PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

1. PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES
LOYOLA COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
TRIVANDRUM
SEMINAR ON PSYCHOMETRY

2.  Projective test is a personality test which is conducted
in psychology. This test is done in order to understand
the stimuli of the person.
 Projective Techniques are indirect and unstructured
methods of investigation which have been developed
by the psychologists and use projection of
respondents for inferring about underline motives,
urges or intentions which cannot be secure through
direct questioning as the respondent either resists to
reveal them or is unable to figure out himself.

3. Cont..
 These techniques are useful in giving
respondents opportunities to express their
attitudes without personal embarrassment.
 These techniques helps the respondents to
project his own attitude and feelings
unconsciously on the subject under study. Thus
Projective Techniques play a important role in
motivational researches or in attitude surveys.

4. Theory about Projective Tests
 1. It maintains conscious and unconscious
constraints:
 The test affirms that an individual has various needs
which can be both conscious and unconscious.
 These needs can be understood using the projective
tests. It is very common to think that these projective
tests can be more on the sides of personality.
 And that is why it mainly handles all the factors of a
natural human behavior on conscious and
unconscious elements.

5. Cont…
 2. It results in spontaneous outcomes:
 The need of the person comes out spontaneously
and there is no editing in these needs.
 It is the actual picture about the thought process
of a person. And that is why these projective tests
represent most spontaneous outcomes of a
human behavior.
 Moreover, it clearly pictures all the needs and
wants of the person in middle of some sort of
emotional roller coaster rides.

6. Cont…
 3. It depends upon non-verbal communication:
 The test does not depend on the verbal details of the
person who is getting tested. The results are
confirmed on the basis of what the person tells
spontaneously while conducting the tests.
 In simpler words, one can definitely understand the
actual personal behavior. Therefore, it is one of the
most non-verbal communication where in which
people present their nonverbal communication and
that might depend upon behavior, reaction and
attitude.

7. Cont…
 4. Motivational barriers:
 This study understands all the results of personality
reactions. And most importantly, all the motivations,
beliefs and attitudes are detectable quickly. And that
is why bringing motivational barriers can increase
the stake of this projective test hypothesis high.

8. Classification
Projective techniques are typically divided into five groups
(Linzey, 1959):
 Associative techniques in which a particular stimulus is
used to elicit the first thing that occurs in the subject’s
mind.
 Completion techniques in which the subject is required to
complete sentences or drawings (sentence completion or
captions in comic-strip callouts).
 Constructive techniques in which the subject is required
to create a drawing, sculpture, or story.
 Choice/ordering techniques in which the subject is
required to choose from a group, or to order a group (of
pictures, sentences, etc.).
 Expressive techniques in which the subject is required to

9. INK BLOT TEST
 is a psychological test in which subjects perceptions
of inkblots are recorded and then analyzed using
psychological interpretation, complex scientifically
derived algorithms, or both. Some psychologists use
this test to examine a persons 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.

10. PURPOSE
 The general goal of the test is to provide data about
cognition and personality variables such as
motivations, response tendencies, cognitive
operations, affectivity, and personal/interpersonal
perceptions. The underlying assumption is that an
individual will class external stimuli based on person-
specific perceptual sets, and including needs, base
motives, conflicts, and that this clustering process is
representative of the process used in real-life
situations

11. HERMANN RORSCHACH
 He was a Swiss
psychiatrist whose
interest included art
and psychoanalysis
particularly the work
of Carl Jung. In 1913,
he published papers
on how analysis of
patients’ artwork could
provide insights to
personality. He died of
peritonitis on 1922 at
the age of 38.

12. INK BLOTS CARDS
 Rorschach consists of ten (10) bilaterally
symmetrical (mirrored image) inkblots printed in
separate cards. Five (5) achromatic inkblots or
without color/black and white. Two (2) inkblots
are in black, red, and white. the remaining
three (3) inkblots are multicolored.
 The test comes with the cards only; there is no
test manual or any administration, scoring, or
interpretation instructions.

14. Thematic Apperception Test
 •History of the TAT
 The TAT was first
developed in 1935 by
Henry Murray,
Christiana Morgan, and
their colleagues at the
Harvard Psychological
Clinic. The early
versions of the TAT
listed Morgan as the
first author, but later
versions dropped her
name.

15. The Thematic Apperception Test
(TAT)
 The TAT was originally designed as an aid to
eliciting fantasy material from patients in
psychoanalysis (Morgan & Murray, 1935). The
stimulus materials consisted, as they do today, of
31 cards, one of which is blank.
 The 30 picture cards, all black-and-white, contain
a variety of scenes designed to present the test
taker with “certain classical human situations”
(Murray, 1943).
 Some of the pictures contain alone individual,
some contain a group of people, and some
contain no people. Some of the pictures appear
to be as real as a photo; others are surrealistic
drawings.

17. Administration
 The TAT is usually administered to individuals in a quiet
room free from interruptions or distractions.
 The subject sits at the edge of a table or desk next to the
examiner.
 The examiner shows the subject a series of story cards
taken from the full set of 31 TAT cards.
 The usual number of cards shown to the subject is between
10 and 14, although Murray recommended the use of 20
cards, administered in two separate one-hour sessions with
the subject.
 The original 31 cards were divided into three categories, for
use with men only, with women only, or for use with subjects
of either sex. Recent practice has moved away from the use
of separate sets of cards for men and women.

18. Cont
 The subject is then instructed to tell a story about the
picture on each card, with specific instructions to
include a description of the event in the picture, the
developments that led up to the event, the thoughts
and feelings of the people in the picture, and the
outcome of the story.

