Sex Assignment to Whole Human Responses in Rorschach

Abstract

According to the theory of identification, men are more likely to qualify their Rorschach human content responses as males, and women as females. These assumptions were tested in an empirical investigation using a Belgian nonpatient sample of 800. All human responses and their location were listed. Analyses were carried out on the 10 Cards and on the formal quality (FQo vs. FQu/−) of all human responses according to the subject’s and the examiner’s sex. Variables were first submitted to principal component analysis, and resulting components were compared in a 2 × 2 design in order to assess examiners’ and participants’ sex potential effects on human responses sex assignments. Univariate and multivariate ANOVA revealed no or only negligible differences. In a second step, distributions of masculine, feminine, and neutral human responses across 16 card locations that commonly elicit human responses were submitted to hierarchical clustering in order to identify masculine, feminine, and neutral locations in Rorschach cards. Chi-square tests revealed no significant association between participants’ sex and human responses locations. Results do not corroborate predictions according to the theory of identification but they do, however, highlight the role of the distal features of blots.