The thematic apperception test or tat is a type of projective test that involves describing ambiguous scenes popularly known as the picture interpretation technique it was developed by american psychologists henry a murray and christina d morgan at harvard university in the 1930s. Thematic apperception test is a projective psychological test developed during the 1930s by henry a murray and christiana d morgan at harvard university proponents of the technique assert that subjects responses in the narratives they make up about ambiguous pictures of people reveal their underlying motives concerns and the way they see the social world historically the test has been among the most widely researched taught and used of such techniques. In 1935 morgan and murray introduced the thematic apperception test tat murray 1943 a series of provocative pictures used to explore the respondents dynamics the stimuli are more highly structured than inkblots and respondents are required to give more meaningfully organized verbal responses respondents are asked to describe the scene in the picture the apparent emotional content and thoughts of the people involved what led up to the scene and what the outcome will be this test . The thematic apperception test tat is a visually instructional narrative method where the participant is shown a series of pictures that have a vague resemblance to real world objects and is then asked to narrate a story linking all the images and using them as input to the narrative