SSB Center : How to Imagine and Perceive Adequately in PPDT or TAT?

Tips to imagine and perceive adequately in PPDT or TAT during SSB Interview

Earlier we have seen how to make a desirable story and also the conditions that male a story undesirable or psychologically weak. In this article we will try to understand the basics of how to imagine and perceive adequately when a picture is shown to you during PPDT or TAT in SSB interview.

To imagine and perceive adequately the picture shown to you, one needs to understand the situation first. Situation itself will tell you what it wants - Whether it requires reactionary concept or visionary one. The question is not only limited to write the story, but to react on a story. That stimulates you to form a plot and when you perceive adequately, the formation of the plot will go in your favour. And to react promptly to situation , you need to imagine and perceive adequately what is shown in the picture.

An aspirant should react on it and should make a plot manifesting an urgent problem which should warrant immediate disposal, through which he can reveal the qualities of a crisis leader.

I will further prove the crisis managing leadership potential with an example.

The scene depicts a woman drowning. There is a huge cry and all the neighbours are only turning themselves as on-lookers. The woman is struggling between life and death. Now, this situational crisis warrants a rescue mission and the delay will definitely be fatal. Only the immediate reaction / action is a solution.

Seeing this scene on the screen, every attempter would write that he would jump into the river and fish out the lady to save her life. It’s so easily predictable, that everyone would jump into the river to rescue. Also, the attempters don’t have to jump in real to display practicality.

But, the Psychologist has tools to find whether ‘Would you really jump in such a situation, when faced in real life’ or ‘Are you a fake jumper, only jumping in stories and fantasies? ’

A desirable story given below would throw you some clues –

Story – Sunita woke her elder brother up, overruling his instruction not to disturb him as he is resting after winning a 1000m race. Soham, a third year B.Sc graduate at Mahatma Gandhi University realized the urgency and rushed to the spot having noticed the huge cry. He plunged into the pond and noticed the exact point seeing the bubbles over the water. He took a deep dive and brought the woman up in a single attempt. He further caught her hair and pulled her across the pond, being persistently encouraged by the on-lookers. He pressed the stomach and made the woman vomit and escorted the woman to her residence situated nearby. Having known the cause of attempt to give life, he sat with her spouse and made them compromise with each other. They took a promise, bringing the oath of their children in between, never to fight again.

In the above situation, the particular or single context is that, a woman is drowning. Now, let me make you clear as to how this TAT and its leader is fulfilling the need of the system.

First essential - The Hero’s identification – The Hero Soham is a Third year B.Sc graduate at the Mahatma Gandhi University, Maharashtra. Now, with this introduction, the Hero’s identification is clearer. You should be able to conveniently describe the Hero’s basic whereabouts and location.

The second essential – The identification of the task. The task will literally mean a problem, a risk, crisis, urgency or emergency. Here, the task is that the woman is drowning and the situation requires immediate disposal.

The third essential – The management of crisis. Here, the Hero is woken up by his younger sister and the introduction and his urgent rescue reveals that the crisis is within the grasp, but requires courage. Seeing the risking and dying effort, the on-lookers persistently started encouraging and motivating him to grant the new life to the woman having her three kids.

The fourth essential – The outcome or result. See, here the Hero has overcome the demand of the situation with his courageous effort and brought the woman across the pond, that too without delay. He immediately pressed the stomach to maintain the normalcy and escorted her back to her house. He still didn’t finish his job. Further having acknowledged the cause of the attempt to give life, he sat there along with the woman’s husband and her kids. He made them compromise and took an oath that, nothing like this would ever happen in the future.