Upper Left Hand Placement of Human Figure Drawings as an Indicator of Anxiety

The present study explored the validity of upper left hand placement as an indicator of anxiety in human figure drawings. The DAP and the IPAT Anxiety Scale were administered to 103 college students. Their drawings were then judged for the presence or absence of the indicator under investigation. A Mann-Whitney U-test was used to test for differences in anxiety scores between the indicator present and the indicator absent group. Significant differences were found (p < .01) supporting the hypothesis that upper left placement is a valid indicator of anxiety.     

Human Figure Drawings as Predictors of Admission to a Psychiatric Hospital

Blind predictions were made as to admission or non-admission as an overall rating and as to degree of pathology in eight areas of personality, based only on human figure drawings. These drawings were obtained from a sample of 105 individuals presenting for psychiatric hospital admission. The judgments were all in the predicted direction and significant for admission-non-admission, impulsivity, and severity of pathology. Cues utilized in the successful judgments were categorized as structural or content and scaled by degree of pathology. Structural cues predominated. We conclude that HFD's are a useful screening device for clinical judgment of degree of psychopathology. The basis of such judgments can be specified in terms of structural deviations rather than from symbolic content.     

Sex Preferences in Children's Human Figure Drawings

Relevant data as to the sex of the first figure drawn in the DAP were pooled from 19 studies using 5- to 18-year old Ss. 83% of the 4989 boys and 78% of the 4443 girls showed self-sex preference. However, considering age in detail the self-sex proportion of boys significantly exceeds that of girls only from the 11th year on. A significant difference of opposite direction was found with the 7-year olds, but it is impossible so far to determine whether this is an artifact. Results are tentatively explained in terms of the culturally determined learning of sex-role identification.     

The Representation of the Body Self in Human Figure Drawings

The matching of 25 frontal drawings of the female human figure with 25 frontal photographs of the college women who drew the figures was attempted by 30 male graduate psychology students and 30 women religious graduate students of art. The drawings and photos were arranged in envelopes according to a balanced lattice design, and presented to each of the judges in different envelopes in an order determined by randomized latin squares. Both groups matched the drawings with the photographs of the same Ss at significantly higher than chance expectancy (p<.01). These findings suggest that this matching technique may be of some value in testing the hypothesis of objective body self projection in human figure drawings.     

Changes in Human Figure Drawings During Intensive Treatment

This article examines change in the human figure drawings (HFDs) of 32 seriously disturbed young adults during the course of intensive inpatient treatment. HFDs drawn at the time of admission were compared with HFDs obtained more than 1 year after intensive treatment began; both sets were scored on the Goodenough-Harris Scale (GH) and the Robins Balance-Tilt Scale (RBT). The findings indicate that the HFDs significantly improved over the course of treatment, but only for those patients judged introjective, not anaclitic. These findings are consistent with prior research on the same population that were based on analyses of clinical case records and Rorschach protocols (Blatt, Ford, Berman, Cook, & Meyer, 1988). Significant change in the HFDs over the course of treatment suggests that the HFDs provide a unique and independent dimension for assessing therapeutic change.     

Judgment of Children's Popularity from Their Human Figure Drawings

The assumption is presented of the test-taker as a hypothesis-generating organism who can become "testwise." Testwiseness is defined as a stable skill, acquired by test-taking experiences, by which an individual can make test responses conform to a desired response pattern. Forty-three college students completed two forms of The Personality Research Form (PRF) and a rank ordering of their predicted personality need pattern. Results show significantly higher correlations of PRF predictions in the second administration. Analyses show PRF profiles, not predictions, to have been modified. Furthermore, high testwise subjects had higher needs for Understanding and Nurturance, and lower needs for Aggression and Defendence than low testwise persons. The importance of considering testwiseness, given trends in society encouraging access to psychological records, is discussed.     

Ascription of Maturity to Human Figure Drawings by Preschool Children

Summary

Forty-five preschool children, shown outline human figure drawings (all arbitrarily drawn to the same stature) whose overall body proportions were typical of individuals aged 0, 2, 6, 12, and 25 years, generally distinguished more maturely from less maturely proportioned figures, the absence of nonproportion cues to maturity notwithstanding. This is noteworthy, since agerelated changes in stature and in proportion are confounded in nature, and since our culture emphasizes stature cues and neglects proportion cues to maturity. Although Ss generally distinguished more mature from less mature figures on the basis of body proportions, the proportions of immature individuals nonetheless tended to be assimilated to those of the mature individual.     

Body Image Concerns of Psoriasis Patients As Reflected in Human Figure Drawings

Human figure drawings of patients with severe (n = 85) and mild (n = 38) psoriasis were compared on dimensions of nudity, sexual overemphasis, and omissions of exposed body parts. For female patients significant differences were found for percentages of undressed figures and omissions. For male patients only omissions were significant. When compared to 30 patients with other mild dermatologic conditions, mildly affected psoriatic males drew significantly fewer omissions. Discussion of results focused on body image concerns, of dermatology patients as related to issues of nudity, sexuality, and exhibition of exposed body parts.     

