Personality Assessment I PSYC 4500: Introduction to Clinical Psychology Brett Deacon, Ph.D. October 7, 2010

1. Personality Assessment IPSYC 4500: Introduction to Clinical PsychologyBrett Deacon, Ph.D.October 7, 2010

2. Announcements • Exam #2 is next Thursday, October 14th

3. From Last Class • Semi-structured vs. unstructured interviews • The nature of intelligence • The Wechsler scales • Controversies in intellectual assessment

4. Most Commonly Used Tests • Ball et al. (1994) - survey of 151 practicing clinical psychologists • 1. Wechsler IQ Scales 2. *Rorschach • 3. *TAT 4. MMPI • 5. WRAT 6. BVMGT • 7. *Sentence Completion 8. *Human Figure Drawings • 9. *House-Tree-Person 10. BDI (* indicates projective test)

5. Most Commonly Used Tests in Child Custody Evaluations • Ackerman & Ackerman (1997) - survey of 201 psychologists from 39 states • 1. Intelligence tests 2. *TAT • 3. Bricklin Perceptual Scales 4. *Sentence Completion • 5. Achievement Test 6. *Rorschach • 7. *Projective Drawings 8. MMPI-A • 9. *House-Tree-Person 10. *Kinetic Family Drawing (* indicates projective test)

6. Questions for Hunsley et al. (2003) article • 1. Why do you think these tests are so commonly used by practicing psychologists?

7. Rorschach Inkblot Test • Consists of 10 cards • Administration takes about an hour • Administration instructions • Scoring is extremely labor-intensive

8. Ethics and Test Stimuli • APA Ethics Code: “Psychologists make reasonable efforts to maintain the integrity and security of test materials and other assessment techniques consistent with law and contractual obligations, and in a manner that permits adherence to this Ethics Code.”

9. Simulated Rorschach Inkblot

10. Scoring the Rorschach • Scoring: • Frequency of response • Deviant verbalizations • Inappropriate combinations • Inappropriate logic • Location • Morbid content • Form quality • Movement • Color (B&W or color) • Shading • Texture • Pair and/or reflection • Ball et al. (1994) survey: average of 49 minutes to administer, 46 minutes to score, 50 minutes to interpret

11. Rorschach Inkblot Test • Extremely popular among clinicians • For most of 20th century interpretation was scored via different systems, or none at all • Have things changed?

12. Rorschach Inkblot Test • Exner’s Comprehensive System (CS) • Evaluating the Rorschach • Standardization (fidelity to CS?) • Norms (overpathologize healthy people) • Reliability (interrater, test-retest) • Validity (diagnosis, related measures) • Importance of incremental validity

13. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • Administration and Scoring

14. Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) • Evaluating the TAT • Standardization • Norms • Reliability • Validity • Is the TAT a psychological test?

15. Projective Drawings • Examples: • Draw-a-Person • House-Tree-Person • Human Figure Drawings • Are human figure drawings psychological tests?

16. Projective Drawings • Evaluating projective drawings • Standardization • Norms • Reliability • Validity

17. Human Figure Drawings: An Example

18. Projective Drawings • Characteristics of this drawing: • Surprised expression in child • Large mouth in child • Angry eyebrows and mouth in father • Figures are holding hands (though actual hands are absent) • Heavy lines drawn for father • Father is drawn as much larger than child • What do these characteristics mean?

19. Projective Drawings • Without standardized guidelines for interpreting drawings, how are clinicians to score them? What problems can you foresee in how such drawings are interpreted?

20. Illusory Correlation • Definition: perception of a relationship between two variables when no such relationship exists • We see what we expect to see • Examples: • Stereotypes; people from group X have trait Y (e.g., people from small towns are nice) • The one day I forgot to put my lucky comb in my pocket, my mom got into a car accident • Arthritis always acts up during bad weather • People go crazy during the full moon • Athletes' superstitions (e.g., Wade Boggs)

21. Illusory Correlation • Does it surprise you that people are prone to make illusory correlations? • Why do they occur? • Ease with which information comes to mind (availability heuristic) • Biases and preconceived notions • We count the hits and forget the misses (confirmation bias)

22. Illusory Correlation • What do illusory correlations have to do with assessment? • Projective vs. objective psychological tests

23. Illusory Correlation • Danger of illusory correlations • Chapman & Chapman (1969) • Using the Rorschach for diagnosing Sexual Deviation, Homosexual Type (actual mental disorder in DSM-I) • What Rorschach responses are indicative of male homosexuality?

