TAT Responses in Relation to Induced Motivational Set and Reasoning Ability

Transcription

1 Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology July 2006, Vol. 32, No. 3, TAT Responses in Relation to Induced Motivational Set and Reasoning Ability N. Annalakshmi Bharathiar University, Coimbatore The present study examines the effect of motivational set induced through instruction and reasoning ability on the extent of expression of needs in the stories produced by the subjects to the TAT. Five TAT Cards having special relevance to tapping the needs achievement, affiliation, aggression, autonomy and abasement were administered under three motivation conditions, viz. responding under instruction to be neutral, fake-good and fake-bad to the subjects. The TAT was group administered and the protocols were scored for expression of particular need using a ten point rating scale. The level of intellectual ability of the subjects was rated on a three point rating scale applied to each protocol under neutral condition. Criterion groups of representing low, moderate and high levels of reasoning ability were formed on the basis of rating scores on intellectual ability. The findings reveal that the motivational set induced by instructions consistently produces significant effect on the expression of all the five needs studied, in the protocols as expected. The reasoning ability also has significant effect on expression of three out of the five needs. No interaction effect between motivational set and level of reasoning ability has been observed on the test performance. The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a very well known and widely used projective test and is of perennial interest to researchers (Cogan et al., 2002; Phelps, 2003; Morgan, 2004). In recent years expert are divided over the merits of projective tests including TAT (Erica Goode, 2001). It purports to assess a person s patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capability, and emotional reactions on the basis of his responses to ambiguous test materials. The TAT Cards are designed to elicit different needs. Certain cards are designed to give a premium to certain chosen needs. The TAT like any other projective personality test is criticized for having the scope to deliberately alter the expression of oneself in the response protocol. Individuals seeking job and also trained by specialists to produce TAT stories connoting various expressions may falsify the protocols and foul the assessment. This has great implication in the using the test for making assessment of candidates in a competitive selection. Hence it is important to research periodically on the effect of motivational set on the performance on the TAT stories. Motivational set could be induced through instructions (Eysenck, 1973). By manipulating the instructions given to the subjects responding to TAT it is possible to alter the motivation with which they respond to the test stimuli. Thus, it is likely that different sets of instructions may induce different motivations in the subjects and the production of stories might be affected by the motivational

2 332 TAT- Motivational Set and Reasoning Ability conditions under which they were produced. Thus instructions to fake good and instructions to fake bad may induce motivation to manipulate the degree of expression of specific needs in the TAT protocols, which might vary from spontaneous responding to the test stimuli under instructions respond in a neural manner. Any effect the motivational set may have on the expression of needs in the protocols produced by the subjects will have its impact on interpretation of the protocols as reflecting the personality dynamics of the subject. Under such conditions the motivational set might confound the interpretation of the protocols. Research Question Whether individuals could voluntarily enhance or discount the expression of their needs in their responses to TAT? Objective The objective of the study is to examine the extent to which the TAT responses could be varied deliberately by the subjects. Thus an attempt was made to study the scope for deliberately altering the expressions of the needs by the subjects to one of the widely used projective techniques, viz., The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The findings have implication for using the projective techniques as a valid tool of personality assessment in cases where there is a chance of the respondent attempting to deliberately change the expression of needs in the test. Hypotheses The following hypotheses were formulated for testing. 1. There will be no difference in the degree of needs expressed in the protocols elicited under different conditions of motivation. 2. There will be no difference in the degree of needs expressed in the protocols produced by subjects exhibiting high, moderate, and low levels of reasoning ability. 3. There will be no interaction between the conditions of motivation and level of reasoning ability in the degree of needs expressed in the protocols. Design The hypotheses involve comparison of the protocols elicited under different conditions of motivation and also comparison of the criterion groups representing three levels of reasoning. This necessitates obtaining TAT protocols produced under different conditions of motivation induced through instructions and evolving criterion groups from the sample representing high, moderate, and low levels of reasoning for the purpose of comparison. Therefore, a 3X3 factorial design was employed to execute the basic research plan of the study. Method Sample The sample for the study was drawn from college population, 60 students both male and female, undergoing graduate program in science were selected. The age varied from 18 to 23 years. Students from first, second, and third year of the graduate program were included in the sample. Tool The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Indian Adaptation of Murray by Uma Chaudhary (1960) was used to elicit protocols from the subjects. Procedure Of the various cards developed by Uma Choudhary (1960) only the cards purporting to elicit responses relevant to five different needs were chosen for administration. Thus only the cards relevant to identifying the manifestation of the need for achievement (Card-I), the need for affiliation (Card-II), the need for aggression (Card-V), the need for

