Class 1 Flashcards
Rorschach Inkblot Method
Serves a central role in personality assessment
It has a lot history in psychology
Topic of an abundance of empirical research - as well as confounding myths
Meets Supreme Court Daubert validity standards and is admissible in court
It is a very powerful technique but is exceedingly complex
Ethical Considerations
Don’t test people you don’t know
Administration
Write responses and leave space between (2 inches)
Make sure all cards are in order (I on top, X on bottom)
Directions for Administration
“It is just a series of ink blots that you will see and I want you to write down what they look like to you. Try to give 2 responses or maybe 3 each card.”
If you have only 1 response to a card, try to give at least one more. If you have 4 responses to a card, stop with that.
Turn Card I Over to View It
“What might this be?”
Go through the cards in order at your own pace, just writing down what you see.
Then leave space between each response.
Clarification
“Now we are going to start the final step. While looking back at the cards, I want you to write in the space you left below each response.
- What about the inkblot make it look like that to you?
- Then note on the location sheet where you saw what you saw.
Does that make sense?”
Cognitive Perceptual Task
Rorschach more interested in perception or apperception than in content
He saw inkblots as a perceptual task and that characteristics of the individual showed through in the solutions applied
Remember
Rorschach had viewed the test as a cognitive perceptual task, not primarily content based.
Why the Rorschach?
The task provides a standardized, in vivo sample of perceptual and verbal problem-solving behavior.
Inkblots were artistically created and enhanced, carefully selected, and pilot-tested.
Stimuli are structured to provide multiple suggestive but incomplete or imperfect perceptual likenesses that form competing visual images
Schafter continued Rapaport’s work in Psychoanalytic Interpretation of the Rorschach Testing, 1954
1940’s and 1950’s were strongly psychoanalytic in the U.S. (and thus content oriented)
By 1960, 5 scoring systems
- Samuel Beck (empirical)
- Bruno Klopfer (psychoanalytic)
- Marguerite Hertz (empirical)
- Zygmund Piatrowski (psychoanalytic)
- David Rapaport, Merton Gill, Roy Schafer
PLUS many used only content interpretation with no systems at all
But John Exner was not finished
Goal was to compare the “sturdiness and efficacy” of the 5 systems
He believed all the systems had merit if used properly, but the flaws could overshadow the merit
The Comprehensive System
1974 John Exner published the first volume
No an x-ray of the mind but rather a procedure that provokes many of the psychological operations of the subject
Returned to cognitive perceptual test, as Hermann Rorschach had intended it
Reflecting inner organization:
We cannot help but lay down our inner organization in how we perceive and interpret the world (conditioning history, schema, organizing principles, templates)
Resurgence of Rorschach
Standardized, empirically validated results brought credibility
Sufficient to meet criteria to be admissible in court
Revisions were been made as studies continued
Criticisms of the Rorschach
Any scientific endeavor needs criticism (hopefully honest)
Areas of seemingly valid criticism and what was done to address them:
- Lack of Good Norms
- Overpathologizes
- Low Inter-rater Reliability (better graduate training)
- Lack of Relationship to Diagnoses:
BUT Rorschach is not intended to diagnose.
Must consider this indicator by indicator, not rule on the method as a whole
Replication is always an issue in research (but is not the focus of most research)
Better training
- Lack of Incremental Validity
Depends on the assessment –add it to a protocol wisely
Better training
- The problem of R (possible solutions italicized)
New Directions
Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erdberg, Erard developed a new system called the Rorschach Performance Assessment System (RPAS) that addresses many of the criticisms
And allows the system to be responsive to new research
RPAS
We will be learning the RPAS as our nomothetic guide
It has emerged over the last 15 years and is built on Exner’s Comprehensive System (largely a subset)
It is the system most solidly grounded in empirical evidence
It is a system established to evolve with advancing research
It is a user-friendly system (believe it or not!)
R-PAS Manual
Rorschach Performance Assessment System: Administration, Coding, Interpretation, and Technical Manual (2011) Meyer, Viglione, Mihura, Erard, Erdberg (530 pages)
Great start!
