Psychological

Assessment
Projective Personality Tests

Projective Tests: Essential

Features

Individuals must impose their own structure

which is meaningful
Stimulus material is unstructured
Indirect (disguised) method
Freedom of response
Interpretation is broad

Projective Tests

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Thematic Apperception Test

Rorschach Inkblot Test

Hermann Rorschach (18841922)

Nicknamed Kleck or
inkblot
Talented art student who
decided to study science
Dream convinced him of
relationship between
perception and unconscious
1921 published
Psychodiagnostik
Died in 1922

Rorschach
Inkblot
Test

Rorschach: Historical
5 Scoring Systems
Adopted by 5 American psychologists with
very different theoretical backgrounds
Shared common features (same blots were
used, reponse phase followed by inquiry)
5 different systems of administration, scoring
and interpretation emerged
Two most popular (Beck, Klopf)

Rorschach: Validity and

Reliability
Poor psychometric reputation:
Lack of standardized ruls for administration
and scoring
Poor inter-rater reliability
Lack of adequate norms
Unknown or weak validity

Rorschach: Contemporary
Use

John Exner
Established Rorschach Research Foundation
in 1986
Integrated five scoring and interpretation
systems
Established empirical support for new system
Provide a center for training

Contemporary Use:
Administration
Association Phase
What might this be?

Present all the cards

Record response verbatim
Note location of response

Inquiry Phase
I want you to help me see what
you saw. Im going to read
what you said, and then I
want you to show me where
on the blot you saw it and
what there is there that
makes it look like that so
that I can see it too. Id like
to see it just like you did, so
help me now.

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A psychometrically sound test?

An in-class exercise

Contemporary Use: Training

Exner workshops on administration, scoring,

and interpretation

Contemporary Use: Scoring

Exner scoring system: The Structural Summary
Location
Location (W, D, Dd)
Use of white space (S)
Determinants
Form (good, poor, bad quality)
Movement (active and passive)
Color
Texture
Shading

Contemporary Use:
Interpretation
Example: F+% = F+ & Fo/Total F
This variable concerns the conventional use of
contour in the pure F responses.
See example of Structural Summary:
S-Constellation (suicide constellation)

Rorschach Inkblot Test

A psychometrically sound test?

Particularly useful in assessing thought
processes

Thematic Apperception Test

(TAT)

Developed by Henry Murray and colleagues

at Harvard Psychological Clinic
31 TAT cards depicting people in a variety of
ambiguous situations (one blank card)
Examinee is asked to create a story about
each picture

TAT: Administration

Now I want you to make up a story about

each of these pictures. Tell me who the
people are, what they are doing, what they
are thinking or feeling, what led up to the
scene, and how it will turn out.

TAT: Scoring/Interpretation

Content analysis of themes that emerge from

the stories

TAT: Psychometric Critique

Selection of cards is not standardized

Lack of norms
Clinicians rely on qualitative impressions

Thematic Apperception Test

Used to assess:
Locus of problems
Nature of needs
Quality of interpersonal relationships