Developed in the 1930s, TAT is a projective psychological test. TAT taps a subject's unconscious to reveal repressed aspects of personality, motives and needs for achievement, power and intimacy, and problem-solving abilities.

TAT is popularly known as the picture interpretation technique because it uses a standard series of provocative yet ambiguous pictures about which the individual is asked to tell a story. The individual is asked to tell as dramatic a story as he/she can for each picture presented, including the following:

– what has led up to the event shown
– what is happening at the moment
– what the characters are feeling and thinking
– what the outcome of the story was