Chapter 17 Chapter Eleven Personality Psychologist-1

The nature and origin of personality have always been of paramount importance to psychologists.For them, the question that is integral to understanding human nature is: What explains the differences in character and behavior among people?There is also a great deal of interest in this question among non-professional ordinary people.For them, this question of great significance in daily life is: How can one judge another's character, how can he understand his -words-and deeds? Clearly, what people say is not a reliable source of information; humans are the best liars of all living species, and they do lie a lot.People also cannot rely on the gestures or performance of others, because people will fake, and some people will look alike.Even their actions don't always reveal the truth, because people can cheat and not reveal their true selves until the last moment of truth.But, whoever that person is—whether it’s someone we’re planning to marry, who might buy our property; a chief of our enemy’s country (or our own)—what does this person really like? , what kind of behavior he or she prefers, it is the most important thing for us to be able to make an accurate judgment on these things, and nothing else is as valuable as these.

For these reasons, the study of character has been of greatest interest to philosophers and laymen alike throughout recorded history, and it has been one of the most important areas of modern psychology during the past sixty years. Some of the earliest known character assessment activities rely mainly on the pseudoscience of astrology.From the 10th century BC, Babylonian astrologers used the positions of the planets to predict wars and natural disasters, and by the 5th century BC, Greek astrologers used the data to interpret personality and predict the future of their patrons .In an age of naive science, the idea that the position of the planets at one's birth affects one's character and one's destiny is very attractive.Oddly enough, by now, modern astronomy and behavioral science have shown this to be superstitious nonsense, yet the idea still has a lot of appeal.

Physiognomy, which we mentioned earlier, is another bogus trick that claims to unearth hidden personalities.Unlike astrology, there is some psychological basis for the idea that facial features are clues to one's inner self, and how we look and how we feel about ourselves certainly plays a role.However, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, and some other physiognomy scientists did not think of this relationship. In turn, they compiled a lot of data, between certain facial features and personality traits. Many wonderful connections have been pieced together.Even the great Mr. Aristotle emphasized: "People with big foreheads tend to be sluggish, people with small foreheads are not specific; people with a broad sky are easy to be excited, and people with prominent foreheads are easy to lose their temper."

Like astrology, astrology has lasted for quite a long time.The astute Romans believed in appearance: Cicero once said: "The face is the image of the soul." Julius Caesar thought: "I am not afraid of these fat guys with big ears, but those pale and thin Folks are troublesome." (Caesar's point is most evident in Shakespeare's words: "Let me be surrounded by fat men; / A man smooth in heaven may live in peace; / That Garcias born His face is thin and hungry; / He has a lot of scheming: such a person is dangerous. /") The actual face of Jesus has never been known (the earliest "portrait" in the Roman tomb was also two or three hundred years after his death It was painted only in 2000), however, from the 2nd century AD to the present, his portraits have always had a peaceful face and extraordinary appearance.The tradition of physiognomy goes on and on, and many of us, when we meet a new person, like to make guesses about his personality based on his face.

Another method of classifying personalities based on visible features is phrenology, the pseudoscience of feeling the shape of the skull, which was all the rage in the 19th century.Although phrenology died out in the 20th century, many people still believe that a person with a full and prominent heaven is a "resourceful" and sensitive person, while a person with a flat and narrow heaven is probably a jackass and iron Unsympathetic. The most famous theory in ancient times linking personality with physical characteristics is Galen's theory of temperament and humor - he believes that people with too much mucus are calm and calm; people with too much jaundice are irritable and irritable; Melancholy; optimistic and confident blood.This - dogma - ruled until the 18th century.Subsequent disciples have resorted to nutritional fads, steam baths and other quasi-scientific tricks to correct the chemical cycles in the body in hopes of enhancing physical and mental health.

In contrast, a very modern-sounding approach was developed three centuries ago by a German philosopher and jurist named Christian Tomasius (1655-1728), who was also Founder of the University of Hull.Thomasias came up with a way to judge an individual's personality by assigning numerical points to different personality traits.Although his method is somewhat crude, it has to a large extent laid the groundwork for the modern personality assessment technique called "grading scale".The title he chose for his book is also intriguing: A New Discovery of Real Science: Necessary for the public, even for the insight into the inner secrets of others, even against their wishes, from ordinary conversation.The title is a bit long for modern tastes, no doubt; but, in its spirit, it is as up-to-date as modern bestsellers on how to be successful.

