The feasibility of completely automating the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) was tested, and item response latencies were compared with other MMPI item characteristics. A total of 26 scales were successfully scored automatically for 165 subjects. The program also typed a Mayo Clinic interpretive report on a computer terminal, seconds after the subjects had completed the MMPI. For the entire MMPI item pool, separate stepwise regression analysis for males and females indicated that the number of characters in an item accounted for 47% to 58% of the latency variance. Item ambiguity, social desirability, and social desirability-dispersion accounted for only 3% to 8% of the variance. In a replication experiment the results were almost identical. Therefore, except for subsets of personality items like the critical items, latency may not have the psychological or clinical significance often attributed to that variable. (Author/JY)