Dictionary of Human Resources Management

 

Dictionary of Human Resources Management

Thematic Apperception Test “T.A.T”

Thematic Apperception Test “T.A.T” 

Developed by the American psychologist Henry Muray and Christiana D. Morgan at the Harvard Clinic at Harvard University  in 1943. He wrote about TAT in his book “Exploration in personality”.

T.A.T is a projective test witch investigate the personality:

Ambiguous Stimuli + Patient’s Response = Personality

-  It’s a series of black and white pictures can provide information’s about his or her views of the self, the world, the interpersonal relationships, inner conflict, unconscious conflict and drives. The examine in T.A.T technique asked to felt a story about what he or she believes.

- It composed from 31 picture, 11 of them presented to both of males and females adults “more than 14th”, and 7 pictures just for boys males  “from 7 years old to 14 years old”, another 7 pictures are for girls females “from 7 years old to 14 years old”, there is also pictures just for males adults and another 7 pictures for females adults. And all this pictures is about  a dramatic scene or a person in a specific situation.

The T.A.T is based on the theory of Henry Muray witch is “Needs Press Theory”; needs: drives within the person that influence motivation and press: forces in a person’s environment. And the thema is a small unity of behavior that results from the interaction between needs and press.

The T.A.T has been criticized on several levels: reliability(a different story, inconsistent interpretation), validity (it cant show us the different between normal people and who have mental illness), it can’t predict behavior, also the culturally  inconsistent witch make it hard to apply the T.A.T as a standard test.

                                                                                                                                   Bekai Abdel Madjid