Synonyms/Related Terms
Definition
Projective hypothesis refers to the notion that when confronted with ambiguous and unstructured stimuli, the responses elicited by a person reflect one’s unconscious needs, feelings, anxieties, motives, thoughts, conflicts, and prior behavioral conditioning.
Introduction
The concept of projective hypothesis lies behind the development of the stimuli of projective tests and also touches upon the validity-related concern for such tests. It is assumed that unstructured and ambiguous stimuli have the power to bypass both conscious suppression and unconscious defenses that might otherwise result in faked, distorted, or falsified responses. Therefore, assessment techniques using such stimuli may have the ability to unearth one’s core traits, irrespective of culture and training. Evidently, the idea is linked to the psychodynamic understanding of human behavior and specifically to the mechanism of projection.
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Basu, J. (2014). Psychologists’ ambivalence toward ambiguity: Relocating the projective test debate for multiple interpretative hypotheses. SIS Journal of Projective Psychology and Mental Health, 21(1), 25–36.
Frank, L. K. (1939). Projective methods for the study of personality. Journal of Psychology, 8, 389–413.
Frick, P. J., Barry, C. T., & Kamphaus, R. W. (2010). Clinical assessment of child and adolescent personality and behavior. New York: Springer.
Gregory, R. J. (2000). Psychological testing: History, principles, and applications. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
Hughes, T. L., Gacono, C. G., & Owen, P. F. (2007). Current status of Rorschach assessment: Implications for the school psychologist. Psychology in the Schools, 44(3), 281–291.
Knoff, H. M. (1983). Projective/personality assessment in the schools (Special issue). School Psychology Review, 12(4), 446–451.
Koppitz, E. M. (1982). Personality assessment in the schools. In C. R. Reynolds & T. B. Gutkin (Eds.), The handbook of school psychology (pp. 273–295). New York: Wiley.
LIlienfeld, S. O., Wood, J. M., & Garb, H. N. (2000). The scientific status of projective techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 1, 27–66.
Piotrowski, C. (2015). Projective techniques usage worldwide: A review of applied settings 1995–2015. Journal of the Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, 41(3), 9–19. (Special issue).
Winter, D. G., John, O. P., Stewart, A. J., Klohnen, E. C., & Duncan, L. E. (1998). Traits and motives: Toward an integration of two traditions in personality research. Psychological Review, 105, 230–251.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Basu, J. (2017). Projective Hypothesis. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_64-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28099-8_64-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-28099-8
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences