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. 

________________________