From: PSYCHOBOX‚ A BOX PSVHOLOGICAL GAMES. Edited by: Mel GOODING. Shambala Publication . 2004
WHAT DO YOU SEE?
To perform this test you should make a mask by cutting an aperture the size of the individual images into the centre of an A4 sheet of paper. This can be manoeuvred to cover all the pictures but one at any time‚ starting at top left or bottom right. The person performing the task should describe what is seen as each subsequent picture is revealed and all the others (including those seen so far) are masked.
This is similar to tests devised to assess intolerance of ambiguity. (The original test had a contour that gradually changed from one thing into another.) Norms were defined for the stages in the sequence at which viewers began to report a change in their perception of what the picture represented‚ or else to acknowledge their uncertainty. The relevant point is that some people persist for longer than others in reporting what they have seen initially in the sequence. (It is not clear whether such persistence is a matter of actual perception or of persistence of response.) It was noticed that performance in this test tended to correlate with other aspects of the person's behaviour that reflected degrees of flexibility or rigidity of thought. (Of course this was no more than a correlational tendency.) We all have a certain toleration for perceptual variation or we wouldn't recognize objects when we see them from new or odd angles. On the other hand‚ we all tend to 'perseverate' (the psychologists' term for persistence) when we are anxious or highly aroused.
The ideas behind the original test were developed by an American-sponsored international group of social psychologists in the mid-1940s‚ at the end of a world war fought against Nazism and fascism. They were interested in defining those traits in personality that led to political authoritarianism: extreme 'rigidity' correlated‚ they thought. with a need for security and a faith in hierarchies
