Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is the second out of four Psychological tests conducted by SSB in Phase 2 of the testing procedure to evaluate a candidate’s patterns of thought, attitudes, observational capacity, and emotional responses to judge his/ her Officer Like Qualities (OLQs). There are a few things that will help the aspirant to make the best TAT scores. But before that, we have to know the test properly.
Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is a projective psychological test in which a series of provocative pictures are used to explore the respondent’s dynamics. It consists of a series of pictures of ambiguous social situations in which the examinee describes the social situation as they see it. Respondents are then asked to describe the scene in the picture, the apparent emotional content and thoughts of the people involved, what led up to the scene, and what the outcome will be, usually in a form of a story.
Three common systems of scoring TAT are:
1. Miner Sentence Completion Scale (MSCS)
In this test the respondent is asked to tell a story about each picture, the content of the individual’s stories reveal the unconscious desires, inner tendencies, attitudes, and conflicts.
2. Defence Mechanism Manual (DMM)
This assesses three defense mechanisms: denial (least mature), projection (intermediate), and identification (most mature). A person’s thoughts or feelings are projected in the stories involved.
3. Social Cognition and Object Relations (SCOR)
The Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global Rating Method can be used to code narrative material. It is comprised of eight dimensions, which are scored using a seven-point Likert scale, where lower scores are indicative of more pathological aspects of object representations and higher scores are suggestive of more mature and adaptive functioning.
4. Personal Problem-Solving System—Revised (PPSS)
The Personal Problem-Solving System-Revised (PPSS-R) uses Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) responses to assess how people are likely to resolve personal problems. Responses are scored across four broad categories: story design, story orientation, story solution, and story resolution.
Few ways to score in TAT are:
- When you see the picture try to observe as many details as possible.
- Think and Formulate a story and then write about it.
- Building a story is really important, so make a story with proper beginning and ending.
- Bring out the positives and happy points in the story and try to avoid any negativity.
- Make your story practical, realistic and with a mature outcome.
- Give a background information about the person in the picture.
- Don’t write short stories.
- Your story should consist of the Main Character, Situation, Background, Plot, Other Characters and solution of the problem.
- Practice before you go for the actual test.
- Revise what you wrote again and again.
- Don’t feel stressed, be calm, think properly and then write.
I hope these tips helped you in some way and I wish you all the best.
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