Rorschach Inkblot Test

The Rorschach is the well-known inkblot technique, named for its inventor, a Swiss psychiatrist who noticed that mental patients responded to inkblots differently from normal people. Published by Hans Huber of Bern, the 10 inkblots are among the most widely used and most roundly criticized assessment techniques in psychology. Subjects are asked to find images in the ink, and their response tendencies are inferred from what they saw and from how they used the ink.

The Rorschach has three basic uses. One, the inkblots are standardized stimuli that invite a wide variety of responses. Complete and leisurely inspection of the stimulus that occasions a response is a rarity for psychologists and allows for careful consideration of the functional relationship between the two. The psychologist infers what kinds of variables were operating on the subject to produce this particular response to this particular stimulus. Research has shown that managing the gradient from abstraction (they do represent some things) to concreteness (they are only inkblots) may be particularly difficult for seriously disturbed people. Detractors note that research has also shown that interpretations sometimes say more about the psychologist than the subject.

Two, comparison of a subject's responses with what the inkblots actually look like provides a test of the subject's ability to perceive reality accurately. Detractors note that it is hard to say what something actually looks like. Any test of perceptual accuracy, however, will either produce little variation among subjects or raise questions about the psychologist's subjective evaluation. Clinicians frequently make judgments about people based on subjective evaluations; the standardized stimuli of the Rorschach at least allow for a second opinion.

Three, the Rorschach is widely used as a nomothetic device, meaning that responses are coded for how the ink was used, the content that was seen, and numerous other variables. An individual's codes are then compared with population averages, and inferences are drawn about subjects by comparing their performance with most people's. Nomothetic use has proliferated since John E. Exner published the Comprehensive System (CS) in 1974, with its extensive research base. Critics have attacked the CS as not meeting nomothetic standards with respect to reliability, norming, and validity.

Few critics take issue with the utility of examining a subject's responses to ambiguous stimuli under controlled conditions. Many Rorschach interpretations, however, go far beyond this. The CS, for example, derives 113 codes and 32 indexes, ratios, and percentages from as few as 14 answers. The Rorschach takes a relatively long time to learn, and critics are also concerned that this investment makes practitioner constraint more difficult.