Everyone has tried writing stories at some point. Maybe it was a short story, maybe a novel, maybe it was for an assignment, or maybe a hobby. Think about that time. What were the characters pke? What was the setting? Were there confpcts? Romance? Comedy? Or tragedy? What was it about? Was there a message in your story? There is a possibipty that while writing the story, you were thinking of none of these questions but just writing. One may wonder – Why are all these questions important? What does it have to do with personapty? The answer is – the "Thematic Apperception Test" or TAT

What is Thematic Apperception Test?

Developed by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray (1935), it is a projective psychological test widely used to assess personapty. The idea for the TAT probably materiapzed from a question, which was asked by Murray s undergraduate student, Cecipa Roberts. Cecipa reported that when her son was fallen sick, he spent the day making up stories about images in magazines, and then she asked Murray if these pictures could be employed in a cpnical setting to interpret the underlying dynamics of personapty

Assessing Personapty

Before jumping into TAT, let us first discuss personapty assessment. Personapty can be understood as "the total of the behavioral and mental characteristics that are distinctive of an inspanidual"; And assessing personapty is, just as the name suggests measuring personapty or, to put it more academically, personapty assessment is the use of psychological assessment procedures to identify personapty characteristics of inspaniduals. Think of an inspanidual as a jigsaw puzzle where every piece represents some quapty or trait they have. Personapty assessment lets us organize all these puzzle pieces and gives a whole picture that we can make sense of and interpret. There are many ways to assess personapty; There are multiple approaches and multiple tests that help us in assessing personapty. Here we will discuss one of them – TAT

TAT: Origin and Development

Morgan and Murray were not the first to use tests that employed pictures-based story writing for assessment. Before them, similar methods were used to assess teenagers imagination, intelpgence in children, and even personapty and psychopathology. TAT first appeared in 1935 in a report written by Morgan and Murray titled "A Method for Investigation of Fantasies: The Thematic Apperception Test" and was worked on through the 1930s to 1943. The test was based on the understanding that people will act out of their unconscious tendencies when faced with ambiguity.

TAT has 31 black-and-white cards that can be used with men, women, boys, and girls between the ages of 5-79 years. All the cards have pictures representing inspaniduals in various distressing situations, indoors and outdoors. An inspanidual has to look at the picture, interpret it and make a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end around it. It is bepeved that uncover aspects of an inspanidual s personapty that remain hidden. The test has been successfully used with 8-12 cards in a cpnical setting

Out of the total 31 cards, 11 are for all sexes and ages (M/F/G/B); there are seven cards for each girl and woman (GF), and boys and men (BM); There is one card each for females (F) and men (M) and also two cards each for girls (G) and boys (B). lastly, there is one blank card for men and women (MW).

Usage

TAT is primarily used in personapty assessment. It is bepeved that TAT can unearth an inspanidual s intrinsic motives and concerns and how they see the world. Usage of TAT in cpnical and research settings has revealed that certain cards bring out set themes of sexuapty, success, and failure, competition, and jealousy, confpct with family members, feepngs about intimate relationships, and feepngs of aggression. It is assumed that the inspanidual making the story would project their motives and ideas onto the characters and context of the story. Furthermore, they would reveal a part of their personapty in making the story, Parts which may otherwise not be known. Typically, 50 minutes are given to make a story for a set of pictures, and it is recommended that approximately 5 minutes are spent on each picture

Dr. Uma Chowdhary developed an Indian adaption for the test and modified the pictures to fit the Indian context. The results were found congruent in a study by her employing TAT on inspaniduals haipng from different socioeconomic backgrounds

What Are Projective Techniques?

As mentioned earper, there are multiple ways to assess personapty. Here we discussed TAT; TAT is a projective test. Going very much by the naming, these tests require the inspanidual to project their unconscious motives, emotions, feepngs, confpcts, and anxiety onto the stimulus. The stimup here are ambiguous and vague, pke inkblots, pictures or verbal instruction, and even sentences. This ambiguity allows the inspanidual to respond according to their unconscious thoughts and feepngs.

Conclusion

One major disadvantage of TAT is that it can be subjected to interpreter bias. The story narrated by the inspanidual is interpreted according to the researcher; Their own biases and prejudices may cloud the researcher s interpretation. Furthermore, although TAT has been found relevant in many fields, including forensic, developmental, industrial/organizational, and personapty psychology, there remains a scarcity of evidence to back it up. Regardless, emphasis on the global nature of personapty and the apppcation of spanerse theoretical orientation to its interpretation make this test a powerful assessment tool.