, which had to be placed in three boxes labeled “true,” “false,” and “can’t say.” This form of work was inconvenient because it implied an exclusively individual testing format.

In the future, the statements were recorded in a booklet, which the test taker received together with a form for recording answers. And the number of questions increased to 566.

In the 1960s, work began on adapting the Russian-language version of the methodology. The first version was proposed by F. B. Berezin and M. P. Miroshnikov and consisted of 384 questions.

The modern version was developed by L. N. Sobchik at the V. P. Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. V. P. Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. Unlike the original, it does not have a pronounced clinical orientation (although the possibility to draw conclusions about the psychopathology of the subject is preserved). The SMILE, which we use today, is usually used to study psychological features of personality, not to diagnose mental illnesses.

What is the methodology of the test?

The SMIL test contains from 377 to 566 questions (in different variations), which relate to life habits, mood and well-being, the attitude of the test subject to various life situations, behavior, his social interactions, the level of social adaptation and stress resistance. Time is given for taking the test – from 30 minutes to two hours.

The task of the examinee is to answer the questions, choosing one of three options:

• “true” – in a situation when he/she agrees with the statement;
• “wrong” – when he/she does not agree with the statement;
• “don’t know” – if he/she cannot answer accurately, does not understand the question or finds it difficult to answer.

The test in Russian adaptation exists in two versions – female and male. The main differences between them are in the wording (“slept well”/”slept well”), as well as in the interpretation of results on the “femininity”/”masculinity” scales. All responses are analyzed on 10 basic and four evaluative scales.

The main scales of SMILE testing are:

1. the scale of “neurotic overcontrol” helps to determine how anxious a person is about his physical health, whether he has a tendency to hypochondria.

2. the “pessimism” scale assesses the presence or absence of depressive symptoms in the interviewee, as well as the degree of their severity.

3. the scale of “emotional lability” determines the degree of expression of a person’s emotional reaction when faced with a pronounced stress.

4. the scale of “impulsiveness” allows to reveal people who have an active life position and high search activity. High values on this scale indicate possible unreasonable aggressiveness and rebelliousness. They can also become the basis for referring the questionnaire taker to a psychologist for additional diagnostics.

5. The scale of “masculinity-femininity” allows to estimate how much the behavior of the interviewee corresponds to the existing gender stereotypes.

6. The scale of “rigidity” helps to determine how much the personality is inclined to paranoid states – trusts others or is in a state of constant distrust and suspicion of people and the world.

7. The “anxiety” scale helps to assess the level of anxiety in the interviewee: analyze the presence of possible anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc.

8. The scale of “individualism” helps to assess the expression of schizoid personality traits, namely to identify the tendency to withdraw into oneself, to establish possible autism, alienation in communication.

9. The scale of “optimism” makes it possible to assess the expected level of the subject’s self-esteem, as well as his decision-making strategies and social interactions with others.

10. The scale of “introversion” makes it possible to determine the extraversion and introversion of the interviewee, the degree of his/her orientation towards his/her inner world and personal experiences.

Assessment scales of SMILE testing

These are control scales that allow to evaluate the reliability and honesty of the test taker’s answers:

1. the Lie Scale allows you to draw conclusions about how sincerely the person answered the questions.

2. The validity scale allows excluding the possibility that the test taker selects options at random without analyzing the statements.

3. the correction scale allows taking into account the peculiarities of psychological defenses of some interviewees, which make them answer questions in such a way as to create a more favorable opinion about themselves, and not in the way they actually think.

4. the “?” scale records the number of answers to which a person answered “don’t know”. Electronic versions of the SMIL test also contain attentiveness questions to eliminate “automatic” testing.

How the SMIL test is used today

The methodology is a universal tool that allows you to make a psychological portrait of a person, to identify adaptive and maladaptive sides of personality, prevailing emotional states and even to identify signs of emotional burnout, so it has a wide range of applications.

Personnel selection

Modern employers increasingly pay attention not only to the professional competencies and education of the future employee, but also to his psychological stability and the level of development of emotional intelligence. Therefore, it is not enough to check the diploma of graduation and information about work experience.

The SMILE test allows assessing the level of emotional intelligence of a future employee, so it is in demand for selecting candidates for positions that require a high level of emotional stability.

In particular, it is used in law enforcement agencies, civil service, public organizations, athletes. There is also a practice of using the test for admission to military service, including within the framework of mobilization.

