Chapter 10 Rogers: Person-Centered Theory 313researchers used the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT), the Self-Other Attitude
Scale (S-O Scale), and the Willoughby Emotional Maturity Scale (E-M Scale). The
TAT, a projective personality test developed by Henry Murray (1938), was used
to test hypotheses that called for a standard clinical diagnosis; the S-O Scale, an
instrument compiled at the Counseling Center from several earlier sources, mea-
sures antidemocratic trends and ethnocentrism; the E-M Scale was used to compare
descriptions of clients’ behavior and emotional maturity as seen by two close
friends and by the clients themselves.
To measure change from the client’s point of view, the researchers relied on
the Q sort technique developed by William Stephenson of the University of Chicago
(Stephenson, 1953). The Q sort technique begins with a universe of 100 self-referent
statements printed on 3-by-5 cards, which participants are requested to sort into nine
piles from “most like me” to “least like me.” Researchers asked the participants to
sort the cards into piles of 1, 4, 11, 21, 26, 21, 11, 4, and 1. The resulting distribu-
tion approximates a normal curve and allows for statistical analysis. At various
points throughout the study, participants were requested to sort the cards to describe
their self, their ideal self, and the ordinary person.
Participants for the study were 18 men and 11 women who had sought therapy
at the Counseling Center. More than half were university students and the others
were from the surrounding community. These clients—called the experimental or
therapy group—received at least six therapeutic interviews, and each session was
electronically recorded and transcribed, a procedure Rogers had pioneered as early
as 1938.
The researchers used two different methods of control. First, they asked half
the people in the therapy group to wait 60 days before they would receive therapy.
These participants, known as the own-control or wait group, were required to wait
before receiving therapy in order to determine if motivation to change rather than
the therapy itself might cause people to get better. The other half of the therapy
group, called the no-wait group, received therapy immediately.
The second control consisted of a separate group of “normals,” who had
volunteered to serve as participants in a “research on personality” study. This
comparison group allowed researchers to determine the effects of such variables
as passage of time, knowledge that one is part of an experiment (the placebo
effect), and the impact of repeated testing. The participants in this control
group were divided into a wait group and a no-wait group, which corresponded
to the wait and no-wait therapy groups. Researchers tested both the therapy
wait group and the control wait group four times: at the beginning of the 60-day
wait period, prior to therapy, immediately after therapy, and after a 6- to
12-month follow-up period. They administered the no-wait groups the same
tests on the same occasions, except, of course, prior to the wait period
(see Figure 10.1).
Findings
The researchers found that the therapy group showed less discrepancy between
self and ideal self after therapy than before, and they retained almost all those
gains throughout the follow-up period. As expected, the “normal” controls had