Thematic Apperception Test
Thematic Apperception Test
Olive Jane M. De Leon
BS Psychology 3-5
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), is a projective psychological test. Proponents of this technique assert that a person's responses reveal underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.[1] Historically, it has been among the most widely researched, taught, and used of such tests.[2]
History
The TAT was developed during the 1930s by the American psychologist Henry A. Murray and lay psychoanalyst Christiana D. Morgan at the Harvard Clinic at Harvard University. A widely held belief is that the idea for the TAT emerged from a question asked by one of Murray's undergraduate students, Cecilia Roberts.[3] She reported that when her son was ill, he spent the day making up stories about images in magazines and she asked Murray if pictures could be employed in a clinical setting to explore the underlying dynamics ofpersonality.
Murray wanted to use a measure that would reveal information about the whole person but found the contemporary tests of his time lacking in this regard. Therefore, he created the TAT. The rationale behind the technique is that people tend to interpret ambiguous situations in accordance with their own past experiences and current motivations, which may be conscious or unconscious. Murray reasoned that by asking people to tell a story about a picture, their defenses to the examiner would be lowered as they would not realize the sensitive personal information they were divulging by creating the story.[4]
Murray and Morgan spent the 1930s selecting pictures from illustrative magazines and developing the test. After 3 versions of the test (Series A, Series B, and Series C), Morgan and Murray decided on the final set of pictures, Series D, which remains in use today.[3] Although she was given first authorship on the first published paper about the TAT in 1935, Morgan did not
Olive Jane M. De Leon
BS Psychology 3-5
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), is a projective psychological test. Proponents of this technique assert that a person's responses reveal underlying motives, concerns, and the way they see the social world through the stories they make up about ambiguous pictures of people.[1] Historically, it has been among the most widely researched, taught, and used of such tests.[2]
History
The TAT was developed during the 1930s by the American psychologist Henry A. Murray and lay psychoanalyst Christiana D. Morgan at the Harvard Clinic at Harvard University. A widely held belief is that the idea for the TAT emerged from a question asked by one of Murray's undergraduate students, Cecilia Roberts.[3] She reported that when her son was ill, he spent the day making up stories about images in magazines and she asked Murray if pictures could be employed in a clinical setting to explore the underlying dynamics ofpersonality.
Murray wanted to use a measure that would reveal information about the whole person but found the contemporary tests of his time lacking in this regard. Therefore, he created the TAT. The rationale behind the technique is that people tend to interpret ambiguous situations in accordance with their own past experiences and current motivations, which may be conscious or unconscious. Murray reasoned that by asking people to tell a story about a picture, their defenses to the examiner would be lowered as they would not realize the sensitive personal information they were divulging by creating the story.[4]
Murray and Morgan spent the 1930s selecting pictures from illustrative magazines and developing the test. After 3 versions of the test (Series A, Series B, and Series C), Morgan and Murray decided on the final set of pictures, Series D, which remains in use today.[3] Although she was given first authorship on the first published paper about the TAT in 1935, Morgan did not