Glossary
Thematic Apperception Test
What is the Thematic Apperception Test?
The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), introduced by Christiana Morgan and Henry Murray in 1935, asks a person to tell stories about pictures. The storyteller describes what may be happening, what the characters think or feel, and what might happen next.
It is called a projective technique because the stories are interpreted as potentially informative about the storyteller's concerns and motives. Morgan and Murray proposed it as a way to investigate fantasies. A story does not directly reveal an unconscious fact.
How is the TAT used?
The clinical and personality-assessment question is whether patterns in the stories tell us something useful about the person. The answer depends on the procedure and interpretation being tested. A theme alone does not establish a diagnosis.
In research, picture-story methods can use explicit coding rules for motives. Pang and Schultheiss studied a related Picture Story Exercise and found that picture content and order affected scores. That method differs from unrestricted interpretation of a story.
Shortcomings and criticisms
- Subjectivity: Ask how the interpretation was reached and whether another trained scorer would reach the same result.
- Standardization: Pictures and scoring methods differ across picture-story assessment procedures.
- Cultural context: Consider whether the pictures, language, and scoring evidence fit the population being assessed.
- Validity: Evidence must support the specific score and intended use. Findings for one procedure do not validate every TAT interpretation.
Why it matters
Stories can be rich material. Turning them into a psychological assessment requires more than an interesting interpretation.