19.  Procedures:
 • TIME -time measured should begin when the picture
is first presented and end when the subject begins his
or her story.
 • RECORDING- a subject’s complete responses should
be recorded, along with any noteworthy behavioral
observations: exclamation, stuttering, pauses ,blushing,
degree of involvement , and change in voice inflection.
 • QUESTIONING and INQUIRY to produce an
unhampered and free-flow of the subject’s fantasy
material.
 • ORDER OF PRESENTATION usually, the cards
should be administered according to their sequential
numbering system.

20. Results
The results of the TAT must be interpreted in the
context of the subject's personal history, age, sex,
level of education, occupation, racial or ethnic
identification, first language, and other
characteristics that may be important.

21. WORD ASSOCIATION TEST
 Word association was first developed as a
research instrument by Francis Galton and was
subsequently developed by Carl Jung as a clinical
diagnostic tool.
 Galton introduced the first word-association test
to psychology. He used a list of 75 stimulus words
with which he read and noted his responses.
Galton, who thought that there might be a link
between a persons I.Q. (intelligence quotient) and
word associations.

22. Administrating a word association
test
 A subject is asked to respond with the first word or idea
that comes to mind.
 This test consisted of three parts.
 In the first part, each stimulus word was administered to
the examinee, who had been instructed to respond
quickly with the first word that came to mind. The
examiner recorded the length of time it took the subject to
respond to each item.
 In the second part of the test, each stimulus word was
again presented to the examinee. The examinee was
instructed to reproduce the original responses. Any
deviation between the original and this second response
was recorded, as was the length of time before reacting.
 The third part of the test was the inquiry. Here the
examiner asked questions to clarify the relationship that

23. Cont..
 Responses on the Word Association Test were
evaluated with respect to variables such as
popularity, reaction time, content, and test-retest
responses.
 Examples of words so designated were love,
girlfriend, boyfriend, mother, father, suicide, fire,
breast, and masturbation.

24. SENTENCE COMPLETION TEST
 Consists of words or phrases, usually referred to as
item stems, that people are asked to complete a
sentence. How individuals go about this task tends to
reflect the kind of person they are.
 METHOD
 Often provide indirect or direct clues to their underlying
attitudes, affects and concerns.

25. CONT..
 Some Sentence Completion Test have been
constructed with standard sets of items for use in
general personality assessment/analysis clinical
application, attitude assessment, achievement
motivation and measurement of other
construct..Example: Egocentricity, Moral Attitudes
,Marital Satisfaction ,Depression

26. Sentence Completion Test Method Is
used to:
 Assess psychological characteristics Construct
formal measures of intelligence By: Herman
Ebbinghaus, 1987
 Could contribute to assessing personality
characteristics as well as intellectual functioning
originated with some observations. (Carl Jung,
1916)
• “Say the first word that comes to your mind.”

27. Sentence completion test method
 Can be phrased to evoke persons attitude
towards specific individual.
Example: Mother __________
 Perspective on particular events and
circumstances in their lives.
Example: In school __________

28. Eg:

29. Drawing Tests
 A figure drawing test may be defined as a projective
method of personality assessment whereby the
assessee produces a drawing that is analyzed on the
basis of its content and related variables.
 Drawing Techniques • A well- known early example is
the Machover Draw-a- person test (D-A-P Machover
1949).
 The instructions for administering the Draw A Person
(DAP).
 The examinee is given a pencil and a blank sheet of
8½ -by-11-inch white paper and told to draw a
person. Inquiries on the part of the examinee
concerning how the picture is to be drawn are met
with statements such as “Make it the way you think it

30. Cont..
 Immediately after the first drawing is completed, the
examinee is handed a second sheet of paper and
instructed to draw a picture of a person of the sex
opposite that of the person just drawn.
 Subsequently, many clinicians will ask questions
about the drawings, such as “Tell me a story about that
figure,” “Tell me about that boy/girl, man/lady,” “What is
the person doing?” “How is the person feeling?” “What
is nice or not nice about the person?” Responses to
these questions are used in forming various
hypotheses and interpretations about personality
functioning.

31.  Attention has been given to such factors as the length
of time required to complete the picture, placement of
the figures, the size of the figure, pencil pressure
used, symmetry, line quality, shading, the presence of
erasures, facial expressions, posture, clothing, and
overall appearance. Various hypotheses have been
generated based on these factors (Knoff, 1990).
 For example, the placement of the figure on the paper
is seen as representing how the individual functions
within the environment. The person who draws a tiny
figure at the bottom of the paper might have a poor
self-concept or might be insecure or depressed. The
individual who draws a picture that cannot be
contained on one sheet of paper and goes off the
page is considered to be impulsive. Unusually light

33. The House-Tree-Person test
 The House-Tree-Person test (HTP; Buck, 1948) is
another projective figure-drawing test. As the name of
the test implies, the test taker’s task is to draw a
picture of a house, a tree, and a person. In much the
same way that different aspects of the human figure
are presumed to be reflective of psychological
functioning, the ways in which an individual represents
a house and a tree are considered symbolically
significant.

34.  Another test, this one thought to be of particular value in
learning about the examinee in relation to her or his
family, is the Kinetic Family Drawing (KFD). Derived
from Hulse’s (1951, 1952)
 Family Drawing Test, an administration of the KFD
(Burns & Kaufman, 1970, 1972) begins with the
presentation of an 8½ -by-11-inch sheet of paper and a
pencil with an eraser. The examinee, usually though not
necessarily a child, is instructed as follows: In addition to
yielding graphic representations of each family member
for analysis, this procedure may yield a wealth of
information in the form of examinee verbalizations while
the drawing is being executed. After the examinee has
completed the drawing, a rather detailed inquiry follows.
The examinee is asked to identify each of the figures,
talk about their relationship, and detail what they are

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