3 N. Annalakshmi 237 autonomy (Card-X) and the need for abasement (Card-VIII) were utilized. The choice of the specific cards for administration was based on simplicity of characteristics of the stimuli and the capacity of the stimuli to invoke and elicit the commonly found dominant needs from the individual subjects. The original instructions developed by Murray (1943) for administering the TAT were used in the study. The cards were group administered to the subjects using over-headprojector. Not more than 20 subjects were allowed to participate in each session of administration of the cards. Each card was projected on a screen for 30 seconds under each condition and the subjects were allowed 5 minutes to write their responses immediately after the card has been taken off the projection. The administration of TAT was done under three distinctly different conditions pertaining to response set. The first condition is neutral. The second and third conditions were relevant to creating a set to faking-good and a set of faking-bad respectively. Under neutral condition the subjects were instructed to respond to stimuli in a spontaneous manner without any inhibition after involving long drawn out thought process. Under the condition to fake-good, the subjects were instructed to make effort to maximize or enhance the expression of the need felt by them in a deliberate manner. In the condition to fakebad, the subjects were instructed to make effort to minimize or decrease the expression of the need felt by them in a thoughtful manner. Construction of Criterion Groups The criterion groups representing high, moderate, and low levels of reasoning ability were constructed from the sample based on their scores on a Rating Scale for Reasoning Ability adopted for this purpose. The rating scale involved scores ranging from 1 to 3. For the purpose of rating only the responses given by the subjects under the neutral condition of administering the TAT were considered. The five protocols given by the subject in response to the cards presented to him/her under neutral conditions were each rated using the rating scale for expression of intellectual ability. An overall rating of the intellectual ability was obtained for each subject averaging the rating obtained by him on the five cards administered to him/her. The subjects with a score of 1, 2 and 3 on the scale were allotted to groups representing low, moderate and high level of intellectual ability respectively. Thus the three criterion groups were formed and there were 30 subjects in the first group, 15 susubjects in the second group and 15 subjects in the third group. Scoring for Expression of the Needs The TAT protocols elicited from the subjects under the various conditions were carefully scanned through by the investigator and scored for the expression of the various needs expressed there by using a ten point rating scale. The extent of the expression of a particular need in a protocol was assessed for a maximum score of ten and the scores obtained by a subject on all the five cards administered were averaged to obtain over all score for him/her on intellectual ability. Statistical Analysis The present experimental set up gives rise to 3 X 3 Factorial arrangements where in three levels of motivational conditions and three levels of intellectual ability were involved as factors. This facilitates applying analysis of variance to assess the main effect and the interaction effect of the variables examined in the study on expression of the needs on TAT protocol. The analysis of variance was followed with specific comparison of means using Honestly Significant Difference (Welkowitzs et al.1999). Results The results of the statistical analysis are presented in Table 1 and 2.

4 238 TAT-Motivational Set and Reasoning Ability Table 1 provides means of the scores for the expression of various needs by the three groups based on intellectual ability under three conditions of motivational set. Table 1: Mean Scores on Expression of needs of the Subjects of the Various Groups under different conditions. Neutral Condition Condition -Good Condition -bad (N=60) (N=60) (N=60) Need Group Group Group Group Group Group Group Group Group Expressed I II III I II III I II III (N=30) (N=15) (N=15) (N=30)(N=15) (N=15) (N=30) (N=15) (N=15) Achievement Affiliation Aggression Autonomy Abasement The analysis of variance showed that the overall difference between the motivational conditions was consistent for all the five needs : n Achievement [F(2)=37.52, p<0.01], n Affiliation [F(2)=32.39, p<0.01], n Aggression [F(2)=31.24,p<0.01], n Autonomy [F(2)=22.64, p<0.01] and n Abasement [F(2)=20.10, p<0.01]. Hence the hypotheses in these cases are rejected. The F-ratios relating to the overall difference between the three criterions groups on reasoning ability are consistently significant with reference to n Achievement [F(2)=4.86, p<0.01], n Affiliation [F(2)=3.09, p<0.05] and n Aggression [F(2)=4.42, p<0.05] only and the F-ratios with reference to need autonomy and need abasement are not significant. Hence the hypotheses relating to n Achievement, n Affiliation and n Aggression are rejected, and the hypotheses relating to n Autonomy and n Abasement are accepted. No F-ratio relating to interaction between the motivational conditions and the level of reasoning is significant in any case. Since the F-ratios are significant in all the comparisons relating to motivational conditions and in the few cases relating to the needs, HSDs were worked out for the comparison of specific means where ever required. The results are presented in Table-2. Table 2: HSD for Specific Comparison Made Between the Different Groups and the Various Conditions. Variable Conditions of Motivation Levels of Reasoning nachieve Neutral Group I Group II ment Good (N= 60) (N= 60) (N= 60) (N=90) (N=45) (N=45) Neutral 1.65** 3.00** Group I 1.20 ns 1.53 * Good 4.65** Group II 0.33 ns