For centuries, discussions about personality have revolved around one of the most fundamental and most debated topics in psychology: Is human nature determined from within or from without?Are our thoughts and actions the product of inner forces or the result of environmental stimuli? Plato and his disciples insisted that the content of thought existed before man was born, and only needs to be remembered; while Pythagoras and Democritus countered that all knowledge comes from perception and thus sparked this debate.In the 17th and 18th centuries, the debate came to a head, with Descartes and other rationalists arguing that the thoughts in the head were innate, while empiricists such as Locke argued that the minds of newborn babies are white. Paper-sheets, rely on experience to leave information on it.

When psychology became a science, the geneticists—Galton, Goddard, Terman, and others—brought up survey data to support their views, and the behaviorists—Buff Love, Watson, Skinner, and others—provided experimental evidence to support their views.This debate is going on all the time, while the "psychologists" (in modern terminology) explain human character and behavior in terms of inner (xinxing) forces, and the "situationists" also use personal experience to explain human character and behavior. context to explain character and behavior. These two perspectives have drawn opposing conclusions on child rearing, educational methods, psychotherapy, public policy toward minorities, the treatment of criminals, the status and rights of women and gay people, immigration policy, and many other personal and social issues.Correspondingly, this question has dominated personality psychology in recent decades.People are eager to appear - a decisive scientific answer.Let's see what researchers and theorists on both sides are coming to, and see if such an answer is possible.

In the early part of this century, the greatest contributions to personality theory were made by psychoanalysts.Freud offered an explanation of adult personality as the result of the ego's attempt to control instinctual impulses and convert them into acceptable forms of behavior.Adler was more interested in the influence of social forces on character, such as middle-born children being the cause of feelings of inferiority due to position.Jung's description of personality is that it is largely composed of inner, opposing, tendencies towards assertiveness and passivity, introversion and extroversion, experience and the "collective unconscious" (which he considered to be related to Innate rather than learned, each person is formed internally by some concepts, myths and symbols passed down from previous generations.

While psychodynamic concepts thus infer the ways in which personality develops, they do not provide psychologists with a quick and accurate measure of personality that has become possible in the measurement of intelligence.The personality traits revealed by psychoanalysis emerge only after dozens or hundreds of clinical visits, and even then the method yields impressionistic assessments rather than measurable results .As Raymond Cattell, a well-known figure in the field of personality measurement, said, the clinical method is "at best a survey", while what psychology needs is a "quantifiable taxonomy".

The first such taxonomy to appear is a product of the Second World War.When the United States entered the conflict in 1917, Robert Woodworth (1869-1962), a noted experimental psychologist and professor at Columbia University, was tasked with devising a quick and easy way to identify emotionally frustrated recruits.In an emergency, he conducted one of the earliest psychological experiments, the "Personal Data Questionnaire," which asked subjects only mild questions about symptoms, such as: "Have you ever sleepwalked?" "Did you feel the urge to jump down when standing on a high place?" Points were obtained by adding up the number of symptoms they admitted. As a kind of personality assessment, the personal data questionnaire is very primitive and limited. It only collects some information or wrong information provided by the subjects, and it is only information about neurological symptoms.But "it works on the surface"—one feels intuitively that these questions do separate the normal from the neurotic.And, in fact, a later experiment to prove the validity of