Psychology As A Science?

A review of Scott O. Lilienfelds argument and Joni Mihuras support for the validity of the Rorschach Inkblot Test Ankit Patel
The application of science and empiricism within the field of clinical psychology is a topic that has been disputed amongst scholars, clinical psychologists, therapists and practitioners alike. The question still remains, Should methodology and treatments be evaluated according to the guidelines of quantitative analysis and statistics? Perhaps clinical intuition is the way to go as it is easier and seemingly obtains results that are satisfactory. Lilienfeld has argued that psychology is better off suited to be treated as a science, as it obtains results that can be backed up and solidified with data. Certain therapies and assessments that can be validated through numerical and statistical relevance are more likely to hold as reliable when treating a client. There is less room for error within the treatment. On the other hand, we all like to save some time when the solution found through intuition can get the job done as well. Is this morally and ethically acceptable? Does it fulfill the epistemic duties that are mandated to a practitioner? I will explore these questions through a review of Lilienfelds arguments for the use of the scientific method, and Joni Mihuras research for the Rorschach Inkblot Test and its grounds of validity. What is the Rorschach Inkblot Test? Joni Mihura provides a very compelling argument on giving the Rorschach Inkblot test a more scientific perspective. First that is evaluated are the original Rorschach Inkblot variables located within the system. Many of these variables are categorized within indexes. Some examples of indexes include depression, perception and obsession. These indexes and variables within the indexes are used to determine the thought processes of an individual through a series of inkblots. The inkblots are used to project a clients real thought into the inkblot, and the interpreter will evaluate the response in accordance to the CS stimulus manual. The clients response will give insight into a possible thought disorder due to the ambiguity of the inkblot. In other words, the interpreter can interpret patients responses and thus develop a treatment for the patient. Mihuras research portrays the Rorschach from a scientific standpoint and argues for the validity as a psychological assessment test. She does a convincing job in validating each index and providing supporting values to each index in showing that the Inkblot test works. There is no doubt that the test does

help detect certain pathological behaviors such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Mihura also goes on to explain that it has confirmed through analysis that thirteen of the variables within the Rorschach had excellent support in relationship to assessed criteria to effect sizes. (r .33 with p<.001). This means these variables resulted with a correlational relationship higher or equal to .33 with a critical value less than 1%. This proves convincing in statistical analysis that 13 variables rejected their null hypotheses. However, Mihuras research cannot refute the actual nature of how the Rorschach test is based upon, which is interpretational judgment. Potential Problems for the Rorschach Test The Rorschach test is ultimately a test that is projective by nature. This means that the test is administered with reference to the inkblot. What this reference does is create a bias. If a practitioner is to accurately assess their client, then there should not be any preconceived notion of what an inkblot means in relationship to what the test administrator

thinks in the answer given by the client. This immediately produced bias influences how the practitioner sees the response to a certain type of inkblot. If this happens, the testing administrators responses must evaluated by a third party to avoid any type of reference or bias. Does that suddenly perpetuate an endless cycle of judgment? Who is evaluating that third party? A practitioners job is to make an assessment after the data has been collected, not during a testing procedure. However, this is a procedure that is necessary during certain tests, like achievement testing and measuring IQ. A practitioner will naturally create questions as the test goes along. This is a problem within the Rorschach Test. The difference between an achievement test and a Rorschach Test is bias from numbers. The Rorschach does not have this during the testing procedure. It is solely influenced by the interpretations and judgments of the examiner. During an achievement test, whether a biases or questions have been created through out the test, the result will either reject or support the question. In other words, it is painted black and white whether the practitioner was right or wrong by the data. For the Rorschach, it is more of a grey area to determine during testing whether or not a response matched criteria within the comprehensive system, and data does not judge that, the practitioner does. Mihura does explain that this is a problem within the testing procedures that is difficult to avoid. Projecting behavior and into an inkblot suddenly becomes a huge question: Why does a response have to be pathological to ones self? Why is it interpreted as such, when it can be interpreted in a form of creativity? Why is there justification from an inkblot that deception and depression is given from a clients response? The biggest question has to be: Why an inkblot? Where is the scientific testing and reasoning behind an inkblot besides the fact that it just works? These are all questions raised within this single test that are still questions, even with Mihuras compelling research. There are ways to avoid this systematic circular loop of judgment, and that is to standardize each response within the test. Each test receives a generic response and falls under a standard. This way, the test cannot be interpreted differently between different practitioners. The goal is to empirically keep the test as consistent as possible. While the test may be consistent, the nature of it calls for therapists to make a call on the response in relationship to the inkblot, which is biased from the

