Question

Projective techniques are used to assess _______
1. Intelligence
2. Attitude
3. Personality
4. Aptitude

Answer 1

Correct Answer - Option 3 : Personality

Psychologists have tried to assess personality in various ways. The most commonly used techniques are Psychometric Tests, Self-Report Measures, Projective Techniques, and Behavioural Analysis. These techniques are rooted in different theoretical orientations; hence they throw light on different aspects of personality.

Projective Techniques: 

• Projective techniques of personality measurement are the tests that are designed to reveal those central aspects of personality that lie in the unconscious mind of an individual.
• Projective techniques were developed to assess unconscious motives and feelings.
• These techniques are based on the assumption that a less structured or unstructured stimulus or situation will allow the individual to project her/his feelings, desires, and needs onto that situation. These projections are interpreted by experts.
• A variety of projective techniques have been developed; they use various kinds of stimulus materials and situations for assessing personality.
• Some of them require reporting associations with stimuli (e.g., words, inkblots), some involve story writing around pictures, some require sentence completions, some require expression through drawings, and some require a choice of stimuli from a large set of stimuli.
• While the nature of stimuli and responses in these techniques vary enormously, all of them do share the following features:
  1. The stimuli are relatively or fully unstructured and poorly defined. 
  2. The person being assessed is usually not told about the purpose of assessment and the method of scoring and interpretation.
  3. The person is informed that there are no correct or incorrect responses.
  4. Each response is considered to reveal a significant aspect of personality.
  5. Scoring and interpretation are lengthy and sometimes subjective.
• Some of the well known projective techniques are:
  • The Rorschach Inkblot Test
  • The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
  • Rosenzweig’s Picture-Frustration Study (P-F Study) 
  • Sentence Completion Test
  • Draw-a-Person Test

Hence, Projective techniques are used to assess personality.