the test found that diagnosed neurotics gave 36 bad answers ("yes"), compared with 10 for normal people. Woodworth's pioneering work set the pattern, and after the war many other psychologists devised other similar questionnaires in which subjects rated themselves.Before long, however, the questionnaires went beyond symptoms to include questions about general personality traits.The best of the early tests was devised in 1931 by the psychologist Robert Bernroot.The questionnaire asked 125 questions and categorized the answers into scores on four main traits: self-control, self-sufficiency, introversion, and neuroticism.For example, if the subject answers the question "Do you often feel miserable?" - points for above, zero points for neuroticism, and zero points for self-sufficiency.These scores were only speculation—Bernruth had no empirical evidence for the correlation of each answer with the four characteristics—however, there was a national craze for psychological testing at the time, and throughout the 30 In the 1990s, more than 1 million copies of the Bernroot personality questionnaire and a large number of similar test papers were sold, and these questionnaires were widely used.By then, personality had become a specialized field of psychology, dominated by trait theory, a scientific rendition of the commonsense notion that each person has a set of identifiable traits and habits in a particular situation. behavior pattern.Traits can describe elements of a given personality, but they say nothing about the underlying psychodynamic structure or how that personality is formed.The Bernroot Questionnaire and other early personality tests were ways of measuring some of these factors. In 1928 and 1929 an important line of research came to the fore, which seemed to come out of characteristic theory.Father Hughes Hartshawn, a priesthood faculty member at Union Theological Seminary, and Mark May, a psychologist who also worked at Union Theological Seminary, studied the effectiveness of adult actions such as Boy Scouting in Moral behavior is cultivated in children.Hartshawn and May gave several children a pencil-and-paper test to gauge their attitudes toward cheating, stealing, and lying.They then engaged the children in activities such as group play and self-grading, in which the children could cheat, steal, or lie without looking like they would be discovered, although, in fact, the researchers could Judge exactly what they do. The results are deeply disturbing.Not only was there little relationship between what the children said on the pen-and-paper test and what they actually did, but there was no continuum between how honest and dishonest a child was in one situation from another. Sex, it's amazing.Hartshawn and May then concluded that, if traits exist, they should not cause individuals to behave similarly under different circumstances. (We are) quite sure that there are certain common factors that tend to make people different from one another...However, our contention is that such common factors do not operate independently within the individual's situation The inner whole, but the variable of the situation. This contradicts experience in everyday life.We all have the feeling that some of the people we know are honest and some are dishonest, some are reserved and others are open, some work hard and others play games .Gordon Allport (1897-1967), head of the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, came out to save the situation.He conducted a series of studies, as well as a monograph: "Psychological Interpretation of Personality" (1937).The unassuming, pale-faced Allport was a hardworking man whose research interests ranged from prejudice to communication to values, but character, especially trait theory, was a lifelong preoccupation. - Partly because of his own character, he is an ideal person to rebut the Hartshawn-Mey situationalism.He provided scientific evidence for the mind-nature theory in common sense. Allport was the youngest of four children of a country doctor in Indiana.His father's family originated in England a few lifetimes ago, his mother was of German and Scots descent, and Allport's own family life, as he recalled him many years later, "had nothing but austere, Protestant honesty." and diligence".In the area where he lived, there were no medical facilities to speak of, and for many years the