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).

Development Stages of Proprium as described by Allport

Proprium comes from the word ‘Propriate’ which is Allport’s name for essential concept, the Self.  Allport believed that most human behavior is motivated by something very different-functioning in a manner, expressive of the Self which he called “Propriate Functioning” – can be characterized as proactive, future-oriented and psychological.

In other terms, doing things in keeping with what we really are, that is Propriate Functioning.

Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Humanistic Needs

Abraham Maslow was a humanistic psychologist, who approached the study of personality psychology by focusing on subjective experiences and free will. He was mainly concerned with an individual’s innate drive towards self-actualization – a state of fulfilment in which a person is achieving at his or her highest level of capability.

Maslow set up a hierarchy of 5 levels of basic needs. In the levels of the 5 basic needs, the person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied or the third until the second has been satisfied and so on.

Introduction to Life-Span Developmental Psychology

Life span refers to the ongoing process that we go through while growing up. It is the period of time from conception extending to death.

Life-span developmental psychology is the field of psychology which involves the examination of both constancy and change in human behaviour across the entire life span, that is, from conception to death (Baltes, 1987).

Development refers to the biological and psychological changes that occur in human beings between birth and the end of adolescent, as the individual progresses from dependency to increasing autonomy.

Developmetal psychology refers to development throughout the lifespan, and pediatrics, the branch of medicine relating to the care of children.

Growth refers to the development of children from birth to adolescence.

Four areas in which children’s growth and development take place:

a)    Physical

b)   Psychological and cognitive

c)    Social and emotional

d)   Sexuality and gender identity

Classical Conditioning theory by Ivan Pavlov

Ivan Pavlov (1849 – 1936) was a Russian Psychologist, who initially was a Physiologist interested in studying the process of digestion, which was later renamed as “Classical Conditioning (CC)”. So, originally his theory was aimed to explain the learning process.             

The Principles of Classical conditioning were found to be applicable for explaining the development of many Psychopathologies.   

Ivan Pavlov was a behaviorist who demonstrated and articulated a form of learning known as “Classical Conditioning” which focused on Observable Behaviour.  

Pavlov viewed individual differences in personality as the result of learning from different environmental experiences.

Conditioning has been defined as a form of learning in which capacity of eliciting a response is transferred from one stimulus to another.

Theories of Intelligence

Intelligence has been defined as the sum total of everything you know, as the ability to learn or profit from experience, as the ability to solve problems or as the ability to cope with the demands of the environment. 

Some of the definitions given by experts are given below:

“…intelligence, that is to say, reasoning, judgment, memory, and the power of abstraction” (Binet 1890, cited in Sattler, 1988)

 “Intelligence is a general capacity of the individual consciously to adjust his thinking to new requirements” (Stern, 1914)

“An individual is intelligent in proportion as he is able to carry on abstract thinking” (Terman, 1921)

“Intelligence is the capacity of the organism to adjust itself to an increasingly complex environment” (Spearman, 1927) 

In 1986, Sternberg and Determan found that twenty-four prominent scholars had twenty-four different definitions of intelligence. 

Snyderman and Rothman (1987) have presented responses of over 1,000 experts that belonged to different disciplines such as psychology, sociology, education, and genetics. Of the thirteen descriptions rated by the respondents, there was nearly unanimous agreement that abstract reasoning, the capacity to acquire knowledge, and problem solving ability were important elements of intelligence.

Social Foundation of Personality theory by Karen Horney

Karen Horney was the first female psychiatrist criticized the work of Sigmund Freud. Horney reformulated Freudian thought and social influences, human growth and achievement of self-actualization.

Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytical theory of Personality

Sigmund Freud developed Psychoanalytical theory to account for how the mind accomplishes the task of balancing the conflicting demands of instinct and social acceptability. 

Freud’s discusses into following types:

1)   Structure of Personality

2)   Dynamics of Personality

3)   Development of Personality

4)   Defense Mechanisms

Trait Theories of Personality

Trait approach assumes behaviour is determined by relatively stable traits which are fundamental units of one’s personality. These are defined as relatively stable and consistent personal characteristics.

 Trait personality theories approaches are explained by following psychologists:

A)   G.B Allport

B)   Raymond B. Cattell

C)   Hans Eysenck

D)  Guilford

Type Approaches to Personality

There are 2 types of approach or theories to Personality:

a)    Type &

b)   Trait

Type theories are not stable and inconsistent to Trait approaches. Type approach assume that there are separate and discontinuous categories into which persons fit whereas trait approach assumes that there are continuous dimensions such as warmth, extraversion, etc.

Types are not descriptive of persons. Type approach defies the uniqueness of Persons.

An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology

Cognitive psychology focuses on the study of higher mental processes including thinking, language, memory, problem-solving, reasoning, judging and decision-making.

This is the branch of psychology that focuses on the way people process information.

The term “cognitive psychology” was first coined by Ulric Neisser in 1967.

1.1.       4 kinds of research methods in cognitive psychology:

a) Experimentation;

b)   Psychobiological Research: Post-Mortem, studying images and obtaining information.

c)    Self-reports, case studies and Naturalistic observations

d)   Computer Simulations and Artificial Intelligence

Concept of Personality

Personality refers to Individual differences in characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving. Personality includes the unique pattern of psychological and behavioral characteristics that distinguishes each of us from everyone else.

Personality is used in terms of influencing others through external appearance. Sum total of ways in which an individual reacts and interacts with others.

The term "Personality" is derived from the Latin word "Persona" that means 'Mask'.

Personality is an internalized system, which includes all those aspects of a person that are inherited as well as those that are learned.

The term personality is often understood in terms of social attractiveness. A

good personality is considered to be one who impresses other people and who

has the ability to get on well with others. Those who do not possess such ability

are said to have relatively poor personality.

According to

a) Gordon Allport [1937,1967] - Personality is the dynamic organisation within the individual of those psychophysical systems that determine his unique adjustments to his environment.