Artistic Quality of Drawings and Judges' Evaluations of the DAP

Abstract

Summary: When art quality varied for a set of figure drawings, judges were unable to differentiate hospitalized schizophrenic females from a matched nonpatient group. Both trained and naive judges erroneously tended to see drawings of low art quality as of patient origin, and drawings of high overall quality as of nonpatient origin. When art quality was held constant judges did slightly better than chance in differentiating the patient vs. nonpatient drawings. Psychologists were no more accurate than untrained judges. Results support the position that art quality of drawings influences judges' evaluations, and, in terms of the present investigation, represents a major source of error in drawing interpretation. Even when art quality was controlled, however, judges' rate of success was low, casting doubt on the status validity of the Draw-A-Person test (DAP).