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Forensic Assessment
Published in Louis B. Schlesinger, Sexual Murder, 2021
Projective drawings have long been utilized as a supplement to other projective techniques in the traditional psychological assessment battery (Handler and Thomas, 2013; Kaufman and Wohl, 1992; Leibowitz, 1999). The test can be administered in a variety of ways: the subject is asked to draw a person; a house, a tree, and a person; a family; an animal; the worst thing imaginable; or other topics, such as a person in the rain. Projective drawings are perhaps the least sophisticated of the various projective tests, since there is no established standardization for them, and interpretation is often highly subjective. In fact, Uhlin (1978) has noted that “in order for projective drawings to function alone in criminal proceedings, they must be powerful and descriptive [enough] to … touch the sensitivity of the untrained layman and overcome what may be strong personal subjectivity” (p. 63). We therefore eschew “wild” methods of interpretation based on clinical lore (e.g., interpreting a hole in the trunk of a tree as representing the developmental stage of childhood trauma). Hammer (1997a,b) advises taking due caution in interpreting drawings, but he firmly believes that violent acts including murder, rape, and exhibitionism can be greatly understood by a subject’s illustrations. Meloy (2000) notes the usefulness of figure drawings and reproduced an interesting drawing by an offender who committed a sexual murder as an example.
Deception and Psychosis
Published in Harold V. Hall, Joseph G. Poirier, Detecting Malingering and Deception, 2020
Harold V. Hall, Joseph G. Poirier
Cited below are an array of psychometric instruments that have been described in current literature as forensic assessment tools useful in assessing for malingered psychosis. One notable category area of omission of psychometric instruments in this edition is the use of projective tests (e.g., Rorschach; Thematic Apperception Test, etc.). In the forensic realm, projective tests simply have not fared well in terms of reliability or validity to empirical criteria (Albert, Fox, & Kahn, 1980; Kleiger, 2017; Mclaughlin & Kan, 2014; Seamons, Howell, Carlisle, & Roe, 1981). The judiciary and trial attorneys have become quite aware of this Achilles vulnerability of projective techniques.
Psychological Testing
Published in Mohamed Ahmed Abd El-Hay, Understanding Psychology for Medicine and Nursing, 2019
These are tests that consist of a series of unstructured ambiguous stimuli which can be perceived and responded to in many ways. Individuals are asked for a description or a story about each, thus projecting their own characteristics onto those stimuli. The best-known projective tests are the Rorschach test and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Responses to projective tests reflect many aspects of an individual’s personality. These tests are relatively difficult to score and tend to be less reliable and valid than objective tests.
Empowering Empathy
Published in Psychiatry, 2021
Richard M. Waugaman, Miriam Korn
The authors also gave their participants projective tests (the Rorschach and the Thematic Apperception Test) as well as an intelligence test. Through these instruments they found that the “high empathy group” tended to be more extraverted, positive, flexible, and warm. These subjects had “sufficiently satisfying” familial relationships which in turn facilitated rich interpersonal connections in their young adult lives. The “low empathy” group was found to display the inverse; the authors describe them as “rigid, introverted people” who were misanthropic, self-centered and concrete. Lest the authors themselves come across as unempathic in this description, they posit that these subjects seem to have been deprived of secure attachment figures in childhood, which caused them to be suspicious of others and isolated from social connections. Had they been writing today, the authors might well have considered that some of these “low empathy” subjects had a form of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), a developmental condition that often entails difficulty with mentalization and empathy. There is also research which suggests that negative mood states reduce one’s capacity for empathy (Li et al., 2017).
Rethinking Empathy
Published in Psychiatry, 2021
A third tentative conclusion was based on a selected sample of subjects who scored high and low in empathic ability. All these subjects did projective tests (the Rorschach and Thematic Apperception Test), the California Ethnocentrism Test, and the Wechsler-Bellevue Intelligence Test. The researchers also inquired about important aspects of their life histories, emphasizing early experience. The results of this pilot study were very interesting. Those who scored in the high empathy groups were more expressive, outgoing, optimistic and showed a strong interest in others. Their early family relations had been sufficiently positive that they could establish rewarding relations with others. Those that scored low on empathy tended to be more rigid and introverted. Their emotional life was inhibited, but also prone to poorly controlled emotional outbursts and were unable to navigate interpersonal relations very successfully. They were either self-centered and demanding in their personal relations or “lone wolves” who distrusted others. Their early emotional relations within their families seem to have been disturbed and unsatisfying.
Convergent and Discriminant Validity of Self-Report and Performance-Based Assessment of Object Relations
Published in Journal of Personality Assessment, 2020
Rachel A. Pad, Steven K. Huprich, John Porcerelli
Stricker and Healy (1990) wrote that OR reside within the unconscious and are inherently implicit processes that are difficult to measure. For this reason, they asserted that performance-based (formerly projective) tests are the only effective means of assessing OR. The most commonly used performance-based measure to assess object relations is the SCORS–G (Stein et al., 2011; Stein & Mulford, 2018; Westen, 1995), which assesses narrative material in an attempt to understand individual differences in self and object representations. The scale breaks down OR into eight components, each of which is represented by a unique dimension: complexity of representation of people (COM), affective quality of representations (AFF), emotional investment in relationships (EIR), emotional investment in values and moral standards (EIM), understanding of social causality (SC), experience and management of aggressive impulses (AGG), self-esteem (SE), and identity and coherence of self (ICS). To obtain global scores for each dimension, a rater adds all individual scale scores for each stimulus (i.e., a selection of Thematic Apperception Test [TAT] cards) into an average score for each of the eight dimensions. The average is representative the individual’s global functioning across each dimension. Factor analytic studies of the SCORS–G suggest that its scales can be broken down into cognitive and affective components (Stein & Slavin-Mulford, 2018).