WEBVTT

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Take a look at this image.

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What might this be?

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A frightening monster?

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Two friendly bears?

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Or something else entirely?

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For nearly a century,

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ten inkblots like these have been used

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as what seems like an almost 
mystical personality test.

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Long kept confidential for psychologists 
and their patients,

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the mysterious images were said to draw
out the workings of a person’s mind.

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But what can inkblots really tell us,

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and how does this test work?

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Invented in the early 20th century 
by Swiss psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach,

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the Rorschach Test is actually less about 
the specific things we see,

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and more about our general approach 
to perception.

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As an amateur artist

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Hermann was fascinated by how visual 
perception varies from person to person.

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He carried this interest to 
medical school,

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where he learned all our senses 
are deeply connected.

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He studied how our process of perception 
doesn’t just register sensory inputs,

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but transforms them.

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And when he started working at a 
mental hospital in eastern Switzerland,

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he began designing a series 
of puzzling images

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to gain new insight into this 
enigmatic process.

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Using his inkblot paintings,

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Rorschach began quizzing hundreds 
of healthy subjects

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and psychiatric patients with 
the same question:

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what might this be?

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However, it wasn’t what the test subjects 
saw that was most important to Rorschach,

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but rather, how they approached the task.

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Which parts of the image did they 
focus on or ignore?

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Did they see the image moving?

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Did the color on some inkblots help them 
give better answers,

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or distract and overwhelm them?

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He developed a system to code 
people’s responses,

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reducing the wide range of interpretations
to a few manageable numbers.

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Now he had empirical measures to quantify 
all kinds of test takers:

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the creative and imaginative,

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the detail-oriented, the 
big-picture perceivers,

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and flexible participants able 
to adapt their approach.

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Some people would get stuck,

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offering the same answer 
for multiple blots.

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Others gave unusual and 
delightful descriptions.

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Responses were as varied as the inkblots,

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which offered different kinds of 
perceptual problems–

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some easier to interpret than others.

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But analyzing the test-taker’s 
overall approach

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yielded real insights into 
their psychology.

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And as Rorschach tested more 
and more people,

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patterns began to pile up.

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Healthy subjects with the same 
personalities

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often took remarkably similar approaches.

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Patients suffering from the same 
mental illnesses

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also performed similarly,

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making the test a reliable 
diagnostic tool.

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It could even diagnose some conditions

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difficult to pinpoint with other 
available methods.

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In 1921,

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Rorschach published his coding system 
alongside the ten blots he felt

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gave the most nuanced picture of people’s
perceptual approach.

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Over the next several decades,

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the test became wildly popular in 
countries around the world.

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By the 1960s,

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it had been officially administered 
millions of times in the U.S. alone.

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Unfortunately, less than a year after 
publishing the test,

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Hermann Rorschach had died suddenly.

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Without its inventor to keep it on track,

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the test he had methodically gathered 
so much data to support

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began to be used in all sorts 
of speculative ways.

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Researchers gave the test 
to Nazi war criminals,

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hoping to unlock the psychological roots 
of mass murder.

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Anthropologists showed the images to 
remote communities

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as a sort of universal personality test.

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Employers made prejudiced hiring decisions
based on reductive decoding charts.

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As the test left clinics and entered 
popular culture

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its reputation among medical 
professionals plummeted,

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and the blots began to fall 
out of clinical use.

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Today, the test is still controversial,

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and many people assume 
it has been disproven.

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But a massive 2013 review of all the 
existing Rorschach research

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showed that when administered properly 
the test yields valid results,

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which can help diagnose mental illness

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or round out a patient’s 
psychological profile.

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It’s hardly a stand-alone key 
to the human mind–

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no test is.

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But its visual approach and lack 
of any single right answer

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continue to help psychologists paint
a more nuanced picture

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of how people see the world.

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Bringing us one step closer

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to understanding the patterns 
behind our perceptions.