The Influence of Color on Emotions in the Holtzman Inkblot Technique

Abstract

In this study, the influence of chromatic and achromatic color on emotions in the Holtzman Inkblot Technique (HIT) was tested empirically. Samples of normals (n = 30), patients with neurotic disorders (n = 30), borderline patients (n = 30), and both acute (n = 25) and chronic schizophrenics (n = 25) were studied with the HIT. A computerized investigation of verbally expressed emotions was performed by means of the “Affective Dictionary Ulm” (ADU; Dahl, Hölzer, & Berry, 1992 ), which was applied to the responses in the HIT. The effect of color was tested separately for cards containing red vs. non-red colors. According to the results, normals, patients with neurotic disorders, and borderline patients expressed love and anger significantly more often in response to cards containing red colors. For the non-red color cards neither an effect on love and anger, nor on anxiety and depression could be demonstrated. Furthermore, the chromatic cards of the HIT elicited significantly more different words given in response to a card than the achromatic cards. Again, this was true for normals, patients with neurotic disorders, and borderline patients, but not for schizophrenics. Structural ambiguity of the HIT cards correlated significantly negatively with the number of emotion words given in response to a card, again with the exception of schizophrenics. The latter result is discussed referring to the “almost axiomatic rule” ( Gunderson & Singer, 1975, p. 6 ) that borderline patients function adequately on structured tests but appear more seriously disturbed on less structured tests.

The Role of Structure in the Assessment of Psychopathology

“…In this study thought disordered responses showed a negative correlation with structural ambiguity and a positive correlation with interpretative ambiguity. In a previous study, the number of emotion words given in response to a HIT card also correlated significantly negatively with structural ambiguity in nonschizophrenic groups (Leichsenring, 2004). However, for another indicator of personality functioning, the avoidance of ambiguity, an inverse relation seems to be characteristic (Leichsenring & Meyer, 1994): HIT cards of high structural ambiguity elicited significantly more avoidance of ambiguity as assessed by the applied computerized lexical-content analytic method (in normals, patients with neurotic disorders, borderline patients, and acute schizophrenics).…”

“…Another study showed that HIT cards of high structural ambiguity elicited less emotions in normals, patients with neurotic disorders, and borderline patients (Leichsenring, 2004). According to these results, structural and interpretative ambiguity seems to be correlated differently with indicators of psychopathology.…”