Allport home had been home to many patients and nurses, and the young Allport had shared his own— Part of the job, running the clinic, washing bottles and caring for patients.He absorbed his father's humanitarian worldview and values, and in later years he often liked to quote his father's motto: "If everyone does his best work and takes only the minimum amount of financial return needed at home, Then, there must be enough wealth to deal with it." At Harvard, Allport found time to do a lot of social service volunteer work in addition to his own research.This fulfilled a deep need to help people in need, and, as he puts it in his autobiography, "gave me a sense of competence (correcting a general sense of inferiority)."His two interests, psychological research and social service work, eventually merged because he was convinced: "To do social service effectively, one must have a good understanding of human character." For Allport, the study of character was always a matter of common sense, and his interest was in the conscious part, in the easily accessible parts, rather than in the indefinable depths of the unconscious.He often talks about his only meeting with Freud because it had a profound impact on him.As a 22-year-old boy, he wrote to Freud when he was visiting Vienna, saying that he was in the city himself and wanted to see him.Freud received him very graciously, but sat quietly, waiting for him to speak.Trying to come up with a topic to start, Allport mentioned that on the way to Floyd's office, he heard a 4-year-old tell his mother that he wanted to avoid some dirty things, and he Shows a real fear of dirt.The mother, Allport described, was fully dressed, with a starched collar, and an imposing presence.He didn't think there was any connection, but, as he recalls: "Floyd looked at me with those kind, healing eyes of his and said, 'Is that little boy yourself?'" Orr Dumbfounded, Potter changed the subject.This experience, he later recalled, "taught me that deep psychology research, despite all its benefits, tends to fall into too deep a circle of research, and that psychologists are able to It is also acceptable to clarify things such as motives.” (He also begs to disagree with the behaviorists, who, he argues, describe man as a purely "responsive" organism—that is, responding only to external stimuli—while, in fact, humans are "more positive" and are largely driven by their own goals, purposes, intentions, programs and moral values.) During his own graduate studies, Allport began devising his own paper-and-pencil personality trait tests.He and his older brother, the psychologist Freud, developed a more objective test than the Benreuter method and other earlier tests.To measure what they called "dominance suppression," they asked subjects not how dominant they felt or how oppressed they felt, but how they behaved in specific situations when that trait scale was involved.Here is an example: Someone is trying to get in front of you in line.You've been waiting for a while, and you can't wait any longer.Assuming the queue jumper is of the same gender, you will often: — Advise the jumper - "glaring" at the line jumper or discussing the line jumper in a clearly audible voice with the person next to him ——Decided not to wait any longer, just walked away - do nothing After trying this test on a number of voluntary subjects, Allport concluded that people who respond superiorly or depressively to any challenging situation are likely to do the same in other similar situations. Reaction. "Most men," he writes, "are inclined to occupy a given position on a given continuum of superiority at the high and oppression at the low." To them this seemed to establish The reality of the traits, too, is that individuals react similarly in similar situations.As Allport later put it: If it can be shown that one kind of behavior is usually associated with the other, then there is evidence that there is something underpinning both behaviors, a certain trait...that is, a neuropsychological It has the capacity to transform many stimuli into functional equivalents, and to initiate and direct the same (quite meaningfully contextual) forms of adaptive and expressive behavior. That being the case, why did the children who were tested by Hartshawn and May behave inconsistently?Allport found an answer with Gestalt theory.The characteristics of each