PSYU3332 Projective Techniques Flashcards
What is a projective technique?
Require the client to respond to ambiguous stimuli, assuming that the client will project their characteristic thoughts, feelings, etc onto the material.
Measures
- perception: what the person responds to
- interpretation: how the person responds
Follows an idiographic framework (looks at unique aspects rather than common)
Frequency of projective technique use
Top 2 personality measures are self-report inventories.
Rorschach is the most popular projective technique - used by half the practicing psychologists in the USA and Canada.
This would be a lot less in Australia.
Characteristics of a projective technique:
- Stimuli are vague or ambiguous
- Use of unstructured task
- use diagnosed testing procedures
- disguised testing procedures (i.e. not as high face validity as self-report)
- characterised by a global approach to the assessment of personality (a holistic image, not traits)
- effective in revealing ‘covert’ or ‘unconscious’ aspects of personality
What are the perceived advantages of projective techniques?
- has the capacity to bypass or circumvent the conscious defense of respondents - supposedly less open to socially desirable responding or faking
- capacity to allow clinicians privileged access to important psychological information of which respondents are unaware
What are the types of projective techniques?
Inkblot test –> Rorschach
Pictorial techniques: Thematic Apperception Test
Verbal techniques: Word association tests and Sentence Completion
Performance Techniques: Draw-a-Person test, Play Techniques and Toy Test
Outline The Rorschach
10 Symmetrical inkblots on separate cards (5 black and white, 2 red, 3 pastel shades).
Association phase: the cards are shown to the person taking the test and the giver recalls verbatim what the client says
Inquiry: the person is instructed to elicit why the client responded in the way they did
Takes an hour
Outline the scoring systems for the Rorschach
There are a variety of scoring and interpretation systems for the Rorschach (no one standard)
- S.Beck: A perceptual cognitive process –> focused on the responses
- Klopfer: phenomenological approach - where responses were seen as fantasies
Scoring categories in common were:
- Location: where in the inkblot the client found the response
- Determinants: what features of the blot determined the response
- Content: what the individual saw (human vs animal)
- Popular responses (common vs rare response)
Exner’s Comprehensive System - Criticising the Rorschach
Exner criticised the disparate approaches to the Rorschach
- advocated standardized administration, scoring and interpretation
- emphasis on the structural variables
- provides normative data for US adults and children, as well as reference data for psychiatric samples
Criticising the Rorschach
Norms
- While ECS provides normative data - it makes normative adults appear maladjusted, and as insufficient representation of minorities (over pathologizing)
Reliability
The most important is inter-rater reliability: because there is subjectivity involved in interpreting responses.
- Exner included no categories in which interscorer reliability was less than .85
- Test retest reliability had .3 - .9, but was only calculated for 40 of variables.
Validity
- most problematic because of different scoring and interpretation systems
- found that 40 variables had good-escellent support for their validity, while 13 had little of no support
- few validity studies have been done
Thematic Apperception Test outline
Another of the most commonly used projective tests
Pictorial technique: stimuli are presented to the respondent as pictures
- involves using 20 out of 31 stimuli cards
- involves 2 1 hour sessions with 10 cards in each session
- respondents construct a story- what lead up to the scene, what the characters are thinking / feeling
Interpreting the TAT
Content analysis:
- hero (person taking the test is assumed to be the hero in the stories - i.e. projecting)
- needs (thoughts trying to satisfy unsatisfying situations)
- press (stressor)
Wide diversity of scoring and administration
There is some normative information available
- the most frequent response characteristics
- the way the card is perceived
- themes
- roles
- emotional tones
- speed of responses
- length of story
Evaluating the TAT
- Non-personality variables can influence the stories told (personal variables - gender, social class -_> situational variables)
Interpreting themes is confounded by fantasy and inhibition - so validity is difficult to establish.
Interpreters tend to overpathologize.
Need based scoring systems:
- reliability: interscore reliability is from .8 - .9!
- but internal consistency rarely exceeds .3-.4
- test-retest reliability over intervals of several weeks is generally in the .30 range
Validity:
- construct validity: correlation of TAT to self-report achievement indexes had a correlation of .09
Sentence Completion Tests
Observing attitudes, motives and conflicts rather than the general structure of personality.
- Respondents are provided with the opening part of a sentence (stem) and are asked to complete it –> this allows for a wide variety of possible completions
Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank
Measures personal adjustment or emotional stability.
Has 40 sentence stems
Each completion is rated on a 7 point scale.
Reliability:
- Test restest reliability: .82 over a 1-2 week period, and .7 over 6 months.
- Scorer: .72-.99
- Coefficient alpha: .69
Validity:
little evidence available
Draw a Person Test
These have in common:
- asking the respondent to draw one or more people
- administered and scored relatively quickly
Types:
- Machover: A sign approach - assumption is that the person draws the human figure how they view themselves
- Koppitz: global approach: looks at the relative size of the drawing, the omission of items, etc - maladjustment score (indicator of emotional instability)
