Photoelicitation and projective assessment are research methods derived from visual sociology and psychoanalysis respectively. This study combined the methods by having respondents view a commercial, and then showing them one of two versions of a projective drawing showing a lone or a male-accompanied woman sitting on a couch. Respondents were told that the woman in the drawing had just seen the commercial and were asked about what the woman was thinking. The results show that a paper-and-pencil attitude measure correlated moderately with the visually-primed responses, but the visually-primed responses included psychoanalytically-predicted reactions such as denial and displacement and were dependent upon the social situation depicted in the drawing.
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/lawrence_soley/16/
Published version. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Fall 2006): 55-64. DOI. Reproduced with Permission of CtC Press. All Rights Reserved.