Measures of Aggression in Questionnaire Ratings and Stories from the Apperceptive Personality Test

Abstract

The present study investigated relationships between judges' ratings of hostility from the content of eight TAT-like stories and scores on Hostile Feelings and Hostile Actions scales of the Apperceptive Personality Test. This test was administered to 104 college student volunteers (53 women, 51 men), who received extra credit on examination scores for their participation. Each subject made up 8 stories to stimulus pictures and then filled out 8 objectively scorable questionnaires about their stories from the Apperceptive Personality Test. The stories were rated by two “blind” judges for hostile feelings and hostile activities using Fine's 1955 scoring criteria. Agreement of judges ranged from .47 to .80. Correlations of judge's ratings with Apperceptive Personality Test scores were .13 for Hostile Feelings and .41 ( df=102, p< .01) for Hostile Actions. Thus questionnaire scores for Hostile Feelings are unrelated and scores for Hostile Actions only moderately related to judges' ratings of story content.