Animal Content in the Rorschach

Abstract

A study was made of some of the associations that may be occurring when subjects give animal responses to the Rorschach stimuli. An animal association test requiring a description of each animal name as to most common gender and characteristic associated was administered to 42 sixth grade students and 39 adults. The subjects saw a predominance of animals as male but only five animals of the 50 presented showed consistent sex stereotypy for both groups: butterfly as female; ape, beaver, dog, and wolf as male. Twenty-nine animals were characterized as passive and 21 as aggressive; 30 animals elicited negative affect and 20 elicited positive affect. There was a high degree of agreement when responses on the animal association test were compared with responses elicited by the group-administered Rorschach test.