Projective Test
For some reason lately I have been more and more interested in the theme of family in sociology. Maybe it's the fact that I've always thought of my family as being so unusual or perhaps it's that I am looking at what is considered to be a socially accepted "normal" family in order to better replicate that myself (why I would want to do that I still haven't a clue). So when I finally sat down to do a projective test I wanted to use something along those lines. At first I was curious as to what people think children find interesting and what adventures they pursue so I wanted to find a photo of two children looking over a fence or something like that because I wanted others to tell me what those kids were looking at based on their own childhood memories. Sadly, finding a picture like that turned out being much more difficult than I anticipated. So I looked for alternatives and found this.



I liked this image because the woman and the baby were walking into a door that was very non-discriminating leaving it very much open to interpretation. I was curious how people would interpret the scene, in particularly I was interested in what activity people thought the two of them were doing. I decided to talk to people from different ethnic backgrounds to try and see how different cultural experiences change what people might see in the picture. I tried to keep the questions simple, asking simply what the person thought was happening in the picture at the time.

I made a point of mentioning that this was for a project in sociology, I always found it amusing to see the looks on people I was asking. I tried not to ask anyone who was busy because I believed that I would get more out of the respondent if they weren't doing anything, but still most people would immediately look at me with a wary look of "Oh god he's going to try and sell me something." Which I thought was funny considering that all of them were in classes with me and knew that I was a student just like them. Perhaps companies now have students trying to pitch products directly to other students now and I'm just not aware of it. Or maybe I'm paranoid.

I was surprised at how boring many of the responses were but I think I can blame my choice in photos for that. Most people assumed of course that the woman was the child's mother. Of the 8 people I asked about the picture 6 of them said that they were either leaving or entering an apartment building. One guy thought that she was dropping him off at daycare and one woman looked at the photo so intently that she noticed the little citizen logo on the door and figured it was a jewellery and watch store. Looking at the photo now I wonder what the mother and child are looking at but most people seemed to see the child as being in movement going somewhere. In fact one person even said that the woman is either lifting the kid up the step or pulling him down.

For future prospective tests I think I would better refine the questions around the photo I was using. For this photo I think I should have followed up my initial question with a query as to why most people thought the child and mother were related. When I asked a friend about it after the initial group had been asked he evoked (that one's for you Marilyn) Occam's Razor, the most likely explanation in this case was that she was the child's parent. It left me with something to mull over that I still have difficulty expressing about my misgivings regarding children and the expected roles that adults play in their lives, in particular, Mothers.