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 tests are meant to evoke an involuntary display of ones subconscious there is no standardization for evaluating ones tat responses each evaluation is completely subjective because each response is unique validity and reliability are consequently the largest question marks of the tat. 30742 thematic apperception test the tat cramer 1996 consists of 31 cards one is blank seven are for males seven for females one for boys or girls one for men or women and one each for a boy girl man and woman the remaining 10 are for anyone. 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