The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)

1. Abstract

The Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) is one of the most prominent, enduring, and historically significant performance-based (projective) instruments designed for the assessment of personality, implicit motives, defense mechanisms, and social-cognitive representations. Conceived in the mid-1930s by American psychologist Henry A. Murray and lay psychoanalyst Christiana D. Morgan at the Harvard Psychological Clinic, the TAT consists of a standardized set of 31 visual stimulus plates (30 ambiguous photographic, illustrative, and fine art reproductions, plus one completely blank card). The examination protocol requires respondents to construct an impromptu, dramatic narrative for selected cards, delineating what led up to the event depicted, what is transpiring in the present moment, what the characters are feeling and thinking, and what the ultimate resolution will be.

Psychometrically grounded in Murray’s foundational theory of Personology, the TAT operationalizes personality functioning through the core dynamic of “needs” (internal motivational forces, drives, and psychogenic tensions within the individual) and “presses” (environmental determinants, situational forces, affordances, and impediments). Rather than yielding a singular, universally standardized psychometric score, the TAT functions as a versatile clinical assessment technique that serves as an expressive vehicle for several empirically validated scoring systems. Notable among these standardized scoring methodologies are David C. McClelland and John W. Atkinson’s scoring system for implicit motives (e.g., need for achievement [nAch], need for affiliation [nAff], and need for power [nPower]); Drew Westen’s Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS and SCORS-G); and Phebe Cramer’s Defense Mechanisms Manual (DMM). Although traditional psychoanalytic administration protocols faced psychometric criticism regarding classical internal consistency and test-retest reliability, contemporary empirically validated scoring systems consistently achieve substantial inter-rater reliability (intraclass correlation coefficients and Cohen’s kappa frequently exceeding .80 to .90) and robust convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity in predicting long-term behavioral trajectories, clinical psychopathology, borderline pathology, and executive leadership performance.

2. Keywords

Thematic Apperception Test, TAT, Henry A. Murray, Christiana D. Morgan, projective techniques, implicit motives, need for achievement, Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale, SCORS, personology, apperception, narrative assessment, defense mechanisms, implicit personality

3. Authors

The Thematic Apperception Test was developed through a seminal collaboration between Henry Alexander Murray, M.D., Ph.D. (1893–1988), and Christiana Drummond Morgan (1897–1967) at the Harvard Psychological Clinic, which was established within the Department of Psychology and Social Relations at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States.

Henry A. Murray was an American biochemist, physician, and psychoanalyst who served as the director of the Harvard Psychological Clinic from 1928 to 1938. Murray integrated psychodynamic principles derived from Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung with physiological, experimental, and holistic personological frameworks. Christiana Morgan, an artist, lay psychoanalyst, and Harvard research affiliate, was instrumental in conceptualizing the apperceptive narrative methodology, co-authoring the earliest foundational monographs, and personally sketching, sourcing, and modifying several of the original stimulus pictures used across the card series. Subsequent development of standardized scoring protocols was spearheaded by prominent mid-to-late 20th-century psychologists, including David C. McClelland, John W. Atkinson, Russell A. Clark, Edgar L. Lowell, Drew Westen, and Phebe Cramer.

4. Purpose

The core clinical and scientific purpose of the Thematic Apperception Test is to reveal the underlying dynamics of personality, covert motivational tensions, unacknowledged emotional conflicts, internal object representations, and characteristic coping strategies that respondents are either unwilling or unable to articulate through traditional, objective self-report inventories. While structured psychometric instruments (such as the MMPI-2, PAI, or NEO-PI-3) capture an individual’s explicit self-concept and conscious self-attributions, the TAT bypasses defensive self-monitoring, impression management, and lack of psychological mindedness. It provides direct clinical insight into what contemporary cognitive and personality psychologists designate as implicit mental processes.

In clinical contexts, the instrument is deployed to:

• Elucidate dominant intrapsychic conflicts, affective vulnerabilities, and latent suicidal or aggressive ideation.
• Assess personality organization, level of object relations, and capacity for emotional investment in interpersonal relationships.
• Track psychological development, structural personality shifts, and therapeutic progress across psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, and cognitive-behavioral interventions.
• Differentiate between neurotic character structure, primitive borderline personality organization, and severe psychotic thought disturbance via narrative incoherence or perceptual distortion.