get go. Standardizing responses and form of the response avoids this bias. What empirical tests have failed to show within the Rorschach is that any given response is responsible for any type of past or potential future behavior. The interpretation of an inkblot test suddenly becomes extremely ambiguous as the inkblot itself, and becomes as useful as explaining a dream one has had. I will come back to Mihuras research to explain more in detail on how she further developed validity for the variables within the Rorschach Inkblot test. Lilienfeld has made his own arguments which I will both support and critique. Why does the Rorschach Test fall flat within science? Scott Lilienfeld argues that the Rorschach, amongst other popular psychological assessments, are falsely seen as scientific with the data that supports them. He calls this the illusory correlation. This phenomenon has a general definition of perception of statistical association between variables when absent and an even bigger association between variables than actually present (Lilienfeld, Wood, and Garb 2012). This can also be thought of as a representation heuristic, that we judge a treatment directly off of a statistic when in actuality the data is misrepresentative of what is going on. An example Scott brings up within his article is the DAP or Draw-A-Person test. Results within the test showed that clinicians often associated large eyes to suspiciousness. The test was then administered to undergraduates and similar results were found. In a nutshell, perception fueled the results and data of this test. Perception is not the same as science however. This test similarly follows the Rorschach Inkblot test in illusory correlation. The question I will raise again is Why do certain characteristics determine psychological outcome? That is not always the case, even with support from statistical analysis. Illusory correlation has been applied to the Rorschach, and has shown that individuals perceive invalid signs as valid, which then leads to processing valid signs as invalid. (Lilienfeld, Wood, and Garb 2012). One point that I will bring up later on is the low amount of skepticism seen within projective tests. It is hard to think Is this test truly working off the correlative judgment I just made? This is a question all practitioners ask themselves, but becomes

extremely difficult when applied to a projective measure because of the difficulty presented in whether an inkblot is depicting an accurate psychological outcome. It is assumed once a judgment has been made during the test. Another argument that is presented by Scott is the P.T Barnum effect. This effect is explained as individuals giving themselves high ratings in accordance to their personality, when it reality these same ratings can be applied to an entire population of people. They are ambiguous self-perceptions that people rate as their own. This can be applied to the Rorschach in ways that certain inkblots can be interpreted. If I say the right side of the inkblot looks like half of a heart and I am psychologically assessed to be a loving person, is that only applied to me? That is hardly the case. Why is the assessment that I am a loving person had to do with the fact that I saw half of a heart in an inkblot? This is the question that is avoided when looking at the validity of projective measures. Scotts third point made is the over analysis within certain projective tests, which is primarily directed towards the Rorschach Test and the comprehensive system that is used to assess an individual. The numbers within this system tend to overestimate how psychologically disturbed someone is. Scott uses a comparison example of the MMPI and the Rorschach. The MMPI results came out normal for the individuals that took the test, but the Rorschach deemed them as pathological in personality. One out of six participants scored within the comprehensive range of schizophrenia and one out of four produced reflection response, which can be associated with potential narcissism. (Lilienfeld, Wood, and Garb 2012). The Rorschach precedes the CS norms in over analyzing patients though. A study conducted by Wittenberg and Sarason noted that the Rorschach sometimes results in normal individuals in being severely disordered. I do not have any statistics on how often this happens, but this explains why the Rorschach is not fully accepted. If there is any type of ambiguity or error within a personality test, such as determining whether someone is exhibiting odd behavior because of seemingly pathological personality, then how many errors can be allowed to slip by like that? No person would want to be falsely assessed and labeled. This is where science lacks within the Rorschach, due to the fact that it cannot explain the faults within it, but only what is done correctly.

