Envisioning other Minds: The Artistic Drawing and Psychometric Rating of Images and Percepts

During half of this two-hour study, 28 individually tested subjects completed the MMPI. At the outset of the second hour, each subject photographed a frightening view, then described his or her percept of the view as a student artist made a colored chalk drawing of the perceptual experience described. Independent raters later compared the subject's color photograph of the view itself and the colored drawing of the subject's perceptual experience, and rated the extent to which the view itself had been 1) embellished, 2) diminished, and 3) transformed in the subject's perceptual experience of the view. During the conclusion of the second hour, each subject mentally envisioned a frightening image, then described the image as the student artist made a colored chalk drawing of the imaginal experience described. The independent raters, on three more scales, rated the extent to which the drawn image expressed 1) paranoid fear, 2) phobic fear, and 3) chronic fear. Subjects whose perceptual experiences of frightening views transformed the actually viewed stimuli scored significantly higher on the MMPI Schizophrenia scale. In addition, subjects whose frightening images expressed paranoid fear scored significantly higher on both the MMPI Paranoia scale and the MMPI Schizophrenia scale. Such results suggest that artists' drawings of subjects' percepts and images can, with psychological validity, serve to envision other minds.