In empirical and organizational research, the TAT serves as the foundational gold-standard paradigm for measuring non-conscious human motives. Unlike questionnaire measures of motivation, which reflect socialized values and normative expectations, TAT-derived motive scores reliably predict spontaneous, long-term operant behavioral trends over years or decades. Consequently, the TAT is widely applied in longitudinal studies of leadership, entrepreneurial success, developmental trajectories of coping mechanisms, and cross-cultural analyses of collective societal narratives.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the TAT is grounded in the perceptual-cognitive phenomenon of apperception. First introduced into psychological philosophy by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and elaborated by Johann Friedrich Herbart and Wilhelm Wundt, apperception refers to the mental process by which a new visual or situational percept is assimilated, interpreted, and meaningfully organized in light of the individual’s accumulated past experiences, dynamic unconscious needs, and internal schemata. In Murray’s formulation, when an individual is confronted with an ambiguous, emotionally evocative visual scene and asked to explain the scenario, the resulting narrative is an apperceptive distortion—a direct projection of their internal psychological reality onto the external characters and circumstances.

Needs (Internal Dynamic Forces)

According to Murray’s personology, personality is organized around a taxonomy of psychogenic needs—organic forces in the brain that coordinate perception, apperception, intellection, and action to transform an existing, unsatisfying situation into a satisfying one. Primary needs systematically indexed by the TAT include:

• Need for Achievement (nAch): The drive to overcome obstacles, exercise power, strive to do something difficult as well and as quickly as possible, and meet or surpass an internal standard of excellence.
• Need for Affiliation (nAff): The motivation to draw near and enjoyably cooperate or reciprocate with an allied other, to please and win affection, and to maintain warm, affectionate interpersonal bonds.
• Need for Power (nPower): The urge to control one’s human environment, influence or direct the behavior of others through persuasion, command, seduction, or coercion, and maintain social prestige.
• Need for Autonomy (nAut): The impulse to resist influence, break away from coercion, defy convention, and achieve independence.
• Need for Aggression (nAgg): The tendency to overcome opposition forcefully, fight, attack, injure, or disparage an opposing entity.
• Need for Abasement (nAba): The disposition to submit passively to external force, accept blame, seek pain, or exhibit depressive self-reproach.

Presses (Environmental Forces and Affordances)

Complementing needs are environmental presses (plural: press), which represent the directional forces, hazards, constraints, or opportunities exerted by objects or persons in the subject’s ambient environment. Murray distinguished between:

• Alpha Press (α press): The objective, real, verifiable properties of the physical and social environment as assessed by an impartial observer.
• Beta Press (β press): The subject’s idiosyncratic, subjective perception and dynamic interpretation of the environment, which governs behavior and forms the narrative fabric of TAT storytelling.

Typical presses identified in TAT narratives include Press of Rejection, Press of Affliction, Press of Lack or Loss, Press of Dominance, and Press of Physical Danger.

The Thema

The convergence of an internal dynamic need with an external environmental press constitutes a thema. A thema is a behavioral-narrative unit representing the dynamic transaction between the individual and their environment. Over a sequence of TAT stories, recurrent themata reveal the client’s cardinal life conflicts, relational patterns, and core emotional scripts.

Modern Construct Formulations: Object Relations and Defense Mechanisms

Contemporary psychometrics has translated the broad personological constructs of the TAT into multidimensional, empirically anchored scales. The most prominent is the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS) developed by Drew Westen and colleagues, which quantifies four core dimensions:

• Complexity of Representations of People: Ranging from primitive, unidimensional, egocentric caricatures to rich, differentiated, psychologically minded understandings of human subjectivity.
• Affect-Tone of Relationship Paradigms: Spanning from destructive, malevolent, hostile, or persecutory interpersonal expectations to benevolent, safe, and emotionally nourishing relational bonds.
• Capacity for Emotional Investment in Relationships and Moral Standards: Ranging from exploitative, selfish, or narcissistic orientations to genuine, empathetic commitment to others and internalized values.
• Understanding of Social Causality: Assessing the degree to which narratives demonstrate logical, coherent, and realistic attributions for interpersonal interactions and emotional reactions.

Concurrently, Phebe Cramer’s Defense Mechanisms Manual (DMM) operationalizes three classical psychoanalytic defenses arranged hierarchically across developmental lines: Denial (developmentally early), Projection (intermediate), and Identification (mature).

