Projective tests are psychological assessment tools to gain insights into your thoughts, feelings, and personality traits. A projective personality test presents ambiguous and vague stimuli, such as images, pictures, or incomplete sentences, and you are asked to provide a description or a story about what you think is going on or what the next part of the sentence might be. Given that the stimuli are undefined and have no specific correct answer, a projective assessment involves probing your inner thoughts or feelings into your answer. We offer projective testing as a core service.
We analyze your answers regarding what other people in a large test group said and whether the answer correlated with a reported strength, challenge, or diagnosis. Ultimately, we can make some inferences about your underlying psychological characteristics and less-than-conscious aspects of your personality.
Schedule Projective Tests
Don’t hesitate to contact us or schedule a free consultation if you’d like to learn how a projective personality test battery might help you or a loved one. Below, you’ll find some helpful information as well.
Examples of Projective Tests 
The underlying principle of projective tests is that the ambiguity of the stimuli allows individuals to project their unconscious thoughts and feelings, which they might not readily express in more direct, structured assessments. People may be hesitant to express these thoughts, but more commonly, they are unaware of them.
Rorschach Projective Personality Test
One of the most well-known projective tests is the Rorschach Inkblot, developed by Hermann Rorschach in the early 20th century. In this measure, you are shown a series of standardized inkblots and asked to describe what you see in each image. Your responses are then analyzed based on various factors, including the content of their answers, the location of their responses, and the use of specific details. The Rorschach projective assessment test is relatively objective since these aspects of your answer are compared to a large sample group.
CAT and TAT Projective Tests
Another widely used projective personality test is the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), developed by Henry Murray and Christiana Morgan. The TAT involves presenting you with ambiguous pictures – actual people or scenes – and asking you to create stories about the characters, situations, and emotions depicted in the images. The TAT is excellent because it can be queried (where you are asked questions) to get at the specific information you are trying to uncover and understand. One drawback to the TAT is that it is relatively subjective, so it is vitally important that you choose an experienced practitioner. The CAT is a similar test but designed for children.
Sentence Completion Tests
Sentence completion measures involve giving you incomplete sentences where you are asked to complete the sentences with your thoughts or feelings. This type of psychological test can provide insights into your attitudes, beliefs, and personality traits. Sentence completion is a bit less revealing than the first two listed, but they have an advantage in that they can be tailored to the specific areas you are looking for more information about.
Draw-a-Person (DAP)
In this projective assessment task, you are asked to draw a person or several persons. The drawings are then analyzed for details and content to understand your self-concept and emotional state. The DAP Test is used primarily when a person’s questions concern their self-esteem, social functioning, or self-concept. Another projective drawing test is the house-tree-person test.
Uses of Projective Tests
Projective tests are part of a psychological battery to understand a person’s personality, motivations, conflicts, and emotional state. They are typically used with other psychological assessment methods, such as Personality evaluation and mental health assessments, to understand one’s psychological profile better. Specifically, there are four ways we use projective testing in our practice.
Personality assessment
Projective tests can provide valuable information about a person’s Personality evaluation, emotions, and coping mechanisms. They can help identify underlying issues and potential areas for personal growth. Thus, ongoing therapists often use projective test results to help their clients better. They are also helpful for people who want to tackle their problems independently but want more detail first.
Psychological diagnosis
A projective personality test can be used to aid in diagnosing various psychological disorders. For example, they may help identify depression, anxiety, or personality disorders. Thus, before considering medications or before entering therapy, it can be helpful to have this type of evaluation.
Projective tests and underlying feelings
These evaluations can be used in therapy settings to facilitate discussions about feelings and emotions that clients might have difficulty expressing directly. Many find they reach deeper self-understanding and develop new insights after projective testing. In couples or family therapy, projective tests can explore individual dynamics and interactions to identify potential sources of conflict or communication issues.
Benefits of Projective Tests
These offer important benefits, including:
Projectives Explore the Unconscious
These evaluation methods elicit responses that may reveal unconscious thoughts, feelings, and conflicts. This can help uncover underlying psychological issues that might not be apparent through other assessment methods. You may not be aware of many of these unconscious ideas, and there are few other methods to get at them effectively. A projective personality test can provide rich, qualitative data beyond the surface-level information obtained through structured questionnaires or interviews. They allow psychologists to delve deeper into a person’s inner world.
Projective Tests are Flexible
These measures are adaptable and can be used in various settings and with diverse populations, including children, adolescents, and adults. They can also assess a wide range of psychological constructs, such as personality traits, emotional states, and interpersonal dynamics. This data can help your therapist better understand your issues more deeply and tailor interventions accordingly. It can help you develop insights that can be helpful in a variety of settings. Adding a TAT or Rorschach to a psychological battery, for example, often ensures that we answer the questions you came in with significant depth and detail.
Creativity and expression
Projective tests encourage you to express yourself in open-ended ways, which can be particularly useful for assessing creativity, imagination, and problem-solving skills. Many people enjoy taking them and find them enlightening when they hear what they are revealing and the insights they produce.
Holistic assessment
Projective tests complement other assessment methods, providing a more comprehensive understanding of an individual’s psychological makeup. When used alongside objective measures, they can offer a more complete picture. We often mix projectives with other personality measures and can use them with specialty areas, such as Compatibility assessments and Life Transitions evaluations.
