Psychosomatic Medicine 14:256-260 (1952)
© 1952 American Psychosomatic Society

Autonomic Response Specificity and Rorschach Color Responses

¹ Samuel S. Fels Research Institute for the Study of Human Development Yellow Springs, Ohio

Eighty-five male college students, between the ages of 19 and 22, were subjected to four different stresses. The stresses were mental arithmetic, hyperventilation, difficult word association, and the cold pressor test. Palmar conductance, heart rate, and heart rate variability were continuously and simultaneously recorded. Twenty-six of the subjects were later given the Rorschach Inkblot Test, which was scored for the use of form and color as determinants. The results may be summarized briefly.

The principle of relative response specificity is strongly supported. For a given set of autonomic measurements, normal subjects tend to respond with maximal activation in the same physiological function in a variety of stress situations. The results suggest that we are dealing with a group of individuals some of whom have developed fixed patterning of the physiological variables studied, in which one of the functions is maximally activated by any stress whatsoever. Some of them have developed modal patterns from which they depart only occasionally, and some are random with respect to pattern of autonomic arousal.

It is suggested that such response specificity must be taken into account in studying psychophysiological relationships. The phenomenon of patterned autonomic arousal suggests that success in demonstrating covariation between autonomic response and personality variables may be achieved only if the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system is assayed in terms of maximal reactivity, no matter in what stress or in what physiological function this maximal reaction is exhibited.

This was shown to be true in a second study in which an attempt was made to validate the Rorschach Form-Color Index of "emotionality" against the criterion of autonomic response to experimentally induced stress. No convincing validity was found when the autonomic responses were correlated one at a time against the Form-Color Index. As response specificity and the sampling nature of measures of autonomic response were taken into account the correlations rose to a final value of .47, significant at the 2% level.