Work and the Rorschach Test

In a scene from “The Andy Griffith Show,” Deputy Barney Fife showed an inkblot to Otis Campbell, Mayberry’s town drunk, and asked him what he saw. Otis said he saw a bat, but Barney objected and said that the inkblot represented a butterfly. Next, Barney showed Sheriff Andy Taylor the same inkblot, and he too said it was a bat. Barney rolled his eyes and refused to accept that answer.

You see a bat, but I see a butterfly. I see a butterfly, but you see a bat. Perspective is everything.

Early in the twentieth century, the psychologist Hermann Rorschach developed ten symmetrical inkblot...