There are other benefits of projectives, and many of these benefits are increased when projectives are mixed with other psychological measures. During your initial assessment, we will review the benefits of each of these methods for you and the specific questions you want to answer through this type of evaluation.
Projective Testing Process
Here’s an overview of the typical process involved in projective testing at our practice:
Selection of Projective Tests
We meet with you first to learn what you hope to learn and how you hope the report will benefit you, and then choose projective tests based on the assessment’s specific needs. We develop a projective testing battery that may include other personality measures.
Projective Testing Administration
We then administer the battery either virtually or in person. This involves presenting stimuli one at a time and giving instructions on responding. You may be asked to describe what they see, tell a story about an image, or complete sentences with your thoughts. We often asked questions to get more details. We collect and record your responses, often verbatim and then we might ask how the answer or the stimuli made you feel.
Scoring and Interpretation
We score projective testing based on established guidelines, considering various factors such as content, themes, symbolism, and emotional tone. We analyze patterns and discrepancies in the responses to gain insight into your personality, emotions, conflicts, and underlying psychological dynamics. The results are often integrated with other assessment data, such as interviews, self-report inventories, and observations, to understand you comprehensively.
Feedback, Planning, and Recommendations
We always provide a feedback session to discuss the findings and their implications. Some people choose to have others attend that session as well. This feedback may inform treatment planning, such as psychotherapy, by highlighting focus areas or potential interventions. It can also help you understand your challenges and ways to overcome barriers. Projective testing also highlights untapped strengths and opportunities. We point out the limits of these evaluation methods, including reviewing reliability, validity, and cultural sensitivity.
Repeating a Projective Personality Test
These measures may be repeated to monitor changes in your psychological functioning or as part of ongoing therapy assessment. A repeated projective personality test can show where you’ve improved and give new ideas for coping strategies and paths to contentment.
Projective Assessment Case Example
Here’s an example of a projective assessment to help illustrate how these measures are applied:
Projective Tests for Adolescent
Sarah is a 16-year-old referred by her parents due to increasing social withdrawal, academic decline, and difficulty expressing her feelings. They report conflicts at home and a noticeable change in her behavior over the past year. They are not sure why they are seeing these changes, as nothing in particular has changed in her life.
Projective Assessment Tools Used:
- Rorschach Inkblot Test (Projective Personality Test)
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) (Storytelling)
- Adolescent Sentence Completion Test
Projective Assessment Process & Results:
1. Rorschach Inkblot Test
Sarah was shown the inkblot cards and asked to describe what she saw.
- Responses:
- Card 1: “A scary bat, but it’s not hurting anyone.”
- Card 3: “Two people arguing with each other. They seem far apart.”
- Card 6: “A monster or shadow chasing someone.”
- Interpretation:
- Sarah’s responses suggested themes of fear, conflict, and distance in interpersonal relationships.
- Distorted perceptions in some responses hinted at inner tension and unresolved emotional distress.
2. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)
Sarah was asked to create stories based on ambiguous images of people in various situations.
- Story Example (Card Depicting a Lone Figure Sitting on a Bed):
“She looks sad and alone. Something bad might have happened, and she doesn’t know how to tell anyone. Maybe she lost a friend or feels guilty about something.” - Themes Across Stories:
- Loneliness, guilt, and difficulty sharing emotions.
- Overwhelming situations where characters feel trapped or helpless.
3. Sentence Completion Test
Sarah completed sentences designed to reveal subconscious thoughts and feelings:
- “I feel sad when…” → “…I disappoint people.”
- “The people in my family…” → “…argue a lot, and I stay quiet.”
- “When I am alone, I…” → “…think too much and feel stuck.”
Interpretation: Sarah’s responses reflected underlying family stress, fear of disappointing others, and feelings of isolation.
Summary of Findings:
The projective assessment revealed Sarah’s difficulty articulating her emotions and a tendency to internalize conflict. Themes of loneliness, guilt, and family tension emerged. Sarah appeared to struggle with unresolved emotional distress that contributed to her withdrawal and academic decline.
Conclusion & Recommendations:
- Sarah may benefit from individual psychotherapy to address her feelings of guilt and isolation.
- Family therapy was recommended to explore family dynamics and improve communication.
- Further assessment for potential depression was suggested based on the themes uncovered.
Why A Projective Assessment Was Helpful:
The projective assessment provided a deeper look into Sarah’s internal world, uncovering emotions she had difficulty expressing verbally. These tools allow for a more nuanced understanding of her struggles.
Summary and Our Work
We can provide projective tests in 44 states since they can be given virtually. We offer each major projective personality test, and you can choose the one or two that best fit your needs. They can be combined with other measures to form a comprehensive psychological battery or they can be given alone. Projective testing can be a bit fun and quite useful, and you may be surprised by the amount of insight you gain into your strengths, weaknesses, and abilities through this process.
Of course, we’d be happy to discuss how projective tests might fit into a testing battery to answer your questions. Our services always include a free consultation so you can ask questions and ensure that a psychological evaluation is the right choice. Feel free to schedule a consultation or contact us at any time.
