A self-concept test : The relationship to a personality rating scale and the group Rorschach test

In the interest of investigating a proposed research tool, this study attempted to validate a Self-Concept Test of five personality source traits. These traits are Social Adaptability, Emotional Control, Conformity, Inquiring Intellect, and Confident Self-expression. The criterion of validation was a self rating scale based upon these five source traits. Adjunct to the validation study, relationship of these source traits to the Rorschach F%, the M:C ratio, the H/Hd%, the FC:CE/C ratio, and the F/% scores we sought. The objective was to establish the Self-Concept Test as a consistent and stable measure of personality traits capable of making discriminations within the normal range. Forty-six students attending Mental Hygiene classes at the University of Houston, Houston, Texas were the subjects. Their ages and levels of education varied and thus insured a heterogeneous sample. Each subject devised a code number in lieu of his name for privacy. Product moment correlations wre computed of the Self- Concept Test and the Rating Scale for each of the five traits. The validity of the Social Adaptability was the highest, with a coefficient of correlation of .78. Emotional Control followed with a .67 coefficient of correlation; Conformity, that of .47, Inquiring Intellect, that of .43, and Confident Self-expression that of .43. Critical ratios of the Self-Concept Test and the Rating Scale were computed for Upper and Lower Groups dichotomized on the five Rorschach scores used. Relationship of the high F% score to a high Emotional Control score was found at the .10 and .05 levels of confidence for the Self-Concept Test and the Rating Scale, respectively. A high Conformity score related with the high F% score at the .01 level of confidence for both trait measures. A high M:C ratio score is predictive of a high Social Adaptability score at the .01 level of confidence for both measures, and is predictive of a high Conformity score at the .10 level of confidence for the Self-Concept Test as well aa the Rating Scale. Both High Social Adaptability and confident Self-expression are related with a high H/Hd% score at the .01 level of confidence, again for both the Self-Concept Test and the Rating Scale. The only factor relating with a high FC:CF/C ratio is a high Emotional Control score, at the .01 level of confidence. A high Inquiring Intellect score was found to relate to a high F/ % score also at the .01 confidence level. The validation data of this study was interpreted as indicating that there existed a high, marked relationship between the Self-Concept and the Rating Scale criterion. With respect to the relationships of the personality source traits to the Borschach F% score, a high F% would be indicative of intellectualisation and rigidity while a low F% would indicate fluidity and looseness in thought process. It was felt that though Conformity seemed to be the core trait of the relationship, components of Emotional Control is also of importance. The relationship of the M:C ratio, defined in this study as indicative of the balance between introversive and extroversive experience, to the source traits shows that the higher the M:C ratio score, the higher the Social Adaptability score, and to a lesser extent the higher the Conformity score. This may be interpreted as indicating that a subject with more M responses than C would be more controlled, less emotionally labile in social activity. The relationship of the high Social Adaptability score and the high Confident Self-expression score to the high H/Hd% score was considered tenable with the definition of the H/Hd% indicative of sensitivity to interpersonal relations or social reactivity. A predominance of FC In the FC:CF/C ratio was defined as indicative of a more controlled, tactful social reactivity, and therefore, the larger the FC, the greater the Emotional Control. The high degree of relationship between the high F/% score and high Inquiring Intellect score were interpreted as consistent with the definition of the F/ response as a good form response which indicates the level of accuracy and degree of ego strength.