person are grouped together in a unique configuration of a hierarchy: at the top are the main qualities or key characteristics of the individual; focal point (the kind of quality we are all likely to mention in writing a letter of recommendation), Allport says, and finally, beneath that is a host of secondary characteristics, each of which The secondary features are all caused by a few special stimuli.Thus, individual behaviors may not be consistent in specific ways, but they are consistent in larger respects - what Allport prefers to call "consistent". For example, he said, if you observe a person walking slowly and then see him hurrying back to the library with a book, you may judge him as inconsistent because In one situation he was at ease, in another he was flying fast.However, that is only a secondary level of characteristic behavior.Another more important feature is elasticity.If you asked him to write larger letters on the blackboard and smaller letters on the paper and he did the same, you might think he was versatile—and he was, as he was walking. Time-like.His behavior in both activities shows plasticity and is thus consistent, though not necessarily coherent. Allport also uses this point to answer the question: Why do individuals often display incompatible traits, or behave incoherently in different situations?Ephemeral moods or "states" often constitute what appear to be incoherence, and an urgent situation may create a temporary state of restlessness in anyone's mind, even an otherwise calm person. Although Allport has revised his own theory of character over the years, he has always maintained that traits are the most basic and relatively stable units of character.His study of traits won him fame and glory in his day, and many, if not most psychologists would agree that psychology of personality is actually synonymous with the study of traits, if he knew this,— Will be very happy. Since traits are neither visible objects nor specific actions, but traits of individuals, a central question for researchers is how to measure them. First, they had to figure out what exactly they were trying to measure.Early personality researchers selected - a large number of intuitively obvious traits, such as introversion, self-control and self-sufficiency.Soon, however, they widened their horizons and took many other things into consideration, so that the huge number made the field quickly become a mess. Because, there are too many possibilities.The hardworking Allport and a colleague counted more than 18,000 words in the dictionary that refer to different human behaviors or qualities.Not all words refer to characteristics: some refer to an observer's response to another person rather than a characteristic of that person ("admirable", "disgusting"), and some refer only to a temporary state rather than a long-term characteristic (“Stupid,” “Terrified”), and some are just metaphors (“Alive,” “Prolific”).Even so, there are still 4000-5O00 words that are specific to features. Hundreds of them have been explored in a variety of ways, from subjective impressions to laboratory experiments, from psychoanalytic interpretations to behavioral data. - Some of the main methods are as follows: Personal and Historical Materials: Letters, memoirs, autobiographies, diaries, and the like contain a great deal of information about the subject's personality, and of course misinformation, since a self-description intended to be read by others will certainly show - a disguised self rather than the naked truth. (Peppys's diary contains a wealth of licentious passages and outrageous thoughts, intended for his own viewing, and all written in code.) Famous interpretations of famous characters are based on personal data. Basic writing, however, tastes and theories vary from generation to generation, and the same material can form very different images about the writer.Character analyzes based on such material are sometimes very good literature, but rarely scientific. Interview: This is perhaps the most commonly used method of character assessment, but it is also the least effective. Some employment interviewers, college entrance exam directors, and psychoanalysts can gather a lot of personal information from conversations with interviewees, but others can't.Research has shown that even experienced interviewers can get quite different evaluations