Thematic Apperception Test

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

The TAT consists of a standard set of tables depicting rather ambiguous situations. Each table, as conceived by the authors, assumes the actualization of experiences of a certain type or attitudes towards certain situations and allows for an ambiguous interpretation; tables that provoke suicide, aggression, sexual perversion, domination-submission, sexual and family conflicts, etc. are specially highlighted. Some of the tables are shown only to men or only to women; there are tables for teens. The subject is presented with a set of 20 tables.

The study is carried out in two sessions with an interval of no more than one day. A calm, friendly atmosphere is very important. It is recommended to start work with some simple projective technique - drawing on a given topic, etc. Basic information about the subject should be known: marital and social status, education, profession.

Tables are usually presented from 1 to 10 on the first day, and from 11 to 20 on the second. In the first session, a standard instruction is given, allowing minor variations according to the cultural level and age of the subject. According to the instructions, you should come up with a story for each picture: what is happening, what events led to this situation, what will be its outcome, what are the feelings and thoughts of the characters. In the second session, the content of the instruction is reminded and an indication is given that now the stories should be more dramatic - you need to give free rein to fantasy. Among the tables there is also an empty one: you need to imagine and describe in detail any picture you like, and then come up with a story based on it.

When researching, the time is noticed - both from the moment the table was presented to the beginning of the story, and the total time spent on the table. All long pauses, reservations, agrammatisms, unusual expressions, etc. are recorded. During testing, certain technical difficulties may be encountered, associated, for example, with forgetting the points of instructions, etc. After the study, a survey is conducted, the main purpose of which is to obtain additional information about the subject and about the sources certain plots, as well as discrepancies, reservations, etc.

The analysis of the results is carried out in accordance with the named tasks of the TAT. The analysis begins with finding the "hero" of the plot with whom the subject to some extent identifies himself. The next step is to determine the most important characteristics of the hero. Then all identified needs are ranked on a five-point scale. Finally, a list of needs and associated pressures is drawn up.

The analysis creates a kind of portrait of the hero: what are his dominant desires, needs, feelings; what influences he is exposed to, is he active or passive in his interactions with the world, is it possible to satisfy his needs; whether he is successful or prone to frustration; whether there are antisocial actions; what are his values, what constitutes his worldview, etc.

It should be borne in mind that the stories of the subject always, except for cases of gross pathology, turn out to be a mixture of fantasy production and cliché plots - products of defense mechanisms. As a cliche, everything that was not really experienced by the individual and is not his affective experience can act: literary and cinematic plots, etc. Moreover, what was once really experienced loses its significance and affective coloring over time and becomes hardly different from the cliche. On the contrary, some literary plots or life ups and downs of other people affect the feelings of the subject so much that they cease to be simply assimilated cliches. All this requires a special sensitivity of the experimenter to any manifestations of the individual style of the subject.

For diagnostics, deviations from clichés seem to be especially informative, where real or imagined attitudes, feelings and actions that are extremely significant for the subject are especially clearly manifested. But even in them personally significant information can be masked by protective mechanisms. An analysis of the formal characteristics of the construction of the story, as well as the individual characteristics of speech and expression, unusual themes, or even subtle modifications of clichés, helps to identify it.

The formal characteristics of the content of the story represent a kind of abstraction from the text and answer the question of what the researcher is looking for in the story, to which formations of the personality the content of the story is relevant. The following categories are distinguished:

1) emotional background - feelings and experiences that arise in the subject; here not only identification with the character is possible, but also solidarity, opposition, etc.;

2) characters - they can be either representatives of the subject himself, or significant others;

3) aspirations and attitudes - dynamic tendencies, indicators of the main motives of the personality, determined by the characteristics of the characters, with whom the subject identifies himself;

4) obstacles or barriers - are found in the form of thoughts and feelings of the main character or those around him, in the form of real actions of other people or social norms that impede the realization of aspirations.

