V-iONSTRUCTivE theorizing and research on the projective process have been greatly hampered by the general tendency to accept and preserve as "given" the particular set of conditions which happened to be specified originally for each of the various projective tests We now have a wide variety of "standard" projective conditions varying all of the way from the unstructured blots and free directions of the Rorschach test to the highly structured stimulus words and rigid directions of the word-association test Hence instead of a general projective psychology', we have a number of systems for interpreting projective phenomena, each applicable only withm Its own local test setting Toward a more constructive approach, we have suggested an experimental attack upon the whole problem with a deliberate program for varying drastically the inviolate conditions of some prominent projective techniques The present stud> is a continuation of our previous research directed toward determining the extent to which the projective process is influenced by variation of a particular aspect of the test situation, namely, the task attitude of the subject While the previous research (4) dealt with the effects of the free conditions of the Rorschach test, the present study concerns the influences of the restricted task imposed by the usual conditions of the word-association test Experimental variation of the task attitude was selected as a promising line of attack since it could provide an approach to the ' This research was aided by a grant from the Sigma Xi-RESA Research Fund The wnters are grateful to Harold E Israel for helpful suggestions related to the theoretical aspects of this paper

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