5 N. Annalakshmi 239 n Affili Neutral 2.78 ** 0.92 * Group I 0.37 ns 1.19 ns ation Good 3.70 ** Group II 0.82 ns n Aggre Neutral 1.50 ** 2.85 ** Group I 0.28 ns 1.51 ns ssion Good 4.35 ** Group II 1.37 ns n Auto- Neutral 2.76 ** 0.33 ns Group I nomy Good 3.06 ** Group II n Abase Neutral 2.43 ** 1.64 * Group I 0.48 ns 0.62 ns ment Good 4.07 ** Group II 1.20 ns Discussion The findings of the study have shown that motivational set has a significant effect on the degree of expression of the needs for achievement, affiliation, aggression, autonomy, and abasement in the TAT protocols. Thus instructions seem to have successfully produced motivational set appropriate to the conditions and this has considerable effect on the performance of the subjects on TAT. A significant pattern has emerged in the manifestation of the needs for achievement, affiliation, aggression, autonomy and abasement with regard to the motivational effect. In the case of need achievement, need affiliation, need aggression, and need abasement, the mean scores of the subjects under fake-good condition is highest and the mean achievement score of the subjects under fake-bad is lowest and the mean scores differ significantly from one another from condition to condition. While the same trend of means is confirmed in the case of need abasement; the difference between the mean scores obtained under neutral condition and the fake-good condition, and between the mean scores obtained under fake-good condition and fakebad condition are found to be significant. In the case just cited no significant difference was found between the scores obtained under neutral condition and fake-bad condition. However, the trend of the means in all the cases with regard to comparisons of the expression of the five needs on the TAT administered under the three conditions of motivational set conforms to our expectation. Thus, it is found that motivational set has a significant effect on the performance of the subjects on TAT in an expected manner. In the case of reasoning ability, it is found that overall differences in the expression of the needs for achievement, affiliation, aggression and abasement have emerged significant as found through the ANOVA. However even the overall effect found in these cases has been found to be masked in the specific comparisons made of the high, moderate and low groups

6 240 TAT-Motivational Set and Reasoning Ability on reasoning ability for all these four needs. The only exception to this trend is that of the comparison made between the high and low groups on reasoning ability wherein a significant difference between the means in favor of the high groups is reported. The failure of the overall significant differences to show in specific comparisons in the case of comparison between different criterion groups on reasoning ability is intriguing. The complexity of the reasoning ability seems to have contributed for the insignificant interaction between motivational set and reasoning ability herein observed. Further studies may be needed with more sensitive assessment of reasoning ability of the subjects to clarify the relationship between reasoning ability and test performance. Experimental conditions could be manipulated by adopting appropriate instructions to induce different levels of arousal and hence the motivational set as shown by Eysenck (1973). The findings suggest that induced motivational set could produce the effect intended by the subject on his/her performance on a projective test. Motivational set confound assessment of individuals in test situation. Review of published studies of the TAT over a 10 year period identified that some respondents may display high levels of a given attribute on the TAT not because they possess high levels of this attribute, but because they are fantasizing about possessing high levels of this attribute (Vane, 1991; Loevinger, 1987). It is also argued that due to what is called the inhibitory effect individuals can exhibit low levels of an attribute on the TAT not because they possess low levels of this attribute, but because they are repressing or otherwise inhibiting the expression of this attribute. These effects can be invoked as ad hoc immunizing tactics (Popper, 1959) to explain away negative findings in TAT. The findings of the present study are explicable invoking Walter Mitty (Loevinger, 1987) and inhibition effects (Lilienfeld, et al., 2000) as in the case of studies reporting negative findings on TAT. References Cogan R, Larrabee, L. K., Wyatt, I. M., Ontiberoz, A., Waters, S. K., Werner, M. L., Miller, A. L., Lovelady, A. C., Hunt, T. J., Hardin, E. D. III, & Gonzalez, P. M. (2002). Castration anxiety and phobias. Psychological reports, 91, Erica Goode. (2001). What the critics sees in Rorschach see is... flaw. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April l9, Eysenck, H.J. (1973). (Etd). Experiments in motivation. NY: Mac Millan. Lilienfeld, S.O., Wood, J.M., and Garb, H.N. (2000). General overview of TAT research: Problems and findings. Psychological science in the public interest, 1, 2. Loevinger, J.C. (1987). Paradigms of Personality. NY: W H Freeman. Morgan, W. G. (2004). Gone but not forgotten: The origin and history of the TAT-II pictures. A paper presented at the 2004 Midwinter Meeting of the Society for Personality Assessment, Miami, FL. Murray, H.A. (1943). Thematic Apperception Test Manual. Harvard: Harvard University Press. Phelps, C. (2003). The evolution of caring: Longitudinal evidence. Paper submitted to the Conference The Paradox of Happiness in Economics organized by the University of Micano, Bicocca, 21 to 23 March, Uma Choudhary. (1960). Indian Adaptation of TAT. New Delhi: Manasayan. Vane, J. R. (1981). The Thematic Apperception Test: A review. Clinical Psychology Review, I, Welkowitzs, J., Cohen, B.H., & Ewen, R.B. (1999). Introductory statistics for behavioral sciences. 5 th Edn. Singapore: John Wiley & Sons (Asia). Received: April 04, 2006 Accepted: June 23, 2006 N. Annalakshmi, PhD is Lecturer in the Department of Psychology, Bharathiar University, Coimbatore