Psychologists are up in arms about the posting of the 10 original Rorschach tests on Wikipedia. As detailed in today's New York Times, many of them fear that the easy availability of the inkblots could undermine their usefulness in assessing personality and mental illness.
But Rorschach tests themselves are not particularly effective in the first place, argue Scott O. Lilienfeld, James M. Wood and Howard N. Garb in the April 2005 issue of Scientific American Mind, "What's Wrong with This Picture?" See what impressions you get from that article.
Image of a Rorschach inkblot image from Wikipedia.
The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)
Philip Yam is the managing editor of ScientificAmerican.com, responsible for the overall news content online. He began working at the magazine in 1989, first as a copyeditor and then as a features editor specializing in physics. He is the author of The Pathological Protein: Mad Cow, Chronic Wasting and Other Prion Diseases. Follow Philip Yam on Twitter
