In other words, instead of simply asking the patient what he sees in the inkblot, the clinician will say something like 'To you does this image look more like a person, an animal, a flower, or a food?' Juni (1993) asserts that this approach reduces the need for "trained judges" to interpret the results, and also provides a sense of standardization that maximizes the projective content.
The phenomenon known as the "expectancy effect" is also pertinent to issues of validity and reliability. The expectancy effect is based on the idea that the administrator of the test consciously or subconsciously emits signs of how he expects the subject to respond. For example he may raise his eyebrows while waiting for a response, which could in turn have an influence on how the subject answers. According to Silverstein (1993) this is a particularly important consideration in relation to the Rorschach test. The author describes an experiment by Masling in the 1960s which "demonstrated that subjects' Rorschach responses could be influenced by the subtle differential reinforcement of types of responses by the test administrator. This raises the possibility, in the absence of adequate controls, that differences in Rorschach responses between hypnotized and nonhypnotized individuals may be due, at least in part, to covertly communicated expectations about how hypnotized subjects should respond" (p. 13).
Strengths and Weaknesses
Ultimately, scholarly conjectures on the reliability and validity of the Rorschach test vary as considerably as the possibilities of responses to the inkblot cards. Accordingly, the same holds true for its strengths and weaknesses. For almost every supporter who lauds the test's usefulness in an applied setting, there is a critic completely disparaging it. For example, Butcher and Rouse (1996) assert "Much of the strength of the Rorschach method in contemporary assessment comes from the broad use of the Exner Comprehensive System (Exner 1991, 1993, 1995; Exner & Weiner 1994), which provides a more reliable and objective basis for interpretation than was available prior to its introduction" (p. 90). On the contrary, Bornstein (2005) reports numerous problems with directly connecting the Rorschach test to Exner's CS scoring model, stating, for example, "in contrast to the approach embodied in the Comprehensive System, the Rorschach is best viewed as a theory-driven evaluation of the content and structural organization of an individual's representational capacities, rather than an atheoretical, empirically-based test" (p. 109).
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