The purpose of this experiment was to investigate the effect of instructions upon responses to pictures of the PF Study type. It was hypothesized that when subjects are directed to respond for, and presumably to identify with, pictured characters, they would give more unfavorable responses than when questioned directly as to their own presumed behavior in the depicted situations. It was hypothesized, further, that one type of response likely to be withheld when the questioning procedure is

more »

... yed is a response indicating hostility toward fellow men. In order to test the hypotheses, 58 university students were given a set of pictures under PF Study instructions, and an alternate set administered in questionnaire fashion. For half the subjects the order of presentation of pictures, but not of instructions, was reversed. All responses were scored according to the same criteria, and subjected to statistical analysis in order that the effects of differences in instructions, pictures, and groups of subjects might be estimated. The results of the experiment lend support to both hypotheses, the main findings being as follows: 1. When the pictures were administered under questionnaire rather than PF Study instructions, the subjects gave fewer responses indicating that blame for frustration is aggressively attributed to another person, and a greater number of responses indicating that, when frustrated, the subject takes it upon himself to try to overcome the obstacle. 2. The observed differences in frequency of these two types of response, elicited under different instructions, were sufficiently great to produce significant differences in mean scores for three of Rosenzweig's major scoring categories: Extrapunitiveness, Ego-defensiveness and Need-persistence. These results were interpreted as reflecting differences in the effects of projective and questionnaire instructions. Questionnaire instructions, by directing the subject to indicate his own presumed behavior in hypothetical situations, tend to put the subject [...]