Yes, but in that context gaming is known and accounted for. My definition of gaming was manipulation without the proctor or evaluation showing any statistically significant deviation, which is virtually impossible on modern personality tests. The "gaming" becomes transparent and used to score the candidate, if it's present at all.
No, it can certainly be gamed. It's just so hard without prior knowledge and preparation as to be statistically negligent. This is also why I said you should avoid giving the same test twice. But a single, cold test administration should be very difficult to game.
You should also read upthread, what the actual psychologist said. It clarified my comment really well.
The following are very obviously the "correct" true or false answers to these questions from the MMPI-2:
T * My mother is a good woman.
F * Evil spirits possess me at times.
F * There seems to be a lump in my throat much of the time.
T * At times I feel like swearing.
T * My hands and feet are usually warm enough.
F * Ghosts or spirits can influence people for good or bad.
F * Someone has been trying to poison me.
F * Everything tastes the same.
F * Someone has been trying to rob me.
F * Bad words, often terrible words, come into my mind
and I cannot get rid of them.
F * Often I feel as if there is a tight band around my head.
F * Peculiar odors come to me at times.
F * My soul sometimes leaves my body.
F * When a man is with a woman he is usually thinking
about things related to her sex.
F * I often feel as if things are not real.
F * Someone has it in for me.
F * My neck spots with red often.
T * Once in awhile I laugh at a dirty joke.
F * I hear strange things when I am alone.
F * In walking I am very careful to step over sidewalk cracks.
F * At one or more times in my life, I felt that someone
was making me do things by hypnotizing me.
I cut out a few because I couldn't see how true or false mattered.
Those are the obvious ones. I've taken the MMPI. There's a lot more than just those. None of these are the seemingly innocuous ones I was talking about.
Again, I'll reiterate: can they be gamed? Yes. Is it likely? Emphatically, no.
Okay, I didn't know you've taken the MMPI, so fair enough. I would be surprised if answers to the innocuous questions were that important though; they strike me more as luring you into a sense of complacency and so that you end up answering honestly when it comes to the important ones.
