Draw A Person Interpretation Guide
4-year-old's drawing of a person The House-Tree-Person test (HTP) is a projective test designed to measure aspects of a person's personality. The test can also be used to assess brain damage and general mental functioning.
H-T-P Interpretation Booklet (Pack of 25) This convenient 4-page booklet allows you to record, score, and interpret all information from a drawing session on one easy-to-use form. The front provides space for demographic information and general observations. Inside, a Post-Drawing Inquiry lists appropriate questions for each of the three drawings (house, tree, and person) and provides space for the client’s responses. This is followed by a Checklist of Interpretive Concepts organized under eight headings: General Observations, Proportion, Perspective, Detailing, Nonessential Details, Irrelevant Details, Line Quality, and Use of Color. The back contains a ruled grid that allows you to quickly evaluate the horizontal and vertical placement of each drawing. The House-Tree-Person Projective Drawing Technique: Manual And Interpretive Guide By John N.
Buck, revised by W. The definitive guide to administering, scoring, and interpreting the House-Tree-Person (H-T-P), this manual gives you quick access to accepted interpretive concepts. It links sample drawings (many in full color) directly to specific interpretive guidelines, and it illuminates differences between the drawings of children and those of adults.
In addition, it presents research on drawings done by abused children. Spiralbound (7' x 10'), 165 pp, illus. A Catalog for the Qualitative Interpretation of the House-Tree-Person (H-T-P) By Isaac Jolles.
This time-saving volume alphabetically catalogs characteristics of H-T-P drawings, giving a brief interpretation of each. It covers all variations of each characteristic—a feature that helps you solve specific interpretation problems. Many of the findings presented apply specifically to children. Providing quick access to key characteristics, this volume simplifies H-T-P interpretation. Paperbound (5 1/4' x 8'), 191 pp, illus. BUCK One of the most distinguished and widely used projectives, the H-T-P yields abundant clinical information. It also saves time and is easy to use.
The subject simply produces, and then discusses, three drawings—of a house, a tree, and a person. Because drawing can reduce tension, the H-T-P is often administered as the first in a battery of psychodiagnostic tests. It is an ideal way to assess personality in individuals who are culturally different, educationally deprived, developmentally disabled, or non–English speaking. The books and forms presented here enhance and simplify administration, scoring, and interpretation.
Continuing on with various psychological measures of personality, I’m going to discuss a very odd (to say the least) method of personality testing this week- the Draw-A-Person (DAP) test for personality and intelligence. I think there are a number of valid & reliable tests out there that can be used to assess personality, and this quite frankly isn’t one of them, but it’s an interesting one none-the-less. The test method I’ll be discussing this week seems to have good intentions, but overall the whole method is questionable. The first Draw-A-Person test was created by Florence Goodenough in 1926 to initially assess intelligence & maturity level in children through a non verbal task: drawing a person.
The test was meant to be an alternative to traditional intelligence tests and was a non-verbal, ‘nonthreatening’ task (ie. No investigator pressures) to evaluate intelligence by scoring the drawings. It was intended to eliminate biases by reducing language barriers (like primary language differences, verbal skills, communication disabilities, working under pressure, etc.). Later revisions of the test incorporated a drawing of a man, a woman, and of the child themselves. One revision was named the Goodenough-Harris DAP, and it was a psychological projective personality test that was used to evaluate children & adolescents for a variety of purposes, including personality traits and emotional/behavioural disorders. Another later version of the test was done by Machover in 1949, and in this version the drawings were measured qualitatively on a variety of dimensions (Murstein, 1965).
The personality traits/characteristics measured could be anything (e.g. Aggressiveness, homosexual tendencies, relationships, introversion and extroversion (Machover, 1949)). Harris’ book from 1963 provides a scoring scale that can be used to examine and score the 3 drawings. As well, the inclusion, omission, proportion, and timing (meaning which body parts are drawn 1 st, 2 nd, 3 rd, etc.), can be used to interpret the subjects personality, and any emotional/behavioural disorders. The locations of all of the body parts are analyzed too (e.g.
Where the limbs are attached). They measured everything.
Note: Thanks to Jesse for giving me the idea to look into the Draw-A-Person test as a method of personality testing! A link to the ‘Goodenough’ scoring table/guide: Images: Children’s Drawings as Measures of Intellectual Maturity by Dale Harris, Pennsylvania State University, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963 (A Revision and Extension of the Goodenough Draw-a-Man Test) Sources: The goodenough-harris drawing test as a measure of intellectual maturity of youths 12-17 years, United States. Personality projection in the drawing of the human figure (A method of personality investigation) – Karen Machover Murstein, B. Handbook of projective techniques.
New York, NY: Basic Books Inc. I did not know what the Draw-A-Person test was until this post. I am awful at drawing and I am sure that if someone were to see my drawings they would not think that I was in university. I think that judging intelligence through drawing is not valid because some can be more artistic than others. Although, I can understand that more intelligent children would add more detail (whether good or not) to the drawing, which may show more understanding of the human body. Although, an idea such as if teeth are showing this is a sign of aggression, I do not agree with.
I think this generalizes and makes assumptions with not much evidence. Overall, I think that this would be a good test in looking at how many details they added, but not a good personality test in telling how they feel and act on a daily basis. Hi Christine! Excellent ideas. I have to say I agree with you there- if my IQ were to be evaluated based on my drawings of a man, woman and myself I probably would not meet the minimum requirement for IQ to be accepted into university!
