Psychological scaling of defensive cognitive styles on the Adjective Check List

This paper presents a cognitive (information-processing) model of ego defense and describes procedures that have been developed for sampling different types of defensive processing of threatening information. Since these laboratory paradigms are time consuming, three brief scales of defensive style have been derived for more ready use in personality research. These scales, scored from the Adjective Check List, include items discriminating between individuals demonstrating a particular defensive style in the laboratory and those who do not. The Projective Style Scale measures the tendency to deny threatening information and attribute it to others, the Repressive Style Scale identifies the tendency to avoid threatening information by selective forgetting, and the tendency to reduce threat by changing the meaning of information is reflected in the Rationalizing Style Scale. Psychometric properties and potential uses of the scales are discussed.