PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT: PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST [TAT]

•Thematic (adj. having or relating to subjects or a particular subject) Apperception (n. assimilation into the mind of a new concept) Test [TAT] was developed by Henry Murray & Christiana Morgan in 1935. 

•TAT is a little more structured than the Rorschach Inkblot Test.

•Altogether, there are 30 cards; 29 having ambiguous black and white pictures, showing one or more persons, in a variety of situations; and 1 blank card.

•Some of these cards (10) are meant for adult males and females, others (10) are used with boys and girls, and still others (9) are used in some combinations.

•20 cards (19picture cards+ 1 blank card) are appropriate for a subject, although a lesser number of cards (even 5) has also been successfully used.

•The pictures are vague about the events depicted and can be interpreted in several ways. 

METHOD

•The person taking the test is presented these (20) cards, one at a time. The test-taker is asked to construct a story about the people and objects depicted in the picture. 

•The subject is asked to describe:

i) What led up to the situation shown?

ii) What is happening at the moment?

iii) What the people are thinking and feeling?

iv) What the outcome is likely to be?

SCORING & INTERPRETATION

•Psychologists consider many factors in interpreting the stories constructed by the TAT test-takers. 

•These include the kinds of personal relationships involved, the motivations of the characters, and the degree of contact with reality shown by the characters. 

•There are no objective scoring systems for TAT, and its reliability and validity are low when used for diagnostic purposes. 

•Attempts have been made to develop standard procedures for scoring TAT responses.

•The TAT has also been modified for use with children and the aged.

•Uma Chaudhary’s Indian adaptation of TAT is also available.

Nevertheless, TAT is widely used to uncover internal conflicts, dominant drives, interests, and motives. Specific motives include the need for achievement, need for power, the need for intimacy, and problem-solving abilities. 

OTHER PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

Apart from the Rorschach Inkblot Test and the TAT, psychologists use a number of other Projective Techniques to assess human personality. These include: 

1. Rosenzweig’s Picture-Frustration Study (P-F Study), 

2. Word-Association Test, 

3. Sentence-Completion Test, and 

4. Draw- a- Person Test

SENTENCE COMPLETION TEST

•This test makes use of a number of incomplete sentences.

•The starting part of the sentence is first presented and the subject has to provide an ending to the sentence.

•It is held that the type of endings used by the subjects reflect their attitudes, motivation and conflicts. 

•The test provides subjects with several opportunities to reveal their underlying unconscious motivations.

•Interpretations of the responses with this approach can be highly subjective.

•However, some sentence-completion tests, such as the Rotter Incomplete Sentence Blank, provide for more objective scoring.

DRAW-A-PERSON TEST

•It is a simple test in which the subject is asked to draw a person on a sheet of paper.

•A pencil and eraser is provided to facilitate drawing.

•After the completion of the drawing, the subject is generally asked to draw the figure of an opposite sex person.

•Finally, the subject is asked to make a story about the person as if s/he was a character in a novel or a play.

CONCLUSION

•The assessment of personality with the help of projective techniques appears fairly interesting. 

•It helps one to understand unconscious motives, deep-rooted conflicts, and emotional complexes of an individual.

•However, the interpretation of the responses requires sophisticated skills and specialized training.

•There are problems associated with the reliability of scoring and validity of interpretations.

•Nevertheless, the practitioners have found these techniques quite useful in assessing human personality.

Projective Techniques

PERSONALITY ASSESSMENT: PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUE

PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

• Objective tests assume personality as consciously accessible and measure it by self-report questionnaires or personality inventories.

• Projective tests, on the other hand, assume personality as primarily unconscious and assess an individual by how he or she responds to an ambiguous stimulus. 

• Projective techniques are inspired by the Psychoanalytic Theory of Sigmund Freud, which tells that a large part of human behavior is governed by unconscious motives.

• Since direct methods of personality assessment cannot uncover the unconscious part of behavior, they fail to provide a real picture of an individual’s personality.

• Projective Techniques are indirect methods of personality assessment, developed to assess unconscious motives and feelings.

• The theory underlying projective techniques is that when a person is presented with an ambiguous stimulus, such as an inkblot, or a picture that can be interpreted in more than one way, the person will project his/her needs, fears, and values onto the stimulus when asked to describe it.

• These projections (the unconscious transfer of one’s own desires or emotions to another person) are interpreted by experts. 

