LIWC dimension Your data Male average Female average Need for Achievement 4.67 5.8 5.6 Need for Affiliation 0.62 1.1 1.3 Need for power 2.80 1.7 1.8 Self-references (I, me, my) 0.00 0.5 0.8 Social words 6.23 11.4 12.0 Positive emotions 2.49 1.8 2.1 Negative emotions 1.56 1.5 1.6 Big words (> 6 letters) 26.48 18.7 17.7 Overall, you wrote 321 words in the 10 minutes.
Need for Achievement. The typical person generally scores between 4.5 and 8.5, with an average of 5.7. The higher your number, the more you wrote about achievement-related themes.
Need for Affiliation. Because this picture typically elicits themes associated with achievement, most people don't pay too much attention to human relationships in their story. In fact, the typical person scores around 1.2 on this dimension. Indeed, 30% of participants score 0.00.
Need for Power. Most people score between 0.8 and 2.7, with the average being 1.7. High scores on the need for power dimension hint that the writer is concerned with who is or is not in control andwho has the most status.
One thing that is interesting about this kind of exercise is that language analyses can tell us many things about the writer that go far beyond power, achievement, and affiliation. Look at the table below. In it, you can determine some features of your own writing and can get a sense of your writing style compared with others:
Self-references: People who use a high rate of self-references tend to be more insecure, nervous, and possibly depressed. They also tend to be more honest.
Social words: Social words are words that make reference to other people (e.g., they, she, us, talk, friends). Generally, people who use a high level of social words are more outgoing and more socially connected with others.
Positive emotion words: The more that people use positive emotion words (e.g. happy, love, good), the more optimistic they tend to be. If you feel good about yourself, you are more likely to see the world in a positive way.
Negative emotion words: Use of negative emotion words (e.g., sad, kill, afraid) is weakly linked to people's ratings of anxiety or even neurotic. People who have had a bad day are more likely to see the world through negatively-tinted glasses.
Big words (words with more than 6 letters): Use of big words is weakly related to higher grades and standardized test scores. People who use a high rate of big words also tend to be less emotional and oftentimes psychologically distant or detached.
The Big Picture: The above interpretations should be considered with a grain of salt for your own writing. Your approach to the assignment may have been influenced by people bothering you, concerns about other things in your life, lack of sleep, etc. In addition, it is important to remember that the TAT is generally administered in a highly controlled situation and is always graded by a real-live human being. You will recall from the book that the TAT was devised to tap people's needs for achievement, power, and affiliation. Look at your own writings and see if you can pick up if you were in high in these motives. For example, if you said that one person was thinking about her future career, a TAT expert would probably say that you were higher in a need for achievement than if you said that the person was thinking about her lover (which would hint that you were higher in need for affiliation).
Date/Time: 6 March 2010, 2:17 am Your TAT description: Professor Lang had began working on the project, finding new ways to improve the bacteria, to transform it into the worst virus that the world had ever seen. Today was the first day. He had pitted his new product against one of the deadliest bacteria and viruses in history, timed the death of subjects and animals, timed the survivability of the virus in Pedro dishes, tested it's adaptability and immune system against anti-biotic. His new virus had reached outstanding levels of mortality, having estimated to been able to kill a human in a day. But Professor Lang had not been satisfied. Creating an entirely new virus starting from scratch, he silently and surreptitiously sped up the evolution of the virus, modifying the genes of the parent cells, tampering with the environment in which the virus had been subjected to. The daughter cells grew stronger and stronger all the while developing new and more powerful traits, including the ability to regenerate, feed, and resist harsh elements. Yet he was still not satisfied. It was as if he was a mad scientist, skimming through the chemicals, the Pedro dishes, demanding load upon load on his assistants. This went through for several years, until he had finally, ultimately, emerged. The virus that he created was named GENERATION 1. The government had been at first suspicious of him, but in the end they decided to test it on a Latino town. The results were horrendous. The entire town died in minutes despite efforts from world-class doctors, and the doctors had contracted also and died. It had also spread all the way through America, killing and ravaging the citizens. The mother of biological weapons turned upon the Americans. The Americans were not stupid though. Their original purpose for creating the virus was the eliminate Russia, which had been their rivals for centuries. Turning on them, they unleashed a vial of the virus from above.
