PROTECTIVE TECHNIQUES

PROTECTIVE TECHNIQUES

MEANING OF PROJECTION

The word projection has been described in many ways. According to Covillo Costallo and others. It is “the mechanism by which the individuals projects himself from awareness of his own undesirable traits or feelings by contributing them to others’

Projection, according to Freud, means externalizing of conflicts or other internal conditions that has given rise to conscious pain and anxiety. Prorjective tests of personality assessment are those which evoke responses from the unconscious and provide an opportunity to delve into the depth of unconscious built of an individual’s personality.

DEFINITIONS FOR PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

Lindzev (1961) defines “A projective techniques is an instruments that is considered especially sensitive to connect or unconscious aspects of behavior, it permits or encourage a wide variety of subject responses, it is highly multidimensional and it evokes usually rich response data with a minimum of subject awareness concerning the purpose of the test”

Frank (1939) Projective techniques as a king of ‘X-ray” into those aspects of personality which subjects either cannot or will not openly reveal.

CHARACTERISTICS OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES.

1.                 Ambiguous material :  Projective tests often use ambigous material to which the subject must respond freely often in descriptive form. Ambigious material mean that every subject can interpret the test stimulate in his own way.

2.                 Evoke responses from unconscious :  The test stimulate evoke responses from unconscious of the subject. The

subject projects his inner feelings in the test situation.

3.                 Multi dimensionality of responses:  The dimensions in which the subject can respond are various as physical, intellectual, social and emotional. There is more freedom to respond against the instrumental stimuli of the tests. It is possible for the subject to make a great variety of responses to the test task.

4.                 Freedom to respond: The projective techniques provide

full freedom to the subject to test stimuli. He is not restricted as regards the nature of responses.

5.                 Holistic approach : It means that projective tests attempt to study the totality of behavior. They do not explore the molecular behavior of the individual. They emphasizes the moral approach to understand personality.

6.                 Answers are not right or wrong : The responses of the subject are not second or evaluated as right or wrong. They are evaluated qualitatively.

7.                 Purpose of the test is disguised:  The purpose of the test is not disclosed to the subject otherwise he becomes test conscious and may hide his real feelings.

TYPES OF PROJECTIVE MEASURES.

9.   Pictorial Technique

•              Rorschach Inkbot test

•              Thematic apperception test (TAT)

•              Pictures

Verbal Techniques

•              Story or sentence completion test

•              Word association test (WAT)

Play Techniques

•              Doll play

Psycho drama or socio drama techniques

•              Role playing

Rorschach Inkblot test

This is the best known projective technique developed by a Swiss Psychiatrist Hermann Rhorschach in 1942. In this test ten standard cards, each bearing an inkblot, representing different diagnostic categories, are administered to subjects, who are then asked to interpret  and describe what they see. The test administrator notes down this description for subsequent analysis i.e. the individual is arise in his mind etc. The scoring is done objectively on the basis of colour, form, movement, content speed originality . Scores can be categorized three…..

1.            Location

2.            Contents

3.            Determinants.

Location involves seeing of the whole. Determinant includes shape, colour, shading movement human figure, animal figures.

This Rorschach technique has been used in clinical

personality as also some aspects of subjects mental life , adjustment process, depression define mechanism etc.

THEMATIC APPERCEPTION TEST TAT

This test was devised by morgan and Murray in 1935. It consists of 20 pictures (Morgan) Each picture is ambiguous enough to permit a variety of interpretations. Presenting the picture, the testee is asked to make up a story of what is happening in the picture. Most people when they makeup such stories identify themselves with one of the characters in the picture and their stories may be little more than thirty disguised autobiographies. If makes an hour to administer the test and the testee may be asked to appear before an interview.

The stories are analyses to know the testee attitudes

wishes and mental life. These stories reflect the repressed motivations of the subject.

The test is more useful in knowing general personality

rather than the diagnostic aspects. It can be used with Rorschach to obtain better results. The children’s appreciation test has been made for children in which pictures of animal have been used.

Each story is scored out under four main categories

vectors levels conditions qualifies.