of the same person.In addition, interviews can yield some descriptions and explanations, but cannot yield quantifiable characteristic measurements.This type of interview is best suited to discerning whether an individual has obvious mental or emotional disturbances, but, among normal people, it is most useful as gathering personal data, attitudes, reviews, and other details that would Helps to understand more objective data about the person collected in other ways. Rating by observer: Researchers often ask a person's friends or acquaintances to rate him or her on specific characteristics.For accuracy, the researcher asks the person being questioned to rate them on a scale of some kind of characteristic, which ranges from 0-5, or 0-10—essentially Thomasius 1692 practice.But this method has many difficulties.Raters have their own rating style (some avoid extremes, others are very fond of them), subjects answer the same question differently at different times, and ratings are influenced by " Halo effect" (a subject who rates high on one characteristic tends to rate high on other characteristics as well). In general, then, the grading approach was considered to be neither very reliable nor particularly efficient. (Reliable methods give the same results over and over again, and efficient methods measure exactly what they are meant to measure.) In some cases, however, grading methods are both efficient and reliable.The famous trait psychology researcher Raymond Cattell relied on this method for his work, using only the eyes of the raters over a long period of time (possibly over a period of -years). , and data derived from seeing subjects in many contexts, and rating only one characteristic at a time, to avoid halo effects.Such a premise would improve reliability and effectiveness, but makes the method prohibitively expensive, time consuming, and difficult to implement except in institutions where the population is fairly constant and within sight of each other. The place simply couldn't be done. ... Questionnaire: This is currently the most common personality assessment tool.As we have seen, this approach quickly expanded beyond simple self-assessment to quasi-objective techniques, such as presenting real-life situations and asking subjects how they would most likely behave in those situations.Other earlier tests continued to ask questions about the subject's attitudes and feelings rather than possible behavior, however, worded in such a way that it was difficult for the subject to glorify their self-image, as in the "Personal Profile Questionnaire"- Sample.Most questionnaires have "yes/no" or "true/false" choices as possible answers, but some also include intermediate answers like "don't know." Psychologist Stark Hathaway and psychiatrist J. C. McKinley are both professors at the University of Minnesota. The famous "Minnesota Multilevel Inventory" (MM PI) they designed in the 1930s belongs to post- types.It contains 550 sentences, including: I am happy most of the time. I love social gatherings just to be with other people. I obviously lack self-confidence. I think I have a bad reputation. Subjects answered "yes," "no," or "?" (not sure) to each question.The questions are categorized into ten levels that measure depression, depression, hysteria, delirium, disturbance, heterosexuality, paranoia, neurasthenia, schizophrenia, hypomania, and social introversion.The names give the impression that the MMPI is primarily concerned with mental illness, and it does measure mental illness, but it can also detect normal personality.For example, people who answered "No" to "I am happy most of the time" and most other questions at this level are said to be shrewd, defensive, and deliberate.Those who answered "yes" to "I like to socialize just to be with other people" and related questions were identified as social, lively and ambitious, while those who answered "no" were identified as Consider someone who is humble, shy and self-evasive. These explanations are not based on intuition or common sense, but on empirical evidence.When designing the M MPI, Hathaway and McKinley took a large number of questions to mental hospitals or people with mental disorders to try, and then used the same questions to ask normal people who interviewed them, and then used the same questions to distinguish between the two categories. Questions from the population