6. Theoretical Framework

The Thematic Apperception Test is anchored in the confluence of classical psychoanalysis, psychodynamic ego psychology, and Henry Murray’s holistic framework of Personology. Murray rejected both the reductionist behaviorism that dominated early 20th-century American psychology and the unvalidated speculative excesses of orthodox psychoanalysis. Instead, he formulated a biopsychosocial methodology that conceptualized the human organism as an integrated, temporal whole whose current psychological functioning cannot be divorced from its longitudinal life history.

Personological Foundations

Murray postulated that human behavior is driven by internal organic tensions that require discharge or gratification through interactions with external environmental objects. The fundamental premise of personology is that an individual’s psychological life is an unfolding narrative sequence punctuated by emotional crises, striving, frustration, and adaptation. Because direct observation of unconscious motivational states is impossible, projective methods serve as an analogical microscope. When presented with ambiguous narrative stimuli, individuals automatically cast a central protagonist (the “hero”) who functions as a proxy for the self, attributing to that figure their own latent desires, moral dilemmas, and inhibitions.

The Dual-System Framework of Human Motivation

In modern cognitive and personality psychology, the theoretical framework underlying the TAT is explained via the dual-system model of motivation, predominantly established through the theoretical and experimental work of David McClelland, Richard Koestner, and Joel Weinberger (1989). This paradigm posits two functionally and neurobiologically distinct motivational systems:

• Explicit (Self-Attributed) Motives: Conscious, cognitively accessible goals and self-concepts measured via self-report questionnaires (e.g., “I consider myself an ambitious person”). These motives are activated by explicit social demands, incentives, and normative expectations, and they predict immediate, deliberate choices in structured environments.
• Implicit Motives: Non-conscious, affectively charged associative networks assessed through performance-based, imaginative narrative instruments like the TAT. These motives develop early in preverbal life through affective experiences, are triggered by spontaneous task incentives, and predict recurring, long-term operant behavioral trends over time.

Empirical research consistently demonstrates near-zero statistical correlations between explicit self-report measures of motives and implicit TAT-based measures of motives, confirming that the TAT evaluates a fundamentally distinct, non-overlapping stratum of human personality architecture.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the Thematic Apperception Test has been one of the most vigorously debated topics in clinical psychology. Early academic critiques (e.g., Lilienfeld, Wood, & Garb, 2000) argued that when administered as an unstructured, impressionistic clinical technique without objective coding systems, the TAT exhibits weak and unquantifiable validity. However, when contemporary, standardized, empirically keyed scoring systems are applied, the TAT demonstrates robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity.

Predictive and Criterion Validity: The McClelland Implicit Motive Tradition

The validity of the TAT for measuring implicit motives represents one of the most comprehensively replicated empirical programs in personality science. In foundational longitudinal investigations by McClelland, Atkinson, Clark, and Lowell (1953) and subsequent cross-cultural meta-analyses (Spangler, 1992; Collins, Hanges, & Locke, 2004):

• TAT-derived scores for the Need for Achievement (nAch) significantly predicted long-term entrepreneurial activity, venture performance, patent acquisition, and voluntary career elevation across 10- to 20-year intervals (mean correlation with operant achievement behavior: r = .28 to .38, p < .001). In contrast, self-report achievement questionnaires failed to predict these spontaneous behavioral outcomes.
• The “Leadership Motive Pattern” (characterized by high nPower, low nAff, and high activity inhibition/self-control as coded on the TAT) prospectively predicted managerial success and executive promotion within major corporate entities (such as AT&T) over a 16-year longitudinal follow-up, demonstrating criterion validity that surpassed multi-source 360-degree feedback inventories.

Construct and Convergent Validity: SCORS and SCORS-G

Research examining the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (Westen, 1991; Stein et al., 2012) provides extensive construct validity evidence for the TAT in psychiatric and neuropsychiatric populations:

• Clinical cohorts diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) score significantly lower on the SCORS dimensions of Affect-Tone of Relationship Paradigms and Complexity of Representations compared to both healthy controls and patients with major depressive or dysthymic disorders (Cohen’s d ranging from 0.85 to 1.32).
• SCORS narrative ratings correlate significantly with independent observer-rated relational functioning, clinician-rated Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) scores (r = .42 to .56), and history of childhood relational trauma, establishing convergent validity.
• Discriminant validity is supported by minimal correlations between SCORS dimensions and verbal intelligence (WAIS-IV Vocabulary subtest; r typically < .15), demonstrating that TAT narrative complexity reflects social-cognitive maturity rather than raw lexical capacity.