The SMILE is extremely informative within the framework of career guidance activities, as, in particular, it can give a fairly comprehensive picture of professional capabilities and limitations of a job candidate.

Clinical assessment

Clinical health professionals use the SMILE to diagnose mental disorders. Diagnostic results are relevant when a patient is admitted to a hospital, as well as when drawing up a treatment plan.

In this regard, the methodology helps to identify the presence of possible pathopsychopathological features and the degree of their severity.

Forensic medical examination

In legal practice, the use of SMIL helps in assessing the mental state of participants in criminal proceedings (in particular, it helps to identify signs of deviant behavior).

Scientific research

Researchers often turn to the SMILE methodology in order to analyze the personality traits of subjects and to establish the relationship of these traits with various factors. Therefore, the test is used as a methodological basis for some psychological studies.

In private psychological practice, the SMILE test is rarely used. The reason is that the test is voluminous and requires a lot of time and resource to pass. The specificity of modern private psychotherapy is the following: many clients are not ready to spend a whole session on filling out and analyzing the test.

Therefore, specialists make a choice in favor of replacing SMILE testing with diagnostic methods that require less time. For example, narrowly focused questionnaires and scales (Beck Depression Scale, Hamilton Anxiety Scale), which take less time to administer and collect information on the specific request of an individual client.

Advantages of SMILE

1. thanks to the presence of a number of evaluation scales, the specialist can trace situations of incorrect passing of the technique by the test subject: to reveal lying, filling in “on automatic”, the desire of the questionnaire to show the best results when taking the test.

On the one hand, this helps to trace tests filled out with irregularities, on the other hand, it provides information for additional analysis of the test taker’s personality.

2. The SMIL is fully adapted, validated and tested in Russia, which confirms its reliability and accuracy. 3.

3. the methodology allows to carry out a complex analysis of a person’s personality traits, which makes it possible to draw a general picture of his/her peculiarities. Narrowly focused tests (to determine depressive states, anxiety) do not provide such a result.

4. Strongly exaggerated test results may provide grounds for additional diagnostics of the test subject in order to identify significant psychopathologies in him/her.

Based on the diagnostic results, the subject may be advised to contact a psychological health specialist for additional examination or psychological assistance.

5. The methodology has a very wide range of possible applications in various spheres.

Disadvantages of SMILE

1. Passing this test requires a lot of time and effort due to the large number of questions included in it.

Of course, this disadvantage is somewhat offset by the amount of information for analysis that we get as a result. However, at the same time it makes it less attractive and convenient for use by psychologists in private practice.

2. Only a specialist with special skills and qualifications can conduct a full-fledged analysis of the results.

HR-specialists can organize testing, but deciphering the results and subsequent diagnostics is a job that requires specialized knowledge, and should be done by a qualified psychotherapist specially trained to interpret the results.

3. a small number of Russian-language sources that allow specialists to master the interpretation of SMILE results. There are many more studies and materials with the necessary information available in English, while only a few books with very concise descriptions have been translated into Russian.

This makes it difficult for Russian psychologists to learn how to work with this psychodiagnostic technique.

4. It is very difficult to analyze the test results manually because of its large volume and high risk of random errors that can distort the final result.

At the same time, machine processing of the results does not yet provide a sufficiently high quality interpretation, as the variability of interpretation is too high.

The future of SMIL

To date, the SMILE is one of the most studied psychodiagnostic techniques. During its existence, the test has undergone a large number of modifications. For example, L. N. Sobchik not only adapted the original American version of the MMPI test for use in Russian, but also did a tremendous job of validating the methodology and developing its own diagnostic elements.

According to L. N. Sobchik’s official commentary dated 09.05.2019, interim validity checks of the SMIL are conducted regularly, with a frequency of once every five to seven years on broad groups of subjects (for example, in 2016-2018 their number amounted to a sample of 1800 people).

The value of SMIL is that the test allows not just to analyze individual features of a person, but gives the opportunity to make a full psychological portrait of the person and assess the current mental state.

The focus of the Russian modification is not on clinical diagnosis (as in the original American version), but on the analysis of personality traits in general, which makes it possible to apply the SMIL in practice more widely.

One of the important tasks, the solution of which will allow the methodology to be used more effectively in practice, is to work on the creation of a database of Russian-language methodological recommendations for deciphering and interpreting SMIL tests.