Defense Mechanism Card Pull in TAT Stories

This study investigates the question of whether different Thematic Apperception Test (TAT; Murray, 1943 ) cards are likely to prompt stories that are characterized by different defense mechanisms. This condition is known as card pull and refers to the probability that different TAT cards elicit different personality scores for the same variable. If so, the assessment of defense use would be importantly influenced by the TAT cards used in an assessment. TAT stories from 3 different community samples were examined (Ns = 91, 98, 121), using a statistical method developed by Stein et al ( 2014 ). The results indicated that different TAT cards pull for different defenses, as assessed by the Defense Mechanism Manual (DMM: Cramer, 1991b ). However, the nature of card pull was not always consistent across samples. These dissimilarities could be due to group differences, or to the presence of different TAT cards used in the test battery, indicating that card pull is importantly determined by context.