The critique that I will present towards Scotts argument will be seemingly miniscule, but large on the populous scale. I will phrase it as a question: If it works, do people really care whether science backs it up or not? As someone who is for science and has found comfort within the discomfort of not knowing the answer to a problem, I cannot forget that people who are being psychologically assessed need an answer to irrational and odd behavior. Many people often dont want to know what scientific assessment is being performed, just a promise that it can explain a phenomenon that is occurring with them. I am not saying this is correct, but just reality. As a practitioner, it still is an epistemic duty to uphold quality and integrity for the client, but if that client wants an answer to explain their personality that works and they dont care how its obtained, the Rorschach seems pretty appealing and quite the job to do that. That does not excuse the fact that the test does have large variation in results from assessing normal individuals as severely disordered, but the reality in seeing that if it has worked a lot before, then taking the chance that it will work just as well later is appealing to someone who desperately demands an answer. Often times, we look for what works, and we neglect what truly makes them work because of time constraint, lack of emphasis and in its most blunt form, laziness. The Rorschach is perceived to work because of specifically tailored beliefs within an inkblot. Person A exhibits symptoms B due to the fact that they responded to inkblot X with response Y, and there is a system that is written to explain the response. Where did this response come from for each inkblot? This is where the Rorschach falls flat for science. We use the test because it is shown to work, but there is no science to explain why the phenomenon works. There is credit due to Joni Mihura and her research on valid variables within the Rorschach Test. The Rorschach Inkblot Test Is Not Useless Even though the Rorschach has a bit of questionable credibility amongst empiricists and followers of scientific methods, that does not mean the test should be exiled completely out of the field. It has shown that it works, but unclear of the methods of why it works. Mihura does a very good job of explaining through analysis of Rorschach variables

that this test does indeed have a use to clients within the field. Mihura goes out to explain many variables such as situational stress, affective features, interception variables etc. and validates them by comparing certain psychological tests. In relationships, the MMPI correlation was equal to the Rorschach Test in global validity. This shows that the Rorschach does have some science backing its use. Mihura also brings up a point on what kind of validity should be considered when looking at the Rorschach Inkblot test. When the Rorschach was tested for validity, it did not test validity for each individual variable within the system. Instead only about a quarter of the variables from the comprehensive system were included for testing. For the MMPI and the Rorschach, there is no confidence on whether or not all the estimated validity applies to all variable scales since there is a very large degree of effect sizes for each. In other words, it shows that there is a treatment in some scales, and not others. This gives some ground for the Rorschach to stand upon because one cannot conclude that the test does not do anything if there are effects in some variables, and not others. Mihura also brings critique upon one of Lilienfelds articles in a study conducted against DSM diagnoses (includes depression, schizophrenia etc.) and showed that there was weak associations between these symptoms and the comprehensive system variable. However, Mihura points out that because this study did not have an inclusion criterion, some studies may have been subjected to publication bias. Other studies conducted came to find that the Rorschach was very good in detecting schizophrenic symptoms, determining that suicide is related to self-destructive behavior, and that the two stress variables are supported within the comprehensive system. The Rorschach falls flat of trying to find anything related to depression, however. Mihura notes this and continues to support the validity of the Rorschach variables through other various researches that supports these strong relationships to the Rorschach variables related to schizophrenia, and almost no relationship between variables within the depressive symptoms category. Mihuras results for all comprehensive variables were all essentially measured in effect size, using r. This means any correlation was regarded as a true correlation. Although I have learned myself that certain statistics can be played