Vectors      : drives, feeling direction of ehaviour

Levels  : Object description, wish intention night dream

Conditions : psychological, physical, social, valences, depression,

anxiety, security and

Qualifies    : temporal characteristics contingency casuality,

negation

This test is being employed in clinical studies of the maladjusted and abnormal section of students normal group. It is permitting wide quantitative and qualitative frustrstion modes of adjustments.

Pictures  Instead if using dolls, the researcher presents pictures to the child and ask questions about them one could present pictures of rural and urban persons, Rajasthani and Gujarathi females, Hindus and Muslims, Brahmins and dalits and soon,  and ask with whom the child would like to play with.

VERBAL TECHNIQUES

STORY OR SENTENCE COMPLETION TEST

Lindzey call this as completion technique. The respondents are given some incomplete stories or sentences for completion. In the story , the end is not given but the children are asked to finish it. A partial sentence is asked to complete with the first word or phrase that comes to mind. For example.

•      A female teacher should be ………… • A male teacher should not be. ……….

•      A good house wife is…………….

•      An efficient manager is ………………

•      When someone interferes in my studies, I feel ………..

WORDS ASSOCIATION TEST (WAT)

Lindzey calls this also as association techniques in this test, the subject is given a list of words, one at a time, and asked to link it with the word that immediately comes to his the mind. These words are recorded. For example, a teacher is asked about the roles which a teacher is expected to perform. It is not necessary that all respondents will point out all roles which a teacher is to perform. Say, to  teach, to guide, to control, to motivate, to create awareness, to seta role model, to inculcate value, and so on. Every respondent will answer the question as he perceives it.  A doctor is described as commercial – minded, greedy, inefficient, careless. A vegetable, seller is seen as cheat, liar greedy, impolite. A college / University lecture / Professors, is described these days as a politician, class – cutting person asking for more and more pay and privileges and less and less and less interested in studies, research, publications and seminars / conferences.

It is assumed that respondent’s first thought is a spontaneous answer because the subject does not have much time to think about it. It is only is face association process that the person reveals him inner feelings about the subject. Word association test are affected by clasped time. If a person is caught asserting a your girl, and the man who watched it is immediately asked how to deal with the assaulter his immediate replay could be “severe, retributive and deterrent punishment’. But if he is asked the same questions after a month or so, he could only say, “he should be punished”.

PLAY TECHNIQUE

DOLL PLAY

This projective method is used extensively both in theory and in data gathering interviews. For example, the interviewer studying sibling rivalry can setup a scene containing a mother doll breast – feeding respondent looking on. The investigator then asks the child what he/ She encounters the mother and baby (Yarrow, 1960 :  584). Dolls have also been used extensively in studying prejudies.

PSYCHO – DRAMA OR SOCIO DRAMA TECHNIQUE

Role playing

Sometimes students in a college are asked to organize a ‘mock parliament’ session and different students are asked to play the role of as speaker, Prime Minister, foreign minister, Opposition leader, MPs of different political parties an independent MP and so on. This is called a third person technique because it is a dynamic –re-enactment of the third person technique in a given situation. The role player acts our someone else’ behavior in a particular setting. Many a time a student is asked to perform a teacher’s task. This techniques can be used to determine a true feeling of a student about a teacher in a class situation. Role playing is particularly useful in investigating situations. Where interpersonal relationship are the subject of the research, eg : husband – wife, shop keeper – customer, employer-employee, officers – clerk etc.

ADVANTAGES OF PROJECTIVE TECHNIQUES

1.                             An individual reveals himself in various situations and

sometimes he is not aware of this fact. Thus we get reliable information.

2.                             The connection between diagnosis and the situation is very close

3.                             It is not possible for the individual to give readymade habitual or conventional responses as the tasks presented are novel and instrumented.

4.                             These techniques encourage spontaneous responses.

5.                             These enable us to have a total view of the personality of an individual rather than in piece – meal.

LIMITATIONS

-                They are very subjective

-                They require a lot of training in their administration only trained psychologist can administer them.

-                It is time consuming

-                Difficult to interpret

-                There are very few standardized tests.