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Take a look at this and see what it looks
like to you.
Okay, and this one.
And one more.
For decades, psychologists have used these
inkblots to diagnose mental illnesses
and gain insight into people’s personality traits.
Which may seem like kind of a sketchy way
to understand someone’s mind.
And some people have definitely overestimated
its power.
But modern studies of this old technique suggest
that in some ways,
this test actually can tell us things about
the way people see the world.
The traditional inkblot test, called the Rorschach
Test, is a set of ten inkblots.
Basically, you look at these colored splats
and describe what you see.
Then, depending on your answers, a psychologist
may be able to tell something
about how you process the world, or even about your personality.
Well, allegedly.
The use of inkblots as a psychological tool
is really controversial.
And taking a look at its history, you can
see why.
The Rorschach Test is named after the Swiss
psychologist Hermann Rorschach,
who published it in 1921.
Weirdly enough, he actually first got into
inkblots
through a popular game in the 19th century called “Klecksographie.”
In this game, players make their own inkblots
by dropping ink onto paper,
then folding it along the middle and pressing
the halves together to create symmetrical patterns.
Then, they compete to come up with the most
and wildest interpretations of what the blot looks like.
Apparently, Rorschach loved this game.
Enough to get the nickname “Klex” from
his high school friends.
And when he entered the realm of psychology,
it was still on his mind.
Enough so that he became the first person
to turn inkblots to the task of understanding
how people with mental illnesses process the
world.
Early in his career, he noted that people
with schizophrenia
seemed to interpret the patterns differently from other players.
And later in his career, he decided to test
that observation further.
He designed hundreds of inkblots and tested
them on 300 patients and 100 controls,
and ultimately, he claimed these splotches
could be used to diagnose mental illness.
He found that viewers without mental health
conditions tended to give similar answers to each other,
while people with similar mental health diagnoses
gave answers that resembled each other
but differed from the typical answers.
Eventually, he settled on just ten inkblots that seemed to draw out the most measurable differences.
And in 1921, the year before Rorschach died,
he published these ten images in a book titled Psychodiagnostik.
From there, the inkblots became widely available,
along with the coding system Rorschach developed,
which he claimed could diagnose various mental
disorders, such as psychosis.
And before long, the images became wildly
popular in the U.S
except, as a personality test.
Which is not what the Rorschach Test was designed
for.
Like, at all.
People who weren’t trained in psychology,
or even working in a psychological field,
began introducing them into their work.
For example, in the 1960s, U.S. job recruiters
started using them to sort through potential employees,
thinking they could pick out the personality
traits they wanted.
Even psychologists got really liberal with
their applications of the test.
And that’s where the science started to
really get... mushy.
After Rorschach’s death, inkblots were so
popular that many scientists began adding
to his body of work.
They tried to find more and more aspects of
personality and cognition
that these inkblots could potentially tease out.
And along the way, they began to adopt different
methods of interpretation and new ways of scoring.
Researchers at the time eventually rolled all of these additions into a new, standardized inkblot system,
called the Rorschach Comprehensive System.
But the problem was, not all of those additions
were as rigorous as they should have been,
and inkblot tests began to earn a reputation
as pseudoscience.
Around the same time, other approaches to
psychology that attempted to draw meaning
from the subconscious mind were falling out
of favor,
and the Rorschach Test went down with them.
So, these days, it’s easy to write off the
Rorschach Test completely,
and there are a lot of strong, negative feelings towards it,
for a lot of good reasons!
First there was all the mushy personality
science that followed Rorschach’s death.
Then there’s the fact that the results of
the test can depend a lot on the person scoring it.
And, to top it all off, it doesn’t seem
to actually reliably diagnose most disorders.
So, it’s pretty problematic.
But there may still be some glimmers of usefulness
in there.
A team using modern analysis methods found
that some parts of the test in its current form
still seem to have some merit.
A study published in 2013 systematically reviewed
53 existing meta-analyses
on the Rorschach Comprehensive System,
and found that, of the 65 main variables it
claims to test, 13 had some really solid support.
These 13 variables were the ones that assessed
how you see and think about the world,
or your cognitive and perceptual processes.
Which, lo and behold, is what Rorschach designed
the test for in the first place.
The researchers concluded that Rorschach’s
inkblots are of “notable use” for identifying
those with psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia.
People with schizophrenia often experience
thought disorder,
which messes with their ability to organize their thoughts.
Because of that, the way they interpret the
blots is noticeably different, more scattered,
and in some cases it can demonstrate their
feelings of paranoia.
Again, just like Rorschach first noticed.
It’s unlikely that psychologists would use
test in place of other diagnostic tools
we have for mental illnesses these days, but
now we know that it does have some value.
The Rorschach test may seem like a cliché example of how wacky and pseudoscientific psychology can be,
and thanks to its history,
it does have a lot of baggage.
But with more rigorous research using modern
research methods, there’s reason to hope
that something useful can be pulled from the
mush.
And if nothing else, it stands as a cautionary
tale to future scientists.
Be careful how you use psychological tools,
or you might end up ruining them for everyone.
Thanks for watching SciShow Psych, which is
produced by Complexly.
If you want to keep imagining the world complexly
with us,
check out Crash Course Business: Entrepreneurship Learning Playlist, hosted by Anna Akana.
In this 17-episode series, Anna will explore
how to turn an idea into a successful business.
Even from the very beginning, our first video can help you figure out if you want to be an entrepreneur,
or if you already are.
You can find the link for the playlist in
the description.
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