Projective Personality Tests

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Projective Personality Tests
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Projective Personality Tests

• Based on PROJECTIVE HYPOTHESIS
• when people attempt to understand an ambiguous or
  vague stimulus their interpretation of that
  stimulus relfect their needs, feelings,
  experiences, prior conditioning, thought
  processes
• Ambiguous stimuli that have been used include
• Ink blots (Rorschach)
• Ambiguous pictures (Thematic Apperception Test)
• Sentence stems

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Popularity of Projective Tests
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The Rorschach Inkblot Test

• use of inkblots to assess personality functioning
  proposed by Binet in 1916
• Rorschach was first person to use them to
  identify psychological disorders
• began his inverstigations around 1911
• Psychodiagnostik 1921
• died in 1922 at age of 36

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History of the Test

• initially unenthusiastic response to book
• David Levy brought test to US from Europe
• his student, Samuel J. Beck, wrote a no. of books
  about the test, helped popularize it until his
  death in 1980
• others who popularized it were Marguerite Hertz,
  Bruno Klopfer, Zygmunt Piotrowski David
  Rapaport
• became extremely popular
• WLU library holds about 20 books on Rorschach
• there is an annual international conference just
  on the Rorschach

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Test Stimuli

• inkblots formed by dropping ink on piece of paper
  folding it
• Rorschach selected 10 from thousands of inkblots
  he experimented with
• five black gray
• 2 black, grey red
• 3 different colours

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Administration of Test

• examiner hands card to subjects asks what
  might this be
• examiner keeps a verbatim record of responses to
  each card, reaction time duration of responses,
  position in which cards are held, spontaneous
  remarks, emotional expressions
• each card administered twice
• free association
• inquiry
• during inquiry, tester attempts to ascertain what
  in the inkblot made person see what he/she saw

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What might this be?
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Scoring
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Scoring Systems

• Content analysis
• Exners scoring system

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Reliability Validity

• Reliability using Exners scoring system is
  reasonably high (.61 to .74), but many do not
  consider this to be adequate
• Poor as a diagnostic tool no relationship with
• psychopathology
• conduct disorder
• antisocial personality
• depression
• PTSD
• anxiety disorder
• antisocial personality etc., etc., etc.

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The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

• introduced by Christiana Morgan Henry Murray in
  1935 as a method to explore unconscious thoughts
  and fantasies
• based on Murrays theory of needs
• test material administered to any one subject
  consists of 10 or 12 cards, chosen from 31
  available (1 of these being blank)

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Administration Procedure

• I am going to show you some pictures. I want you
  to tell me a story about each picture. Tell me
  what led up to the story, what is happening, what
  the characters are thinking and feeling, and what
  the outcome will be

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Scoring

• HERO
• character with whom subject seems to have
  identified
• traits of hero superiority, intelligence,
  loneliness
• NEEDS of the hero
• using Murrays formulation includes
  achievement, agression, nurturance
• scored on an intensity scale from one to five
• PRESS (environmental forces that interfere with
  or facilitate satisfaction of various needs)
• e.g., aggression, in which heros property or
  possessions are destroyed dominance, where hero
  is exposed to commands rejection, where hero is
  rejected, ignored

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Scoring (continued)

• OUTCOMES
• amount of hardship, frustration experienced
• degree of success, failure
• usually inferred from the way in which
  respondents wind up their stories
• THEMES
• interplay of the heros needs, press, and
  unsuccessful or successful resolution of
  conflicts, constitute a theme
• they represent need-press combinations
• when reviewing totality of response, question is
  what issues, conflicts, or dilemmas are of the
  greatest concern to the respondent?

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Reliability Validity

• mixed results for reliability and validity
• better for specific scoring protocols, such as
  achievement motivation

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Other Projective Tests

• Blacky Pictures
• Rosenzweig Picture Frustration Test
• Draw-a-Person Test
• Word Association Test
• Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank