Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1986

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Psychology

Major Professor

Harold J. Fine

Committee Members

Alvin G. Burstein, Kenneth R. Newton, F. Stanley

Abstract

Personality questionnaires and the Rorschach are frequently utilized means by which to elucidate an individual's style of interacting with others. A sample of College Scholars from the University of Tennessee was selected and administered the Rorschach, Jackson's Personality Research Form (PRF) and Tellegen's Differential Personality Questionnaire (DPQ). It was hypothesized that these College Scholars could be differentiated by their scores on the two personality questionnaires into two large groups on the basis of how invested they are in other people.

The NEAR or Socially Responsive group was hypothesized to include those persons who tended to seek out others and were interested in other's thoughts and feelings. The FAR or Self Focused group was to include those who tended to follow more autonomous, less interpersonally engaging pursuits. It was further hypothesized that each group would provide a different quantity and quality of movement responses and human figure percepts on the Rorschach. In short, the NEAR group would offer more human movement responses with greater degrees of human and motivational articulation.

Results indicated that the sample was not bimodal in distribution. The questionnaires could not differentiate the students on the basis of how invested they viewed themselves in interpersonal relationships. However, a post hoc observation of the results revealed that these College Scholars could be differentiated on the basis of their gender. Females not only provided more human movement responses than the males, but also their human movement responses were at higher levels of human and motivational articulation. These relationships were significant. The results from the data of the females also indicated that there was a significant (p<.05) and positive relationship between the human movement and object movement scores. These findings were not supported by the data from the male subjects.

Clear gender based distinctions in the manner by which individuals interact are supported and remain an area to be considered for future investigation.

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