📝 Narrative Analysis

Narrative Lab

The platform for scoring free-response narrative data using the two most rigorously validated content-coding protocols in the literature: the Core Conflictual Relationship Theme (CCRT) and the Picture Story Exercise (PSE).

Narrative content coding is the oldest form of psychometric assessment — and still among the most information-dense. A 300-word relationship episode narrated in three minutes contains data that no Likert scale can capture: the structure of the person's wishes, how they represent others responding to those wishes, and how they experience their own emotional reactions.

ImplicitifyAI's Narrative Lab implements two protocols that operationalize this tradition into reliable, scorable output. The CCRT — Luborsky's Core Conflictual Relationship Theme method — codes recurring relational patterns across relationship episodes. The PSE — an automated deterministic lexical content-analysis approximation in the McClelland/Winter tradition — codes implicit motive imagery for Power, Achievement, and Affiliation drives.

Protocols

CCRT

Core Conflictual Relationship Theme

The participant narrates three or more relationship episodes. Each episode is coded for the core Wish (W), Response of Other (RO), and Response of Self (RS). The dominant CCRT is the most frequent wish–response pattern across episodes — the recurring theme of the relational life.

PSE

Picture Story Exercise

The participant writes imaginative stories to TAT-style picture stimuli. Each story is scored for implicit motive imagery: Power (dominance, prestige, influence), Achievement (standards of excellence, mastery, task completion), and Affiliation (connection, belonging, fear of rejection).

What the lab produces

CCRT · W
Core Wish coding
CCRT · RO
Response of Other coding
CCRT · RS
Response of Self coding
PSE · nPow
Power motive imagery
PSE · nAch
Achievement motive imagery
PSE · nAff
Affiliation motive imagery
Pattern Congruence
Wish–RO alignment index
Outcome Expectancy
Positive / negative ratio
Motive Breakdown
Per-story imagery scores