The formal indicators are as follows:

1) formal adherence to instructions - this can express a departure from topics related to conflict experiences;

2) strict adherence to the instructions - evidence of increased rigidity of the subject;

3) excessive detail of the story - may indicate increased anxiety, occurs in hysterics;

4) omitting certain points of the instruction: in the absence of a "past" or "future", this may be a sign of the existence of conflict experiences in the past or expectations of trouble in the future;

5) refusal - at the beginning of the experiment indicates a lack of understanding of the instructions or the lack of contact with a psychologist, refusal from certain pictures - about the special significance of the stories they provoke;

6) failure to mention certain parts or details of the picture - usually indicates that the associations caused by these details are alarming;

7) the introduction of additional details or characters - almost always speaks of the special significance and proximity of this topic;

8) perceptual distortion - incorrect or distorted perception of some details of the picture, - as a rule, a consequence of deep conflicts;

9) the perception of a picture as a drawing, photograph, frame from a film - sometimes it can be considered as a kind of detachment from the traumatic subject of the story.

There are about two dozen interpretation schemes that differ in the categories of story analysis and personality parameters studied using TAT. Only some of them are used for clinical and diagnostic purposes, and not for experimental purposes; it also happens that practicing psychologists borrow different points from different systems.

1. S. Tomkins has developed an approach that is widely used in various psychological systems. He introduced a number of new categories, as if increasing the effectiveness of the technique:

1) vector - characterizes the psychological orientation of behavior, drives and other things; Tomkins considers ten vectors that correspond to the basic prepositions of the English language;

2) level - characterizes the "plane" in which the action of the story unfolds: a description of an object, event or character's behavior; imagination; memory; feelings, etc.;

3) conditions - any mental or physical states of different valency, in themselves, do not express any desire or motivation; for example, the hero is poor (-) or happy (+);

4) qualifiers - used to indicate the temporal, spatial or power characteristics of the named categories.

Here, compared to the X. Murray, the level categories and qualifiers are essentially new. Level analysis allows you to determine the predominant type of activity of each hero. The sequence, frequency and variability of different levels are considered. Much attention is paid to the psychological meaning of the qualifier "remoteness". The degree of remoteness in time or space characterizes the degree of suppression of the need: the more fantastic the story and the more distant from reality the time and place of action, the more this need is suppressed by the Superx-I. Among other methodological techniques, the requirement for a holistic contextual analysis of testing protocols stands out: certain invariant formal structures are distinguished from the entire set of stories. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of materials related to the experiences of early childhood.

2. M. Arnold builds his system on the rejection of certain postulates of "depth psychology", for example, the postulates of identification and unrealized deep thinking as the main content of stories are eliminated. It is believed that the material of the stories reflects not so much these tendencies as the personal attitudes of the social, which determine the plot and outcome of the story, or its meaning - like the "moral" of the story, where the usual values, motives and ways of achieving goals are found.

As a result of the analysis of the values, the so-called motivational index, positive or negative, is derived: adequate life attitudes, a constructive approach to solving problems, cooperation with other people give a positive index; tendency to impulsive, destructive or unproductive actions - negative. Depending on the sign of the motivational index, the possibility of success in a particular field is predicted.

The approach of M. Arnold, despite a somewhat simplified understanding of the conditions for human success, contains a number of points missed by other authors, and therefore indicates the way for a more adequate development of an approach to the analysis and interpretation of TAT:

1) the requirement for a contextual analysis of stories: stories are viewed not as a set, but as an integral product of the reorganization of the impressions of past experience, which has its own meaning, which is not revealed when analyzing individual stories;

2) emphasizes the role of social attitudes in the formation of the text of stories.

Like other projective techniques, TAT finds the greatest application in the clinic of neuroses and borderline states. For the clinician, the following diagnosed features of the affective sphere of the personality and motivations are of particular interest:

1) leading motives, attitudes, values;

2) affective conflicts, their spheres;

3) ways of resolving conflicts: position in a conflict situation, the use of specific defense mechanisms, etc.;

4) individual characteristics of a person's affective life: impulsivity / controllability, emotional stability / lability, emotional maturity / infantilism;

5) self-esteem - the ratio of ideas about the real I and the ideal I, the degree of self-acceptance.

It should be emphasized that the regularities and phenomena revealed by means of TAT are nothing more than tendencies, personality attitudes, direct transfer of test data to the characteristics of a person and her behavior without taking into account the clinical material and objective living conditions of the subject is illegal.