Definition Of TAT?

Please help me of the definition of TAT and how it actually works?

in psychology we term it as Thematic Apperception Test. TAT is a projective techique to understand the behaviour of the person.
It has 12 pictures (black and white). the procedure is:
show the first picture for 30 seconds and one minute to write what has been observed likewise all the 11 slides is being shown. In this way, one can understand the indepth feelings of the person.
12 picture is a blank picture which is again shown for 30 seconds and the participant has to write something on the slide for one minute. The participant is not aware that the 12th picture is blank but still he come out with a description.
Regards
Dr. Kavita R. Shanmughan

TAT was first developed in 1935 by Henry Murray, Christiana Morgan, and their colleagues at the Harvard Psychological Clinic.

The Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT, is a projective measure intended to evaluate a person's patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capacity, and emotional responses to ambiguous test materials. Many psychologists prefer not to call it a "test," because it implies that there are "right" and "wrong" answers to the questions. They consider the term "technique" to be a more accurate description of the TAT and other projective assessments. TAT is often administered to individuals as part of a battery, or group, of tests intended to evaluate personality. It is considered to be effective in eliciting information about a person's view of the world and his or her attitudes toward the self and others into specific aspects of human personality, most often needs for achievement, fears of failure, hostility and aggression, and interpersonal object relations. The TAT is often used in individual assessments of candidates for employment in fields requiring a high degree of skill in dealing with other people and/or ability to cope with high levels of psychological stress such as law enforcement, military leadership positions, religious ministry, education, diplomatic service, etc. TAT investigates a variety of different topics, including the extent to which people are emotionally involved in relationships with others; their ability to understand the complexities of human relationships; their ability to distinguish between their viewpoint on a situation and the perspectives of others involved; their ability to control aggressive impulses; self-esteem issues; and issues of personal identity.

Murray's scoring system is time-consuming and unwieldy. Other scoring systems have since been introduced that focus on one or two specific variables for example, hostility or depression. While these systems are more practical for clinical use, they lack comprehensiveness. No single system presently used for scoring the TAT has achieved widespread acceptance. There are two basic approaches to interpreting responses to the TAT, called nomothetic and idiographic respectively. Nomothetic interpretation refers to the practice of establishing norms for answers from subjects in specific age, gender, racial, or educational level groups and then measuring a given subject's responses against those norms. Idiographic interpretation refers to evaluating the unique features of the subject's view of the world and relationships. The 1992 Code of Ethics of the American Psychological Association requires psychologists to be knowledgeable about cultural and social differences, and to be responsible in interpreting test results with regard to these differences.

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TAT is basically used to measure the personality dynamics of the people. It not only measures need/motives/structure of the people but also how these internal aspects of people are interacting with the outside world to get a positisve or negative outcomes.
let me expalin.. a person might be having very heigh level of need for achievement, but he is palced in a very hostile work place, then the chances are that he might not be able to fulfill his ambitions.
TAT is a very powerfu tool to undersatnd the personality dynamics of people. However, to adminster and interpret proper trainimng is required.
In the original TAT by Murray and Morgan, there are 31 cards including one blank card. But for one person only 20 cards are used depending on the age and gender of the person.
Dr M. G. shahnawaz
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Hi Sudheer,
Its really interesting as I had never heard of TAT. The information provided by our friends arouses interest & implies what many things a person to be aware of & it definitely helps in updating horizons of knowledge.
Thank U one & all..

Hi Dr. Kavita,

From your view i understand that there shall be 12 slides to be used while administering TAT (Thematic apperception test). But when i did a research on the topic I found that few psychologists has suggested to make use of around 31 slides to be offer to the subject. I request you to go through the article given below and put some light on the issue.

The Thematic Apperception Test, or TAT, is a projective measure intended to evaluate a person's patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capacity, and emotional responses to ambiguous test materials. In the case of the TAT, the ambiguous materials consist of a set of cards that portray human figures in a variety of settings and situations. The subject is asked to tell the examiner a story/ opinion about each card.

Because the TAT is an example of a projective instrument— that is, it asks the subject to project his or her habitual patterns of thought and emotional responses onto the pictures on the cards— many psychologists prefer not to call it a "test," because it implies that there are "right" and "wrong" answers to the questions. They consider the term "technique" to be a more accurate description of the TAT and other projective assessments.

The TAT is usually administered to individuals in a quiet room free from interruptions or distractions. The subject sits at the edge of a table or desk next to the examiner. The examiner shows the subject a series of story cards taken from the full set of 31 TAT cards. The usual number of cards shown to the subject is between 10 and 14, although Murray recommended the use of 20 cards, administered in two separate one-hour sessions with the subject. The original 31 cards were divided into three categories, for use with men only, with women only, or for use with subjects of either sex. Recent practice has moved away from the use of separate sets of cards for men and women.

The subject is then instructed to tell a story about the picture on each card, with specific instructions to include a description of the event in the picture, the developments that led up to the event, the thoughts and feelings of the people in the picture, and the outcome of the story. The examiner keeps the cards in a pile face down in front of him or her, gives them to the subject one at a time, and asks the subject to place each card face down as its story is completed. Administration of the TAT usually takes about an hour.

Murray's original practice was to take notes by hand on the subject's responses, including his or her nonverbal behaviors. Research has indicated, however, that a great deal of significant material is lost when notes are recorded in this way. As a result, some examiners now use a tape recorder to record subjects' answers. Another option involves asking the subject to write down his or her answers.

There are two basic approaches to interpreting responses to the TAT, called nomothetic and idiographic respectively. Nomothetic interpretation refers to the practice of establishing norms for answers from subjects in specific age, gender, racial, or educational level groups and then measuring a given subject's responses against those norms. Idiographic interpretation refers to evaluating the unique features of the subject's view of the world and relationships. Most psychologists would classify the TAT as better suited to idiographic than nomothetic interpretation.

I would be obliged to get your response.

Regards,

Sumir.

Plz help to understand the meaning of below:
1. Ensuring the TAT for the numbers of positions
2. coordination with he vendor / consultants to meet the TAT
What is meaning of TAT above? Is it Turn around time ?