24. Illusory Correlation Actual, valid responses that distinguished homosexual and heterosexual groups of men: Human, or humanized animal (“Woman dressed as a bat”) Human or animal; contorted, monstrous, or threatening = =

25. Illusory Correlation • What clinicians reported as signs of homosexuality: • Human or animal anal content (44%) • Male or female genitalia (38%) • Feminine clothing (38%) • Humans with sex confused (28%) • Almost none of the clinicians reported the valid signs

26. Illusory Correlation • Undergraduate students more often selected the invalid, illusory correlates as indicating male homosexuality • This remained true even when it was suggested that the actually valid signs were more indicative of male homosexuality

27. Illusory Correlation in the Courtroom http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/misuse.php • This was a day care case with allegations of ritualistic satanic abuse complete with costumes, masks, dead animals, sacrificed babies, blood, feces, skeletons, and monsters.  These bizarre allegations surfaced during therapy.  The therapist who saw two of the children depended heavily upon the children's drawings in forming conclusions about ritualistic, satanic abuse. • The case file included a large stack of drawings over a two-year period — probably over 500 from the two girls.  These drawings are typical of the types of scribbles and rudimentary figures drawn by three- and four-year-olds.  These had been saved because they were considered significant.  In her deposition the psychologist was asked about the drawings in detail. What she believed was significant included:

28. Illusory Correlation in the Courtroom http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/misuse.php • What she believed was significant included: • Shapes that are untypical for three- and four-year-old children • Shapes that are phallic symbols • Jiggly lines that indicate anxiety • Straight mouths that mean people can't say anything • Jagged mouths that mean anxiety • A mouth that is open and oval shaped • Darkened eyes • Eyeballs that are scribbled around • Eyes that are two different colors • Drawing something and then covering it up • Drawings something and not talking about it

29. Illusory Correlation in the Courtroom http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/misuse.php • Colors are very important and significant: • Black means the child is frightened or distressed; black is a morbid color • Red means angry, unless the child is drawing a pretty red flower, when it is healthy • If every thing is the picture is red or red and black, this is very suspicious. • Blue, brown, and orange mean fear, anger, and depression • Pink, red, and green are healthy colors • There is no empirical evidence to support any of these theories.  Also, these were not House-Tree-Person drawings or Kinetic Family Drawings but were simply drawings done in therapy sessions or at home and brought to the therapist by the parent.  There was no effort to standardize the administration.

30. Illusory Correlation • How high is the danger that tests results will be biased due to illusory correlations? • How can this possibility be mitigated?

31. APA Ethics Code • 2.07 Obsolete Tests and Outdated Test Results: • (a) Psychologists do not base their assessment or intervention decisions or recommendations on data or test results that are outdated for the current purpose. • (b) Similarly, psychologists do not base such decisions or recommendations on tests and measures that are obsolete and not useful for the current purpose.

32. Response Paper Questions • 3. Is there sufficient justification for using the Rorschach, TAT, projective drawings, or anatomically detailed dolls in forensic settings?

33. Ethics and Projective Tests • “Now that I am no longer a member of the American Psychological Association Ethics Committee, I can express my personal opinion that the use of Rorschach interpretations in establishing an individual's legal status and child custody is the single most unethical practice of my colleagues.  It is done, widely.  Losing legal rights as a result of responding to what is presented as a "test of imagination," often in the context of "helping" violates what I believe to be a basic ethical principle in this society — that people are judged on the basis of what they do, not on the basis of what they feel, think, or might have a propensity to do.  And being judged on an invalid assessment of such thoughts, feelings, and propensities amounts to losing one's civil rights on an essentially random basis.” -Psychologist Robin Dawes

34. Ethics and Test Stimuli • An example: http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/rorschach.htm • See also: • http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/misuse.htm

35. Misuse of Personality Tests in Forensic Settings: Example #1 • A four-year-old girl was asked to draw a picture of herself and the family doing something.  She instead, according to the school psychologist who was evaluating her, "seemed to be preoccupied with drawing circles within circles which she called 'caves.'  Her second representation bore a significant resemblance to male genitalia (when asked what it represented, she reported that it was a ball rolling into a lion's cave)."  This was interpreted as being suggestive of sexual abuse and the fact that the child has been subjected to some type of traumatic experience. • When we saw the child, now age five, we tested her and found borderline to low-average intelligence and no ability to draw anything other than scribbled circles. The child clearly had difficulties with visual motor perception and indeed, could not draw, a fact which was ignored by the other evaluator.  This example, therefore, illustrates the importance of recognizing the child's developmental level.

36. Misuse of Personality Tests in Forensic Settings: Example #2 • In a similar example with an older child, a 15-year-old boy's drawings of a person were interpreted as "rather primitive for an adolescent of his age and ... suggests that (the boy) has the psychological characteristics of a person who acts out their anger in sexualized ways."  But when we tested this boy, we discovered that he was blind in one eye, performed below what was expected for his age on the Porteus and the Bender, and had a performance IQ on the WISC-R of 67.  This is why his drawings were "primitive."  None of this had been assessed or discussed as a possibility.

37. Misuse of Personality Tests in Forensic Settings: Example #3 • A seven-year-old girl was asked to draw a picture of her family doing something.  She drew a picture of herself and her sister with their hands up in the air with the father standing next to them and smiling.  The child told the psychologist that she and her sister were "cheering at a show." • The psychologist disregarded what the child told her about the drawing and claimed that this really signified a "helpless posture."  She saw it as significant that there were no fingers drawn on the hands and that the hands were large on the father.  She asserted that abused children put large hands on the drawings of their perpetrators.  She also claimed that the thick lines in the crotch in the picture of the father meant an emphasis on genitals, was probably a penis, and showed anxiety about the father.  She therefore concluded that the girl, who denied the allegations of sexual abuse by the father, had most likely been sexually abused by him and should "be protected from further abuse by him."

38. Response Paper Questions • 2. Should these tests be taught to clinical psychology graduate students?