Developmental Construct Validity: The Defense Mechanisms Manual (DMM)

Phebe Cramer (1991, 2006) established the construct validity of the TAT for assessing defensive processes across the lifespan. In cross-sectional and longitudinal investigations, the DMM demonstrated that:

• Denial scores are highest in early childhood and systematically decline across adolescence.
• Projection emerges in middle childhood and peaks during early adolescence.
• Identification steadily increases from late adolescence into mature adulthood.
• Under experimental stress (e.g., ego-threat manipulations involving intelligence or social desirability failure), participants exhibit immediate, significant elevations in specific defense mechanism usage on subsequent TAT cards, confirming the instrument’s sensitivity to transient affective states and defensive mobilization.

8. Reliability

Evaluating the reliability of the TAT requires distinguishing between traditional psychometric assumptions applied to self-report questionnaires and the specialized measurement theory governing performance-based narrative instruments.

Inter-Rater Reliability

Because the TAT produces open-ended narrative prose, scorer agreement is paramount. When raters undergo structured training using validated scoring systems, inter-rater reliability coefficients consistently satisfy rigorous psychometric benchmarks:

• McClelland-Atkinson Motive Scoring: Trained coders regularly achieve inter-scorer percentage agreement exceeding 85% to 90%, with Cohen’s kappa (κ) coefficients ranging from .78 to .88.
• SCORS and SCORS-G: Across multiple independent clinical studies, two-way random intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC [2,1]) for individual card ratings typically range from .75 to .89, while aggregated across a standard 6-to-8 card battery, composite ICC values consistently exceed .85 to .93.
• Defense Mechanisms Manual (DMM): Inter-rater agreement evaluated via intraclass correlations routinely falls between .80 and .92 for Denial, Projection, and Identification across both adult and child clinical samples.

Internal Consistency Considerations

Historically, the TAT was heavily criticized for exhibiting low Cronbach’s alpha values (often between .30 and .55 across card series). However, modern psychometricians (e.g., McClelland et al., 1989; Schultheiss & Pang, 2007) have demonstrated that classical internal consistency models are conceptually inapplicable to projective narrative tasks. Standard psychometric assumptions of parallel items assume that each item is an equivalent sample of a static trait. In contrast, TAT narrative production is governed by dynamic psychological satiation and the stream of thought: once an individual expresses a strong achievement or aggressive theme on Card 1, the intrapsychic need is temporarily discharged or the narrative tension is resolved, prompting the subject to introduce contrasting themes on subsequent cards to avoid narrative redundancy.

When psychometric models account for this dynamic satiation effect using dynamic balance formulas or structural equation modeling of latent traits, internal consistency estimates rise to acceptable psychometric thresholds (equivalent to α ≥ .70 to .80).

Test-Retest Reliability

Temporal stability coefficients for the TAT vary depending on administration instructions and elapsed time. Because participants instructed to “tell a new, different story” intentionally alter their narratives upon re-testing, unstandardized re-test administrations frequently yield attenuated correlation coefficients (r = .25 to .45). However, when re-test instructions explicitly encourage respondents to tell whatever story comes to mind without feeling obligated to invent completely novel plots, test-retest reliability for implicit motives over intervals ranging from several weeks to one year typically falls between r = .55 and .71, demonstrating stability comparable to standard self-report personality dimensions.

9. Factor Analysis

Because the raw TAT does not produce numeric item responses, traditional Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) or Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) cannot be performed directly on the stimulus cards. Instead, factor analytic investigations have focused on the latent dimensional structures underlying standardized scoring systems applied across card batteries.

Factor Structure of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS)

Numerous confirmatory factor analytic studies have examined the latent structure of the SCORS and its global variant (SCORS-G; Stein et al., 2012; Siefert et al., 2016). When evaluated across clinical and non-clinical cohorts, CFA models typically support either an eight-factor correlated model or a robust higher-order two-factor solution:

• Factor 1: Social-Relational Competence & Complexity: Heavily defined by Complexity of Representations of People (factor loadings > .80), Understanding of Social Causality (loadings > .75), and Capacity for Emotional Investment in Relationships. This latent dimension reflects cognitive maturity, differentiation of self and other, and interpersonal attunement.
• Factor 2: Affective Quality of the Relational World: Dominated by Affect-Tone of Relationship Paradigms (loadings > .85), Affective Quality of Object Representations, and Aggressive Impulse Management. This dimension captures the continuum between persecutory/malevolent internal working models and safe, trusting, benevolent representations.