• A variety of projective techniques have been developed. While the nature of stimuli and responses in these techniques vary enormously, all of them do share the following features:

i) The stimuli are relatively or fully unstructured and poorly defined.

ii) The person being assessed is usually not told about the purpose of assessment and the method of scoring and interpretation.

iv) Each response is considered to reveal a significant aspect of personality.

v) Scoring and interpretation are lengthy and sometimes subjective. 

THE RORSCHACH INKBLOT TEST

• Hermann Rorschach (1814-1922), a Swiss Psychiatrist, who had been fascinated by inkblots (klecks) since childhood, created Rorschach inkblot test in 1921.

• Psychologists use this test to examine a person's personality characteristics and emotional functioning. 

• It has been employed to detect an underlying thought disorder, especially in cases where patients are reluctant to describe their thinking processes openly. 

METHOD

• Ten official inkblots, each printed on a separate white card are shown to the test-taker one at a time.

• Five inkblots are of black ink, two are of black and red ink and three are multicolored, on a white background.

• In the first phase, called performance proper, the test-takers are asked to describe what they see; to note where they see what they originally saw and what makes it look like that.

• In the second phase, called inquiry, the cards are shown a second time, and the psychologist asks specific questions about their earlier answers.

• As the subject is examining the inkblots, the psychologist writes down everything the subject says or does, no matter how trivial. The psychologist notes the test-takers’ gestures, reaction to particular inkblots, and general attitude. 

• Responses can be interpreted in several ways, depending on whether the test-taker reports seeing any movement, human or animal figure, animate or inanimate objects, and partial or whole figures.

USES OF RORSCHACH

• Can detect thought disorders such as schizophrenia and manic depression, that can be detected in other valid and objective ways.

• Not equipped to identify psychiatric conditions.

• Not valid for detecting sexual abuse in children, violence, impulsiveness, criminal behavior.

• Unrepresentative of the general population, and therefore are subject to over-diagnosing psychiatric conditions. 

STANDARDIZATION OF RORSCHACH

• Attempts have been made to standardize the administration, scoring and interpretation of the Rorschach Test. 

• The most successful of these is John Exner’s, Comprehensive System (1993) which claims to lead to improved reliability and validity. 

• There is not universal agreement about the usefulness and validity of Rorschach, even with the Comprehensive System for scoring. 

• Only half of the characteristics had interscorer reliability, making this test overall unreliable and invalid.

• Validity research is generally more supportive of the MMPI than the Rorschach. 

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M. J.Hussain -- The Pedagogue

The world of teaching- learning has always fascinated me and I am thoroughly enjoying it since the last 6 years. I started teaching as a hobby, which grew into a passion and finally became my career.

I have worked at all levels of school teaching and am presently working as a Teacher Educator in a university department. I have been an itinerant lecturer of education and have also been active as a Resource Person for In-service Training Programmes of TGTs, PGTs, and School Headmasters.

For me, the classroom has been a 'fascinating laboratory of life', in which I have kept growing in my ability to understand more about the subjects I teach, more about students and how they learn, and more about myself as a teacher and as an individual.

My chief areas of interest are Teacher Education, Pedagogy of Science, Educational Psychology,and Curriculum Development. In fact, these are the subjects I enjoy teaching. Educational Research and Policy & Planning in Education also interest me.

I develop great enthusiasm for the subjects I teach and strive to communicate in such a way that students are somehow infected with my enthusiasm and are stimulated into learning for themselves. There are times when I face severe setbacks in motivating my students to learn, but I have never failed in doing so! At times, the response that I get from my Students is overwhelming! This is the greatest motivation behind my efforts to evolve as a teacher who is loved and revered by his students.

Although the opportunities I got for learning were not always great, I have found myself always interested in learning; I have had an interest in and respect for diverse ideas. Being a Postgraduate in Botany and Education, I tend to apply scientific method to look into the issues that concern education and society and try to keep myself abreast with policies, issues and latest researches in Education.

I am Cooperative, Compassionate and always open to accept my mistakes [and learn from them]. As regards my weakness, I am very humble and social and at times leave my work incomplete at the cost of helping others.

I love to read literary works [in English, Urdu and Hindi] and Write [Poetry in Urdu and English] in my free times.

I have created this blog with two purposes in mind. First, to create a digital resource on various subjects of education that I teach. Second,to provide an interactive platform for discussing pertinent issues and problems that concern education and society.

All those who are concerned about education and its role in bringing out social change, are welcome on this blog.

Hope I make some sense about the theory and practice of education through the postings on this blog.