Sex assignment to whole human responses in Rorschach

According to the theory of identification, men are more likely to qualify their
Rorschach human content responses as males, and women as females. These assumptions
were tested in an empirical investigation using a Belgian nonpatient sample of 800. All human
responses and their location were listed. Analyses were carried out on the 10 Cards and on
the formal quality (FQo vs. FQu/−) of all human responses according to the subject’s and the
examiner’s sex. Variables were first submitted to principal component analysis, and resulting
components were compared in a 2 × 2 design in order to assess examiners’ and participants’
sex potential effects on human responses sex assignments. Univariate and multivariate
ANOVA revealed no or only negligible differences. In a second step, distributions of
masculine, feminine, and neutral human responses across 16 card locations that commonly
elicit human responses were submitted to hierarchical clustering in order to identify
masculine, feminine, and neutral locations in Rorschach cards. Chi-square tests revealed no
significant association between participants’ sex and human responses locations. Results do
not corroborate predictions according to the theory of identification but they do, however,
highlight the role of the distal features of blots.