How exactly does this work and am I the weirdo that doesn’t see anything other than blobs?
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It is supposed to test for things like personality/emotional disorders (started by looking for schizophrenia, a German boy used to play a game where you’d make an ink blot, then make up stories for it.. later, he started to carefully design the ink blots to suggest certain images instead of drop some ink and fold it in half. He grew up to work at a hospital and noticed patients in the hospital with schizophrenia responded differently to the blots than people without to it, that led to the idea you could come up with a mental profile on someone based on the images they claim to see (even though they’re just ink blots)… over time that then evolved to more things)..
The main idea is it’s a different way to test for personality/ emotional disorders, the main way is to use a standardized test which gives a basic ‘score’…
the rorschach test is different in that it forces the person to project and put forward distinct aspects of their personality without much external guidance
Is the [comprehensive Wikipedia article on the subject](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test) not sufficient?
See the “Method” section for how it works.
And the bottom of the article includes all of the standard inkblots that are used in the test. Due to the symmetry, some of them have a vague resemblance to a bat or butterfly to me, but you aren’t alone in seeing some that just look like blobs.
My understanding (though admittedly not a psychologist) is that the test is believed to be useful in detecting certain underlying psychological disorders that someone could otherwise have learned how to hide, like knowing how to fake empathy for example. The belief from those who support the test is the “correct” answer isn’t known to those individuals and can more easily catch them giving honest answers.
There are many detractors of the test though for many reasons, one of those being that with the internet, the most common images used are out there, as well as “good” and “bad” responses. The test can also be influenced by both verbal and non-verbal cues from the person administering the test.
Most of the images just look like indiscernible random blobs to me as well.
The idea is that if you show people semi-random patterns that you can infer things about their personality and mental state by their responses. Not just *what* they say they see in the image, but also how they respond, how quickly they respond, what part of the image they seem most focused on, etc.
So even if you (and other people) said that you see only blobs, your therapist may still be able to infer things about you anyway. Or at least, try.
It’s an interesting idea, but there’s not great empirical data that it actually is particularly useful or accurate. Your therapist may be drawing false inferences, or coming to their conclusions based on other cues.
Although there are some common methods for administration and interpretation, it’s notable that there is not a single standard used worldwide.
They tend not to work. That’s one of the issues with them. There isn’t much evidence to support them being better than chance.
Well, iirc. The whole point in them is to detetmine the initial thoughts a patient experiences. Every human has different baseline assumptions and experiences. Given an abstract picture and letting em interpret things gives you clues about their personality. Just works if the patient wants to get analyzed, tho.
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