Structural equation modeling confirms that these two latent dimensions display exceptional fit indices in adult psychiatric samples (Comparative Fit Index [CFI] > .95; Root Mean Square Error of Approximation [RMSEA] < .05).

Structural Modeling of Implicit Motives

In the domain of motive assessment, confirmatory factor models testing the independence of the three classic implicit needs—nAch, nAff, and nPower—demonstrate clear discriminant structural validity. Multi-trait multi-method (MTMM) structural equation models confirm that three distinct, non-correlated latent factors account for the variance across selected stimulus cards, with factor loadings for targeted motive imagery ranging from .45 to .75, while cross-loadings are negligible. This structural independence verifies that implicit achievement, affiliation, and power strivings operate as distinct motivational systems within human cognitive architecture.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The Thematic Apperception Test is an individual, performance-based narrative assessment tool consisting of standard visual stimulus plates, standardized administrative instructions, and targeted inquiry protocols.

Stimulus Materials and Composition

• Total Card Inventory: The official TAT set comprises 31 stimulus cards published on heavy cardstock (measuring approximately 8.5 × 11 inches or 21.5 × 28 cm).
• Visual Media: 30 cards depict ambiguous, monochrome (grayscale, sepia, or black-and-white) drawings, etchings, lithographs, and modified photographic images portraying one or more individuals engaged in ambiguous activities, interpersonal scenes, or solitary contemplation. One card (Card 16) is entirely blank on the front.
• Target Demographic Designations: Specific cards feature coded markings printed on the reverse to denote the intended target demographic established in Murray’s 1943 manual:
  • M = Men (males over 14 years of age)
  • F = Females (females over 14 years of age)
  • B = Boys (males under 14 years of age)
  • G = Girls (females under 14 years of age)
  • Unmarked = Universal cards intended for administration to all subjects regardless of age or gender.
• Modern Clinical Battery Size: While Murray originally advocated administering 20 cards across two separate 1-hour sessions, contemporary clinical and empirical assessment batteries typically administer a tailored subset of 6 to 12 cards selected to address specific diagnostic referral questions.

Standard Administration Protocol and Script

The respondent is seated comfortably, traditionally positioned at a slight angle or seated beside the examiner to reduce face-to-face evaluation anxiety. Cards are handed to the examinee one at a time in a standardized numerical order. The examiner presents the following verbatim instructions (adapted from Murray, 1943):

“This is a test of imagination, one form of intelligence. I am going to show you some pictures, one at a time, and your task will be to make up a story for each card. Tell me what has led up to the event shown in the picture, describe what is happening at the moment, what the characters are feeling and thinking, and then give a complete outcome, telling how it ends. Speak your thoughts aloud as they come to you. Do you understand? Since you have fifty minutes for ten pictures, you might spend about five minutes on each story. Here is the first picture.”

Protocol for Card 16 (The Blank Card)

When Card 16 is handed to the subject, the examiner delivers specific instructions:

“See what you can see on this blank card. Imagine some picture there and describe it to me in detail… [After the subject describes a picture] Now tell me a story about it, including what led up to it, what is happening now, what the characters feel and think, and how it turns out.”

Inquiry Phase and Documentation

• Verbatim Recording: The examiner records the participant’s exact words verbatim, noting response latencies (time elapsed from card presentation to the first spoken word), total narrative duration, behavioral hesitations, emotional outbursts, gestures, and comments directed to the examiner. In modern clinical settings, digital audio recording with transcription is strongly recommended.
• Non-Directive Prompting: If an examinee omits a vital narrative component (e.g., forgets to state an outcome or does not explain what characters are feeling), the examiner delivers standardized, non-directive prompts such as: “What led up to this?” or “How does the story turn out?” Leading prompts that suggest specific emotional content are strictly prohibited.
• Clarification Inquiry: Following the completion of all stories, the examiner may conduct a clinical inquiry to clarify ambiguous pronouns, clarify narrative inconsistencies, or explore unusual thematic content.

