This investigation examined the personality characteristics of unincarcerated street addicts as compared with two groups of prisoners: those admitting a history of heroin addiction and inmates who had never experimented significantly with opium derivatives. Although the three groups did not differ on such variables as age, education, or level of intellectual functioning and were markedly antisocial as measured by felony convictions and test indices, unincarcerated heroin addicts showed significantly more personality deviance on the MMPI than either prisoner addicts or nonaddict prisoners.
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