Projective Tests
It is unsuitable to certain aspects of personality to make the client answer to specific questions by choosing one of the fixed answers presented to define the personality trait of the person. Because of this, projective tests are developed. A projective test presents an ambiguous stimuli to the person, and the person may respond whatever he wishes. The good points about projective tests are that they do not demand a specific respond, so the test taker will be more likely to reveal something about himself when he responds. If detailed guidelines are given, he/she might have the tendency to answer according to what he thinks will give a impression to the tester.
Two of the most widely used projective techniques are the Rorschach Test and the Thematic Apperception Test.
Rorschach Test
The Rorschach Test is developed by Psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach is the early 1920's. It contains ten cards with complex inkblots on them, made by dropping ink on to a piece of white paper and folding it. The inkblots will become a unique and symmetrical picture. After making thousands of these inkblots, Rorschach chose ten of them. Five were black and gray, two were black, gray and red, and three were in pastel colors. The person is asked to tell what is seen in either part of the ink blot or the whole of it. He will not be given any other clues of what he should say. After seeing all the ten cards, the examiner will go over each response, including non-verbal communications such as facial expressions and the length of time used to respond. The examiner will then ask the person to clarify some of the responses. He might also ask the person what part of the blot gave him a certain impression.
The responses are scored in a few different ways. The main categories are location (where on the blot was the percept located: whole, common detail or unusual detail), determinant (what feature of the inkblot determined the responses: (F)form, movement, color, shading), form quality (to what extent did the percept match the stimulus properties of the inkblot), content (what was the percept: human, animal or nature) and popular-original (whether their answers were popular among other responses - popular answers are the same as around one-third of the responses)
But there are also problems in the Rorschach test. Many psychologists may interpret the responses according to their own impression of the client. Not enough studies have successfully evaluated the test's effectiveness.