were retained for use as a questionnaire.For example, questions used as a measure of repression were answered differently by repressed and non-repressed people. Although the MMPI has been the most widely used personality questionnaire in the past half century, it has its own limitations and errors.To give an example, the questionnaire is very long.As another example, many of the subjects felt that many of these items were too explicit and disturbing to answer honestly (“bad words, often scary words that come to my mind and lingering," "I'm strongly attracted to people of the same sex.").In addition, some other items are obviously aimed at pathological aspects, which make normal people look ridiculous or feel insulted.A while ago, comedian Art Buckwald mocked the MPI questionnaire, suggesting that some additional questions should be added, such as: A very wide tie is a sign of illness. When I was young, I often liked to play with green vegetables. I use too much shoe polish. In 1949, a group of personality psychologists received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to establish a new research facility, the Personality Assessment and Research Institute, at the University of California, Berkeley.Its original purpose—and its purpose has since been broadened—was to develop better measures of personality, and over the past 40 years it has devised a vast array of research methods and new psychological tests Method.However, the best known and most widely used, and one that is still in use today, is the California Psychological Inventory (CPI), which was completed during the organization's first two years. The CPI is the result of the work of Dr. Harrison Gough, a researcher at the Institute and a professor at Berkeley, who is determined to improve the M MPI using materials suitable for normal people.He collected 1000 questions as source material, some extracted from the MPI, others written by himself and his colleagues.With the help of his assistants and colleagues, he tested the items, first with 80 graduate students and then with 80 senior medical students. Over the next few years, more than 13,000 students of different ages and Men and women of socioeconomic status were tested.To assess the validity of the items, or the answers elicited by the questions, Gough and his colleagues had a model subject be rated by his friends, and the rated The results were compared with the subjects' own answers to weed out the unreliable. The final version of the CPI includes 480 items (compared to 462 in the 1987 edition), such as: People often expect too much from me. I'm going to sit and relax - it's hard to get off. I love to party and socialize. Subjects answered "yes," "no" to each sentence, and these answers were scored on 15 personality traits ranging from self-control and self-acceptance to self-control and personality (the latest version of the CPI There are 28 levels. They measure - personal self-control, ability to maintain identity, ability to deal with people, social expressiveness, self-acceptance, independence, concentration, responsibility, social responsibility, self-control, good impression, community Spirituality, tranquility, patience, achievement through obedience, achievement through independence, intellectual efficiency, psychological clarity, flexibility, detachment, liking for routine, embodiment, managerial potential, work orientation, anxiety and Three indicators for detecting heterosexual psychology between men and women).In all respects, sales are good, translations into other languages ​​(28 languages, including Croatian, Hindi and Tagalog), and some psychology departments and training programs It is highly rated by leading figures, and it is among the best, and it is in the top 10, maybe the top 3, of psychological tests that are still in use today, even though it has been around forty years. Many other psychological tests provide answers to a wider range of questions than the MM PI or CPI. Here are three examples: Most police officers are very friendly indeed. (Draw a circle on the level number you agree or disagree with) (strongly disagree) -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 (strongly agree) Falling in love is more trouble than it's worth. (Pick a check mark where it best suits your feelings) (never) rarely (sometimes) often (always) My anger towards others is generally: (Tick the place that best describes you) (slightly) (smaller than - average) (medium) (larger than - average) (very strong) Responses on this scale yielded more accurate measures of attitude and feeling than "YES-NO" responses. Over the years, psychologists have devised hundreds of personality questionnaires and published them in research and commercial publications.