Draw A Person Interpretation Guide
I can understand judging intelligence based on the amount of detail in a drawing though, the ability for a young child to realize that there are salient features of a person is an intelligent behaviour (like how many fingers are on a hand, nose shapes, etc.). But it’s really not a good measure of intelligence or personality, maybe just of various cognitive, motor, perceptual or attention capacities. Thanks for commenting 🙂 Like. I enjoyed reading your post. The DAP test takes on an interesting concept, especially with knowing the available advances of measuring such traits today. I can see how in that time period how researchers saw the validity in the components that took place in the DAP test.
Reading your post, reminded me of personality tests that analyze personality traits based on handwriting. I too, thought this to be interesting and saw similarities within the framework of the DAP test. In the handwriting test it took on a-like measures. For example: the quiz measures personality traits based on the size of the letters in the handwriting (Wendels, 2013). The elements that were measures went as followed: Smaller letters: -punctual -delicate -you pay attention to detail -you are a planner -observant -good sense of humour -intellectual and the list goes on Large letters: -you relate well to others (very general) -you generate many ideas -you don’t perform well under pressure (uh-oh) -all around likeable – unwillingness to obey rules This is just a small example of what the handwriting-personality test took into account.
It seems peculiar to put an emphasis on something so complex and generalize it with something as simple as a hand written test. Especially if one were to look at the writing in smaller children. Children at a younger age will generally write bigger when they first learn the skill as it it easier.
Draw A Person Test
This does not mean that they possess the characteristics I listed above. I had the same thought with personality quizzes that relate to astrology signs. Many of these “personality tests” should be taken with a grain of salt for the indicated reasons.
Furthermore, strikes the question of validity in similar forms of personality traits. Recruiting intelligence: The problem with personality tests. Retrieved from Like.
Hi Danielle, Interesting! I’ve never heard of this specific test before, but it seems to be similar to the DAP in relating personality traits to writing abilities, and in this case technique or style. I think it’s quite amusing how general these personality traits are! Small letters = punctual, detail oriented, etc. Big letters = likeable, not performing well under pressure, etc.
I have to admit, it gave me a laugh! But I do have to agree with you, we really do have to take these kinds of personality tests with a grain of salt, and we have to remember what time period these kinds of test came out of and what researchers at that time were focusing on and trying to figure out. This is definitely interesting to read about!
It is nice to sometimes compare old methods with new ones, just to see how much we’ve improved in that area. I like that this test considered language barriers, as other tests may not consider this to bias the results. But I do understand where the DAP is not reliable, valid, or frankly accurate in assessing ones personality. I do agree that some personality tests are valid and reliable, hence our grandiose use of them in many aspects of life.
When searching for personality tests online, I came across many that used different questions, pictures, etc. That really either confused me, or made me reeeally uncomfortable. Take for example,.
(I took it for fun haha). I think it’s awesome that your provided a caveat for personality test accuracy by using the DAP as an example. I think this goes to show that there needs to be certain guidelines as to what a personality test can entail, and what should be excluded when assessing the results. Hi Janae: I had never heard of this before and I was pleased to read about something new! While I can see the advantages of a nonverbal test that incorporates fun I think the flaws in it are way greater than those advantages.
When you stated that the interpretations seem to be wrapped up in “psychoanalytic speculation” I couldn’t have agreed more. The interpretations you listed seemed ridiculous to me. Why does the length of a person’s hair have anything to do with sexual fantasies?
Maybe the person they thought of when drawing has long hair or maybe they like long hair. While it is an interesting test I do not see any validity with it at all. The interpretations seem very ‘out-there’ to me and I feel as if the different components of the drawings could mean so many different things, including nothing, depending on the child. This does remind me a little of art therapy where art is used to improve well-being and encourage resolution of issues through a creative process (Art Therapy 2015).
It also reminds me of some episodes on criminal minds I have seen where therapists ask children to draw things and make interpretations from there (I know it is a show and not fact but still). For example, children with families with relational issues they would take the colors used into consideration as well as the placement of the parent figures on the page. If the father was apart from the larger picture they concluded a distant father or a poor relationship with him. I am skeptical of the accuracy with interpreting a child’s painting as well as drawing a person but thought it was an interesting example to compare to!
Reference: Art Therapy (2007-2015) What is Art Therapy retrieved from: Like. Hello Janae, For the life of me, I can not conceive a more perfect example of pseudoscience than the DAP test. It is almost comical the degree to which assumptive leaps and bounds one must make to interpret the results, and I’d be extremely skeptical of the validity of any such results.
I will say that it could be a worthwhile exercise to dig up some old drawings of mind from childhood just to see how some one performing the DAP test on me might have interpreted my results. The “benefits” that you list, that it is fun and easy for young people to perform, would be heavily outweighed by the sheer amount of confounds one can easily find in such testing. One example: Some artists that I’ve known have been drawing from a very young age, and had developed competent and realistic styles of their own by the time they were as young as 13. And if this test it meant to evaluate adolescents as well as children, I could not imagine there being any internal consistency with how one would evaluate the results of some one who’s practiced and developed skills at drawing from a very young age against some one who’s never drawn a person in their life.
I can’t help but find these kinds of measures intriguing but I have to admit the validity of such a test seems completely unfounded. Researchers methods here would be almost entirely subjective because one person may draw a certain way for a different purpose than another. One cannot look at a million pictures and say each one with a specifically drawn mouth is likely because of one specific purpose, more context is needed, possibly a follow up interview would increase validity. Also this, in my opinion, is no measure of intelligence but maybe how the person currently feels about themselves/society/or something entirely different. Plus nowadays we know there are many different kinds of intelligence so what kind are they measuring? And how can it be measured by random drawings? I don’t believe it can be.