Increase in self-rejection and continuing/discontinued deviant response

It was hypothesized that adoption of deviant response patterns regardless of subsequent continuation of the act would be associated with an antecedent increase in negative self-attitudes. Subjects were seventh-grade students who responded to a questionnaire three times (T 1,T 2,T 3) at annual intervals (N=3,148). Self-attitudes were measured by a seven-item self-derogation scale. Change in self-derogation was determined by expressing the posttest score as a deviation from the posttest-on-pretest regression line. Deviant responses were defined in terms of self-reports of each of 22 highly independent responses. In all cases, as hypothesized, for each of the 22 deviant responses both (1) subjects who adopted and continued the act and (2) subjects who adopted and discontinued the act manifested greater increases in self-derogation than subjects who did not adopt the deviant act. The differences, all of which were in the hypothesized direction, were significant in 34 of the 44 comparisons. The results were interpreted as supporting the position that the adoption of any of a broad range of manifestly dissimilar deviant responses is preceded by the genesis of negative selfattitudes.