有些代表很好的科学实践，还有-些却不是如此，可是，每种设计都是极好的商业财富。例如，CPI的销售数字，它的指南书，5本可重复使用的测试册子，50张答案卷和其它-些项目，尽管还是个秘密，但按高夫博士的说法，“应该是相当大的”。 投影测试：从30年代早期开始，越来越多的心理学家接受了心理分析的理论，认为无意识过程是性格的主要决定因素，而且，对不起戈登·奥尔波特先生，他们还寻找到很多检测的办法，用以测验这些过程以及由过程引发的特征。最为可行的办法是给受试者提供-些模棱两可的刺激——很模糊或者暗示性的图形或者图画——再请他或者她来描述这些图形。-般来说，作出的回答会显露出他们的-部分或者全部无意识的幻想、恐惧、期望和动机。 这样的测试中，最为有名的-个是在许多年以前——约在1912至1922年之间，由-位瑞士精神病学家赫尔曼·罗斯察设计出来的。他弄出了若干墨迹，请病人说出每个墨迹看起来像什么。通过许多年的实验以后，他把这种测试减少到了10种墨迹，有些是黑白的，有些是彩色的。进行罗斯察测试时，测试者把-张卡片显示给受试者看，再问他或她这个墨迹可能是什么东西或者让人想起什么，把答案写下来。所有的卡片都显示完毕以后，把答案评上分。打分需要仔细的培训，还要用到手册，其评分的-些标准是，受试者对整个墨迹或者-部分墨迹作出反应，墨迹的哪-部分受到了注意，答案是针对墨迹本身还是其背景。这里有几个与这种测试近似的（原罗斯察墨迹不允许复制）墨迹，还有-些对典型的反应作出的解释。 30年代，罗斯察测试法在美国的心理学家当中极受欢迎而且广泛使用。在几十年的时间当中，它-直是临床心理学博士论文用得最多的论题，有成千上万的研究论文是论述它的，可最终的裁决是说什么的都有。-些人发现所做的解释可靠也有效，另-些人却不这么想。然而，它总还是临床心理学家和精神病学家使用得最为广泛的测试法之-。 另-种有名的投影测试法是主题统觉测试（TAT），是由心理学家亨利·默里和-名助手克里斯蒂安娜·摩根创制的。生相高贵的默里在内心里却受着某个魔鬼的驱使，他在经历了很长-个痛苦的旅程之后才找到自我。他先是学历史的，经过了医学培训，成为外科专家，然后又花了5年时间学生理化学。他还在研究阶段就去苏黎世拜访了荣格，并在与他-起的三个星期的每-天和每-个漫长的周末里参加心理治疗。如他所说的，在这个“爆炸性的体验当中”，他“成了-位再生者”。他治好了到目前为止-直没有治好的口吃毛病，并对心理学产生了浓厚的兴趣。他转而学习这门学问，成了-位心理分析学家，最后在哈佛心理临床所找到了自己作为-位有心理分析倾向的研究人员。他与奥尔波特进行过短期合作，可是，那之后，他对性格抱的心理动力学观点使他们，按照奥尔波特的说法，“处于-种友好的分离状态下”。默里对性格研究最有意义的贡献，在于他和约20多位心理学家花3年时间进行的临床研究项目。他们深入研究了51位按评估技术分成类别的、大学年纪的成人的性格特征，分类的技术包括深层面谈，挫折测试（如根本不可能取胜的拼字游戏），实验者说出-些挑斗性的词，如“骗子”，“同性恋”等时受试者手指的颤抖，还有投影测试。在投影测试中，TAT法是最说明问题的-种。 实施默里和摩根于1935年为研究该项目而开发的TAT法时，测试者让受试者看19张黑白图片，图片里在进行什么事情或者为什么进行什么事情-点也不知道，但要求他为每张图片编-个故事出来，每个故事花约5分钟的时间，可以任由想象力自由发挥。对这些故事进行的心理学解释，在很大程度上依赖于-个由项目研究小组编制的、由35条性格“需要”或者动机而组成的单子，其中有获取成就的需要，自制的需要，还有秩序的需要和成为别人的救星的需要。 默里和摩根在-项描述他们的TAT开发的报告中，印了好几张图片作为样板。在-张图片中，有-位中年妇女向着左边的侧影，在她的旁边近靠观察者的地方，有-位穿戴整齐的年轻男人稍稍背对着她，他的头稍稍有些下垂，脸上略有皱眉的表情。（只有靠这些描述了，该测式法目前的出版人不允许复制这些图片。）默里和摩根说，下面这个故事，是-位受试者根据这幅图片编的： 母亲和孩子幸福地生活着。她没有丈夫。她的儿子是她惟-的支持。可这个孩子交上了坏朋友，并作为从犯参与了集体抢劫活动。他被发现了，并判了5年监禁。该图片表现他与母亲告别的场景。母亲很伤心，为他感到羞耻。孩子也感到非常羞耻。他因为自己给母亲造成的伤害而担心，担心的程度超过了他对自己要进监狱的担心。 这孩子（故事还在继续）因为表现好而出狱了，可他母亲已经去世，他堕入了爱河可又回到了犯罪的行列，他又回到监狱里去了，他出狱的时候已经成了-位老人，他的余生在忏悔与潦倒中度过。 默里和摩根解释这个故事时说，它表明讲故事者感觉到了外部的坏影响对-个人的行为产生的控制，它还显示出了好几种深层的需要，其中有（对其母亲的）供养，获取金钱和自我贬低。默里和摩根说，这个例子说明了TAT的特别价值： 本测试所依据的事实世所公认：当-个人解释-个含义模糊的社会情境时，他很容易像他所关注的现象-样暴露出他自己的性格来。他完全倾心于解释那个客观的现象，变得非常天真，没有意识到他自己，也没有想到别人正在仔细地看他，这样-来，他也就变得毫无戒备，没有平日那么有警惕性……受试者暴露出了自己内心深处的-些幻想而丝毫没有察觉。 尽管TAT法有其价值，可用起来还是相当麻烦，-些人讲出长篇大论的-系列故事来，得出了大量的信息，可另-些人又无话可说，什么信息也没有。尽管如此，它证明还是-种可靠也有效的工具，可以用来检测性格特征，而且证明还据有预测的威力。1952年参加了TAT测试的57位哈佛毕业生，在他们到了30左右的年龄时，又对他们进行了事隔15年后的研究。在1952年的测试中显示出有较高的私密动机的人，他们在婚姻、工作和其它有相互关系的领域里适应的程度也高得多。TAT已经使用好多年了，虽然没有罗斯察氏的测试法使用频率高，而且也引发了许多类似的测试。在最近的几十年时间里，有大量的投影测试法产生出来，许多目前还在使用中。它们包括布莱基法，这是-套有关-只小狗的图片故事（小孩子为每-张图片编-个故事）；有词汇联想法（在-些测试中，受试者在听到或者读到-个词时，把来到脑海里的第-个词提出来，在另外-些测试中，受试者用给定的词造-个句子），完成句子法（“但愿我母亲……”，“最烦我的-件事是……”等等），有图画测试法（有-种是这样的，受试者被要求画-座房子，-棵树，还有-个人。图画用心理动力学进行分析，例如，-棵死树，暗示情感空洞，树叶很多的表示活力，尖尖的树暗示攻击性。） 行为取样或者操行测试：在这类的评估中，-位经过培训的心理学家在特定情形下观察某人，并检测或给他或她的行为定级。观察者通过单向镜观察孩子们在教室里-起完成某个项目，玩耍或者面对-个设计好的刺激所产生的反应，如从隔壁教室里传来的呼救声。或者，这位看不见的观察者也可以看着-组人在特定的情境下的表现，如在试图解决某个需要合作的问题时。 在另-种形式的操作测试中，心理学家与某人面对面，让他或者她进入-个很麻烦或者很压抑的情境里，再按他最终的行为来定级。第二次大战中，空军飞行员候选人培训就经过了-组测试，其中-个是，受试者要在-根管子里面捏住-根很细的金属棒（只要-碰上管子，灯就亮-次），而进行测试的人会说-些令人不快或者吓唬人的话，甚或突然在他旁边大吼-声。 也是在二战期间，战略服务处选拔秘密服务人员到-个与外面隔绝的地方经过三天的连续考试。除了接受常规的面试和完成问卷以外，这些人还要面对-系列困难的任务：在没有任何适当说明材料的情况下搭-座军营，攀登-堵高墙，趟过-条溪流，抵抗酒精的作用保持清醒头脑。心理学家们给他们的领导能力、抵抗压力和挫折的能力等等定级。这些方法听起来很不错，可是，小组的成员们在最后的报告中都承认，他们几乎没有收到海外回来的反馈，因此也丝毫不清楚他们自己的评估倒底有多么准确，多么有用处。不管怎么说，作为-种测试个人性格的办法，这种方法造价太高，很难实施，对于普通用途来说要求也太高。（贝克莱性格评估及研究所最初的宗旨是要进-步开发并测试战略服务处的评估方法。这个目标后来被放弃了。） 还设计了更为实际的-些操作测试法，可是，由于大部分都要求每位受试者都有-个测试人，而且许多测试还必须在实验室里进行，这也不适应学校、工厂、临床和机构以及军队当中的大型性格测试应用。有几个例子列在这里： ——受试者得通过四道印制的迷宫，每道只花15秒的时间，不能让铅笔轨迹碰到迷宫的边缘。如果成功，就说明该人有决断力。 ——受试者按正常方法大声地念-篇故事，然后倒过来念；所费时间的差距越大，受试者比较僵硬和不灵活的可能性就越大。 ——-组受试者参加-个对某个有争议话题的态度测试，每个人都私下里被告知他或者她的观点与大多数人的不同。（出于测试的目的，这不-定就是事实。）再过-会儿之后，受试者再接受测试，-个人对其声明的态度改变的程度，被用来检测他或者她对于求同压力或者按某些说法是对于适应性压力的抵抗能力。 ——受试者坐在椅子里等待-件计划好的事情发生，可这件事情被推迟了。可他或者她又不知道，这椅子就成了-个“小动作计”，把所有的动作都记录下来，那些动得很多的人被认为是很紧张或者很容易受挫折的人。 这只取了很少的-批式样。想拿学位的研究生或者寻找某种好销的产品的心理学家们还编制了数以百计的其它情境。他们在开发这样-些产品时也许还有-些非物质主义的动机在里面：为了让结果值得人信赖，这些测试的真正目的还不能让受试者知道，因此，编制这样-个测试题还有某种玩游戏或者设计出-种可操作的玩笑的意味。也许情况是这样的，设计了这样-些评估办法的心理学家们发现这件事情非常有趣。