with to look better than they really are, I think Mihura has validated other research studies that looked at other variables one at a time to show or not show a relationship between two variables, which is a Rorschach variable and a thought disorder. With all this being said, I will get past all the theoretical talks of how and why a Rorschach Inkblot test does or doesnt work and actually talk about what matters, which is the practitioner applying the test to the client within their office. This is what we all want, right? We all want some type of solution is applied to help our individual to feel better. So if a practitioner does present the method that a Rorschach test is administered, along with the statistics of where it fails and where it succeeds, it has enough ground to support itself as a useful method to psychologically assess a clients behavior. At the end of the day, if the treatment works, that is what the client wants and is what a practitioner strives to achieve. There are multiple reasons that I will bring up within my own comment to both authors on where psychologically testing in general should be considered carefully in regards to statistics. It is an issue that should be looked at very carefully, by both scientists and naysayers of science. Statistical Methods on Individuals and Psychology as a Science? I will convey my thoughts now on what I think of psychological testing amongst any type of treatment. Practitioners of mental health are working with individuals and different individuals at that. So then the question is why do we use a mathematical method of inferring about a population to an individual? An individual is not a population, or even representative of a population. However, a bunch of individuals make up a population but there is a problem here. We cannot solely rely on a statistic to tell us where an individual sits on a distribution. We surely have effect size that can show us whether or not a treatment works, but that is after the fact. The application of a statistic may lead a practitioner to believe that their client falls within a certain confidence interval within a statistic. What if that individual actually is in the critical region, and is not even part of the measured statistic? Statistics and science will always be important in accurately assessing individuals.

Naysayers may say Well Ankit, I have used intuitive judgment for one of my clients and I have even talked them out of their disorder! No, you have not. First, you can never be really sure unless you have some type of data to back that up, so making that claim is very dangerous. Second, even with statistics you can never really be sure, but that is just the very nature of statistics and its uncanny resemblance to science. Neither is meant to be absolute and neither is structured as such. I think where the problem lies is that in being in what we define as human, the quality of scientific nature starts to decline. Who wants to subject a human psyche, to what we deem as a unique possession to each individual, and apply numbers to it? It is repulsive to some individuals to think about. It is necessary within science though, because as humans we look for causality within everything. Science does not judge, leave many grey areas, or sugar coats the results. This is where our hypocritical nature as humans comes in. We want the facts, but only the facts that we are willing to accept. So, should psychology be considered a science? Lilienfeld certainly supports the idea, and Mihura went out on a limb to explain the Rorschach test and its validity through science. As far as I can see, the time consumption used to be precise about crucial testing assessments has no value. Science is absolutely required to establish a relationship. And to all the naysayers out there, take a look at a statistic and a published research paper. It is structured first with an abstract, followed by a null and alternate hypothesis, methods and analysis, data and conclusions. The structure seems oddly familiar, right? The point that I am trying to make, is that there is no way to eliminate science out of whatever we do. There will always be some systematic way of explaining a phenomenon without being absolute about the results. No one in the scientific field has ever told the public to take science as the ultimate scripture. Skepticism is present at all times within science. Perhaps this is where people falter in the realization of what science and statistics are. If something is 95% likely to happen, we all tend to look at the glass half full. If something is 30% likely, then the glass is half empty. If our preconceived notions are violated, we tend to be let down, as if almost we have been lied to. Instead of viewing statistics in such a way, why not just look at the glass with water in it? Once we can embrace this notion of treating statistics as a

Maybe with a probability of precision attached to it, then science will become more of an acceptance within the field. Statistics are not absolute, and neither is science but the job to find the comfort within that discomfort is something that all medical practitioners in the mental health field should all strive for. Final Thoughts My deepest regards goes out to Mihura and Lilienfelds work and research within their respective studies to validate in what they truly believe in. In my eyes, I think this is what all practitioners should strive for. There will always be room to agree and to disagree, but what essentially makes psychological methods like the MMPI and the Rorschach test work are individuals like Mihura and Lilienfeld who go back and forth to scientifically stand their ground in showing that. There will never be a time where psychopathology and empiricism will ever just settle as one and that one side will always try to reject the other. I think this is what the very nature of what science is about, and that is not about being right, but where it is about being wrong. As long as there are others in the field like Mihura and Lilienfeld fueling the field of psychology with their beliefs and methodology, this puts meaning into what it means to be a clinical practitioner.