Quality of Drawing as a Factor in the Interpretation of Figure Drawings

Examined the drawings of 32 poliomyelitis patients and their matched controls to see whether figure drawings primarily reflect the subject's projection of psychological state, ability to draw, or some combination of these two factors. An overview of the literature is also given. Drawings from disabled and nondisabled subjects were reliably rated for quality, with no significant quality difference found between groups. Analyses of variance were then used to compare the drawings on several different measures of drawing size, completion and movement that might be assumed on the basis of the literature, to reflect the subjects' projection of disability status. Results showed that quality of drawing was a significant factor in 13 of the 17 comparisons while disability status proved to be a significant factor in only one of the 17 comparisons. There were no significant interactions. Therefore, the overall findings are consistent with the hypothesis that quality of drawing—rather than projective mechanisms—may at times be the overwhelming determinant of clinical and research findings with figure drawings.     

Social Emotions in Children's Human Figure Drawings: Drawing Shame,Pride and Jealousy

The study examines children's ability to convey social – as opposed to basic – emotions in their human figure drawings. One hundred children aged 4‐, 6‐ and 8‐years were asked to draw a person experiencing shame, pride, jealousy, happiness, sadness and fear as well as a baseline figure ‘feeling nothing’. Drawings were rated in terms of (i) overall emotional expressiveness and (ii) variety and types (face, body/posture and context) of graphic cues used to convey emotion. The effect of age on overall expressiveness and use of these graphic cues was also investigated. The results showed that drawings depicting social emotions were rated as less expressive and presented fewer graphic cues than those conveying basic emotions. Children's developing ability to depict pride, shame and jealousy was largely driven by an increased use of contextual cues in their human figure drawings. As regards the effect of age, it was found that 6‐ and 8‐years old produced more expressive drawings containing a larger range of graphic cues than the 4‐year olds. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Figure Preferences in Two Generations of Men: The Use of Figure Drawings Illustrating Differences in Muscle Mass

Using a new set of male figure drawings which(unlike the Stunkard, Sorensen, & Schulsinger, 1983figures) illustrate differing degrees of muscle massrather than body fat, college men and adult men selected their current figure, ideal figure,figure they thought most attractive to women and figurethat they thought would be the ideal for other men.Adult men's choices indicated satisfaction with their current bodies, but college men's selectionsindicated a desire to be larger (partly because theybelieve that a much larger body is what everybody {menand women} finds most attractive). The male body college women find most attractive is largerthan what college men indicate they currently have butsmaller than what the college men want to look like.Adult women chose an ideal male figure which is the same as that which the adult men indicate theyhave. Thus, selections using the new figure drawingsshow a desire for more muscle mass in college men andsatisfaction in adult men, while selections using the Stunkard et al. (1983) figuredrawings indicated satisfaction in college men and adesire for less body fat in the adult men (Rozin &Fallon, 1988). Both sets of figures provide valuableinformation.     

Degree of Disturbance in Figure Drawings as Related to Mode of Approach to Problem Solving

Spontaneous and induced hierarchical organization was investigated with 72 first, third, and fifth graders (12 females and 12 males at each grade level). Stimuli consisted of an initial set of 20 unrelated pictures and a second set of 20 pictures which could be classified according to four super ordinate categories. Ss were randomly assigned to either the spontaneous or induced condition for the second set. Both recall scores and clustering indexes indicated that induced organization facilitates recall(p < .01 and p < .05, respectively). The effect of the induced presentation condition was most pronounced for third and fifth graders (p < .05). The clustering analysis indicated sex differences in the induced presentation condition (p < .05); with increasing age, girls exhibited a greater improvement than boys in induced organizational ability.     

Human Figure Drawing Size as a Measure of Self-Esteem

The relationship between self-esteem and human figure drawing size was investigated. Seventy-six adolescents completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale and drew the human figure. For males only. there was a significant linear relationship between self-esteem and width of human figure drawing and a significant curvilinear relationship between self-esteem and height and self-esteem and area of human figure drawing. The latter findings lend support to a hypothesis regarding the possibility among low self-esteem subjects of a bimodal distribution with respect to size.     

A Method for the Evaluation of Affective Associations to Figure Drawings

Usual scoring systems for figure drawing techniques are based on structural and content aspects of the drawing, and ignore the affectively toned associations that occur when an observer first sees a drawing. A system for measuring two components of judgment, (a) emission of affective associations (b) evaluation of affective associations, has been developed. This method was applied with some success in studying individuals who had represented in their drawings an image that corresponded to their actual physical appearance. The research so far suggests that the evaluation component of judgment may contribute more to discrimination than the emission component.     

Sex of Free Choice Figure Drawings by Homosexual and Heterosexual Subjects

This article reports the findings from studies investigating the relationship between: (a) sex of free choice figure drawings and sexual inversion and (b) sex of free choice figure drawings and gender identity. Both relationships were found to be statistically nonsignificant.     

Rorschach Responses as an Index of Narcissism

A two-part study was conducted to investigate the uniqueness and interpretive meaning-fulness of Rorschach reflection responses. In Part I, 80 Rorschach protocols were collected from overt homosexuals, character disorders, depressed patients recently suicidal, and a control group of college students. Homosexuals and sociopaths gave significantly more reflection and C and CF responses than did either of the other two groups. In Part 2 of the investigation two groups of 40 subjects each were selected from a population of college students and industrial workers on the basis of their score on a sentence completion test, especially devised to focus on the self. The high narcissism group gave a significantly greater number of reflection responses, pair type responses, and C and CF responses than did the low narcissism group.