Primary Standardized Scoring Protocols

• Murray’s Need-Press System (1943): Evaluates the primary protagonist (hero), identifies active internal needs (scored on an intensity scale from 1 to 5), identifies external environmental presses (scored 1 to 5), identifies dominant themata, and scores the emotional resolution/cathexis.
• McClelland-Atkinson Motive System: Analyzes narrative sub-categories including Motive Imagery (Achievement, Affiliation, Power), Stated Need, Instrumental Activity, Goal Anticipation, Blocks/Obstacles (Personal or Environmental), Affective States, and Thematic Outcome.
• Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale-Global (SCORS-G): Scores 8 narrative dimensions on an anchored 1-to-7 Likert rating scale (1 = Pathological / Immature; 7 = Highly Mature / Integrated).
• Defense Mechanisms Manual (DMM): Counts behavioral instances of Denial (e.g., negation, minimization, perceptual reversal), Projection (e.g., attribution of hostile intent, paranoia, external causation of internal impulses), and Identification (e.g., adopting external standards, moral self-regulation).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Thematic Apperception Test was first conceptualized and published in preliminary scientific papers by Christiana D. Morgan and Henry A. Murray in 1935. The standardized 31-card set and accompanying authoritative clinical manual were formally published in 1943 by Harvard University Press.

• Copyright and Commercial Distribution: The physical stimulus plates and manual are commercially controlled and distributed exclusively by Harvard University Press (Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA). Commercial test kits, replacement cards, and scoring materials are subject to proprietary purchase fees.
• User Qualification Level: In accordance with the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing established by the American Psychological Association (APA), the TAT is classified as a Qualification Level C clinical assessment tool. Purchase and clinical administration require an advanced doctoral degree (Ph.D., Psy.D., or Ed.D.) in psychology, psychiatric licensure, or certified professional training under the direct supervision of a licensed clinical psychologist, with formal coursework in psychometrics, personality assessment, and projective interpretation.
• Research Accessibility: Independent scoring frameworks (such as the SCORS-G manual by Stein et al., or the DMM coding guide by Cramer) are published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and academic volumes, permitting non-commercial empirical use by researchers provided the official stimulus cards are lawfully acquired from the copyright holder.

12. References

• Atkinson, J. W. (Ed.). (1958). Motives in fantasy, action, and society: A method of assessment and study. D. Van Nostrand Company. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1959-00913-000
• Collins, C. J., Hanges, P. J., & Locke, E. A. (2004). The relationship of achievement motivation to entrepreneurial behavior: A meta-analysis. Human Performance, 17(1), 95–117. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327043hup1701_5
• Cramer, P. (1991). The development of defense mechanisms: Theory, research, and assessment. Springer-Verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9041-1
• Cramer, P. (2006). Protecting the self: Defense mechanisms in action. Guilford Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-08101-000
• Lilienfeld, S. O., Wood, J. M., & Garb, H. N. (2000). The scientific status of projective techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 1(2), 27–66. https://doi.org/10.1111/1529-1006.002
• McClelland, D. C., Atkinson, J. W., Clark, R. A., & Lowell, E. L. (1953). The achievement motive. Appleton-Century-Crofts. https://doi.org/10.1037/11144-000
• McClelland, D. C., Koestner, R., & Weinberger, J. (1989). How do self-attributed and implicit motives differ? Psychological Review, 96(4), 690–702. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.96.4.690
• Morgan, C. D., & Murray, H. A. (1935). A method for investigating fantasies: The Thematic Apperception Test. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 34(2), 289–306. https://doi.org/10.1001/archneurpsyc.1935.02250200049005
• Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. Oxford University Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1938-05990-000
• Murray, H. A. (1943). Thematic Apperception Test manual. Harvard University Press. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674877207
• Schultheiss, O. C., & Pang, J. S. (2007). Measuring implicit motives. In R. W. Robins, R. C. Fraley, & R. F. Krueger (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in personality psychology (pp. 322–344). Guilford Press. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2007-04022-020
• Siefert, C. J., Stein, M. B., Slavin-Mulford, J., Sinclair, S. J., Chung, W. J., & Blais, M. A. (2016). Nonclinical reference data for the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale–Global Rating Method (SCORS-G) in an adult sample. Journal of Personality Assessment, 98(3), 273–282. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2015.1098670
• Spangler, W. D. (1992). Validity of questionnaire and TAT measures of need for achievement: Two meta-analyses. Psychological Bulletin, 112(1), 140–154. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.112.1.140
• Stein, M. B., Slavin-Mulford, J., Siefert, C. J., Sinclair, S. J., Renna, M., Malone, J., & Blais, M. A. (2012). External validity of the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale–Global Rating Method (SCORS-G) in an outpatient psychiatric sample. Journal of Personality Assessment, 94(4), 336–346. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2012.668581
• Westen, D. (1991). Clinical assessment of object relations: Empirical research with the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 22(6), 429–439. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.22.6.429

13. Items of the Scale