Les contenus anatomiques au test de Rorschach : comparaison des réponses de sujets infirmiers à une population contrôle

Abstract

Two hypotheses may be suggested in order to explain our findings. On one hand, it is highly probable that our results are linked to the everyday body confrontation in a nurse's job. On the other hand, we suggest that by giving An+Xy answers, nurses tend to reveal some idiosyncratic characteristics in order to show their own identity. Indeed, our nurse subjects were selected because of their job, and so they complied with the social identity that was implicitly expected. This is congruent with the complex functioning in social reality: in a social group, people will not verbalize all of their perceptions; they will preferentially verbalize perceptions that define their social identity. Conversely, if some perceptions do not comply with the subject's identity, these perceptions will be less frequently verbalized, despite the fact that they were perceived. Concerning the second main finding, the inadequate formal quality of answers given by nurses emphasizes a visual misrepresentation conditioning due to one's job. This effect is interesting from a psychological point of view because it suggests that this tendency to perceive more anatomical contents arises to the detriment of the "reality". Finally, our findings allowed us to suggest the hypothesis of the role of identity in answer contents to a Rorschach test according to the context, and to formulate some recommendations about the content use in the Rorschach interpretation.