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Projective Tests
Projective Tests
Projective Tests
The Projective Hypothesis
•The projective hypothesis (Lawrence Frank, 1939): When people try to
understand vague or ambiguous unstructured stimuli, the interpretation
they produce reflects their needs, feelings, experience, prior
conditioning, thought processes
–Shakespeare, Hamlet, II.ii: "Nothing is either good or bad, but
thinking makes it so."
Projective Tests
The Problem
•The difficulty is answering: Which particular ' needs, feelings,
experience, prior conditioning, thought processes' are reflected?
–projective tests can (by their own claim) draw equally upon the
imagined and real, the conscious and unconscious, the recent and
old, the important and the trivial, the revealing and the obvious
–Much room for interpretation is left given to the tester, making test
validation almost impossible
•These tests flourished more in the psychoanalytical era, 1940-1960
Projective Tests
The Rorschach Inkblot Test
•The Rorschach Inkblot Test is the most commonly used
projective test
–In a 1971 survey of test usage, it was used in 91% of
251 clinical settings survey
–It is one of the most widely used tests that exists
–It is widely cited in research
Projective Tests
History
•The earliest use of inkblots as projective surfaces was J.
Kerner's (1857)
–He was the first to claim that some people make
idiosyncratic or revealing interpretations
•In 1896, Alfred Binet suggested that inkblots might be
used to assess personality (not psychopathology)
–Some work was done on this suggestion
–the first response set was published by G. M. Whipple
(1910)
Projective Tests
History
•Herman Rorschach, a Swiss
psychiatrist, was the first to suggest
(1911) the use of inkblot responses as a
diagnostic instrument
–In 1921 he published his book on
the test, Psychodiagnostik (and
soon thereafter died, age 38)
