Relationship between Paranoid Tendencies and Projective Behavior

Abstract

An effort was made to test the widely accepted psychiatric notion that use of the projective defense is especially characteristic of individuals with paranoid tendencies. Male and female college students took the Rorschach test and were led to believe that they possessed either strong or average hostile tendencies. The negative feedback significantly increased the experimental subjects' levels of subjective anxiety, and the subjects who received high hostility feedback projected significantly more hostility onto others than did the controls. However, the highly paranoid subjects, detected by the MMPI Paranoia scale, did not project any more hostility than did the low paranoids, thereby providing no support for the psychiatric hypothesis. Possible reasons for this negative result were discussed.