Page 82 - Failure to Triumph - Journey of A Student

Section 2 - Psychological Tests 8

Basis of Psychological Testing

Psychological or psychometric testing is based on the principles of projective testing. In this, there is
a series of tests like the Word Association Test (WAT), Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), Situation
Reaction Test (SRT) and Self-Description (SD). It is believed that the responses to these tests are an

outcome of the candidate’s personality traits and thus an estimation of his/her traits can be made by
going through the candidate’s response to various stimuli.

Personality is defined as, “a particular combination of emotional, attitudinal, and behavioral
response patterns of an individual". From this definition it is evident that it has more to do with the
internal state of a person than his external appearance. Thus, when a candidate is shown stimuli and
asked to respond, his emotional, attitudinal and behavioral patterns emerge very clearly. Since the
tests are conducted under the constraints of time, the candidates are unable to mask their response or

to give a more desirable response, and there lies the strength of this technique. It is seen that while
many candidates do well in the GTO and Interview techniques, their true personality comes out in the
psychological tests.

In order to do well in these tests one has to practice hard. An attempt has been made in the
subsequent chapters to give as many exercises as possible for practice.