Projective Techniques – Method of Personality Assessment

Projective techniques refer to those methods, which intended for the measurement of personality characteristics or traits that involve presentation of relatively unstructured stimuli to the respondent.

  In simpler terms, subjects are assigned to unstructured tasks without informing them in proper ways to measure or get note on their natural characteristics (instinct behavior).

Examples of Unstructured stimuli are Ink blots (the Rorschach test), Pictures (TAT), Sentence completion, etc.

Projective techniques of personality assessment involve asking individuals to respond to ambiguous (open to more than one interpretation; not having one obvious meaning) test stimuli with no apparent meaning (Viglione and Rivera, 2003).

The underlying assumption of projective techniques is that the meaning the person projects onto the ambiguous stimuli indicates the individual’s unconscious feelings, needs, desires, attitudes, motives and other core personality aspects (Frank, 1939).

Thus, information about the individual’s personality is revealed without the person realizing it (Murphy and Davidshofer, 2005).

There are 2 types of personality assessment:

a)      Formal (Standardized)

b)     Projective (Unstructured)

The projective testing instruments represent disguised testing procedures in the sense that the test takers are not aware of the psychological interpretation to be made of their responses. This is an effective to tool to reveal the latent or hidden aspects of personality that remain embedded in the unconscious until uncovered. 

There are varieties of projective techniques that shre the following characteristic features:

a)      Ambiguous test stimuli: example are responding to a series of inkblots / completing a series of sentence (If I were the President, ….)

b)     Indirect method: individual to respond to ambiguous test stimuli.

c)      Freedom of Response:

d)     Subjective nature of scoring procedures:

Classification of Projective Techniques:

Projective techniques have been classified by different psychologists into different categories.

Frank (1939) offered a classificatory schemes i.e

a)   Constitutive:  E.g:- Rorschach, Finger painting

b)   Constructive:  The Examinee (subjects) may be asked to draw a figure of human male or female according to his own wish.

c)      Interpretative: The Examinee is required to add a comprehensive meaning to the situation. Thematic Apperception test and Word Association test are included under this category.

d)     Refractive:  Examinee is given an opportunity to express his personality in the form of painting, drawing, and handwriting and so on.

e)      Cathartic: Examinee is given opportunity through some manipulative tasks for the release of his conflicts and wish. Play techniques are its best example.

According to Lindzey (1961), projective techniques can be classified into the following 5 general categories:

a)      Completion technique: It requires individuals to complete a test stimulus that is presented to them unfinished.

Example: Rotter Incomplete Sentence Test (Rotter, Lah and Rafferty, 1992).

b)     Association technique: The Individual is presented with a test stimulus and is then asked to respond with the first word, thought, or feeling that comes to mind.

Example: Rorschach Inkblot Test (Rorschach, 1942).

c)      Expressive techniques: Examinee interact with given materials, for instance, Play, Drawing, Role-playing, Finger painting, etc. Examiner may ask the examinee to play with a given set of dolls and watch how he selected & handled during the play.

d)     Choice technique: This is also called Ordering technique.

Example: Szondi test (examinees are required to rank set of pictures along a like-dislike dimension).

e)      Construction technique: Examinees are required to construct a story after seeing the stimulus materials (usually the picture) within certain specified time.

For example: Thematic Apperception Test, Children’s Apperception Test, Rosenzweig picture frustration test, The Blacky pictures, The Object Relations test, etc.

In all these tests, the examinee is required to construct or produce simple statement or complex statements in the form of story.