A physician recently uploaded 10 of the original Rorschach plates to Wikipedia, and psychologists are angry about it.
The Rorschach test is commonly used by psychologists to assess personality and emotional responses. By uploading the images, as well as common responses, they fear that patients can “game” the test, and in effect, render the results useless.
They say that, “the Wikipedia page is the equivalent of posting an answer sheet to next year’s SAT.”
There are other tests that can be used for the same purposes, but the Rorschach test by far has the most data backing it up.
Some are arguing that the presence of the test in Wikipedia is akin to having the Snellen eye chart, where one can theoretically memorize the chart to pass vision screens.
In any case, the cat is out of the bag already, so any discussion of whether these images, along with their interpretation, should be taken down or not is moot.
Related posts:
- Wikipedia and medicine
- Op-ed: Wikipedia isn’t really the patient’s friend
- Big Pharma’s Wikipedia editors
- Medicine and Wikipedia
- Using Wikipedia for online health information, my USA Today column
- Poll: Should doctors use Wikipedia for medical information?
- Wikipedia doesn’t link to health support groups
Scrubs
{ 10 comments }
There really isn’t any other test that provides the kind of information that the Rorschach provides. But as for research, I would say that MMPI/MMPI-2 is probably the most heavily researched psychological test.
The posting of the blots is troubling, but as a practical matter it might not present a huge problem since relatively few clinicians use the Rorschach (or know how to use it) anymore. I am one who uses it, so it doesn’t thrill me to see the blots posted on the net.
Still, I’m not sure how posting the blots helps an examinee to prepare responses, since examinees don’t know what we’re really looking at, how we’re scoring or how we’re interpreting the the results. I’ve seen a few sites that purport to explain it, but, uniformly, they get it very wrong.
Supplying the Populars will not help an examinee’s performance, although prepping with Populars could mess up the results. You’d have to know how to administer, score and interpret the Rorschach to understand why that is so. The system is very difficult to learn. It can’t be taught on a web site and you certainly can’t learn the “right” answers from a web page.
The complexity is part of what is valuable about the Rorschach. Examinees haven’t a clue of what we’re looking at. It can even be difficult for the examiner to know just how the examinee is doing until the scoring is competed.
Perhaps the biggest disservice associated with posting the blots is that some examinees who try to study the Populars or otherwise follow bad advice is that they might hurt their own performance. Not a good idea if you have something serious riding on the results and really not a good idea if you’re being evaluated by someone that you’re paying to help you.
Does anyone really believe that after all these years of use of the Rorschach Test that this is the first time that it has become available to the public?
Give me a break.
Old Story, The Complete Ink Blots along with what you’re supposed to see, not see, or pretend to see, was published in a book called “Big Secrets” in the 1980’s along with other information too dangerous for the lay public like the Colonels secret recipe and the backward messages in Beatles songs…
Every Blot gots at least 1 penis or vagina, and you’re only crazy if you DON’T see them…
Line 8 of the Snellen??? DEFPOTEC… thats why ya gotta get em to read it backwards…
And thats the blot with 2 Monks Swordfighting…
“Every Blot gots at least 1 penis or vagina, and you’re only crazy if you DON’T see them…”
A perfect example of the utterly false information proliferated by people who know nothing about the Rorschach. And if someone followed that ridiculous advice, it would be to their detriment.
“And thats the blot with 2 Monks Swordfighting…”
The hell it is. That’s two garden gnomes doing a Bavarian slap dance.
I can’t imagine that many patients will study the Wikipedia entry so closely that it will affect his/her test. (And maybe that says something about the ones who do.) As Dr. X mentioned above, few clinicians still use the Rorschach anyway. I don’t expect this to be a major problem for psychologists.
Whatever, Dr. X,
if you can’t see what I see, might wanta take a different test, the one with the little letters… You act as if there’s somethin wrong with seein Vaginas or Peni…Now showin ink stained cards with crude representations of Vaginas and Peni??? Little creepy…
Frank
Frank,
You said that psychologists will interpret the absence of sexual content as “crazy.” You wrong about that. Moreover, you were advising people to include an amount of sexual content that far exceeds the average amount.
I completed a dozen graduate testing and assessment courses, including three Rorschach classes, I’ve attended Exner seminars, I taught the Rorschach to graduate students and have personally administered, interpreted and supervised hundreds of Rorschachs.
You’re giving readers very bad advice and I’m giving them fair warning that following your advice will hurt them–no matter how much you would like to believe otherwise.
Shadow Merchant,
You forgot to mention that the garden gnomes were well hung. You just failed the test.
ROLMFAO @ Dr Frank
Comments on this entry are closed.