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    Google celebrates Rorschach's birthday with social inkblot test

    Google celebrates Rorschach's birthday with social inkblot test

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    Rorschach Doodle
    Rorschach Doodle

    Google is commemorating the 129th anniversary of Hermann Rorschach's birth with a special Google Doodle. Rorschach was a Swiss psychologist most famous for creating the inkblot test, which asks people to analyze abstract inkblots. That analysis is then itself analyzed in order to discern the person's mental state and diagnose disorders. The test was used widely in the latter half of the 20th century and has become embedded in western culture after featuring in many movies and books, including Alan Moore's Watchmen.

    Although some have questioned its continued viability, Rorschach's test is still taught in many graduate courses and used in a number fields of psychology. Google's version of the test currently sits on its home page, but if it's not showing up for you, it can also be found in the Google Doodle archive. Visitors to Google.com are shown an inkblot and can choose to share their interpretation through Facebook, Twitter, or Google+ with a #RorschachDoodle hashtag. Searching through them is quite amusing — it doesn't take long to find some wildly different answers to the same image. What do the answers mean? Unfortunately, Google doesn't play psychologist, so you may never know if you're a social deviant.