Psychological Reports, 1977, 41, 391-396. @ Psychological Reports 1977
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSIVENESS AND DEATH ANXIETY S. J. FLEMING' Atkkson College, York University Summmy.-This study investigated the relationship between the extent of defensive responding on a perceptual recognition task and score on the Handal death anxiety scale. The results did not confirm the hypothesis that perceptually defensive respondents (those with elevated thresholds for death words as opposed to neutral words) would tend to have lower scores on the death anxiety inventory. Additional research into multilevel criteria of death anxiety is suggested along with improving the internal consistency of the Handal death anxiety scale.
A n impressive array of research evidence has repeatedly shown that there are marked and consistent differences between individuals in their responses to ego-threatening stimuli. Briefly, avoiding and denying responses to anxietyarousing stimuli characterize the repression extreme of the repression-sensitization dimension while attempts to approach these same stimuli through intellectualization, reaction formation, and projection are representativeresponses of sensitizers (Byrne, 1961; Eriksen, 1963, 1966; Lomont, 1965; Sullivan & Roberts, 1969; Tempone, 1964). In contrast to the previously cited research showing a consistency in responding across a number of situations, investigation~ into the relationship between perceptual defensiveness and perceptual vigilance and death anxiety yield equivocal results. For example, Golding, Atwood, and Goodman (1966) postulated that it was more difficult to recognize death-related words than neutral>words and that the magnitude of this perceptual defensiveness varied directly with death anxiety. Results indicated that neutral words were indeed recognized quicker than were death-related words, however, there was no relationship between the magnitude of perceptual defensiveness and death-anxiety score. Aside from the fact that ( a ) there were relatively few participants (8= 30 male undergraduates), ( b ) only four death and four neutral stimuli were presented, and ( c ) a death anxiety inventory was used with little or no reported reliability and validity, these authors misinterpreted the characteristics of the perceptual defensiveness-perceptual vigilance response modes. More specificdy, on the basis of previous research (Eriksen, 1963, 1966), one would expect an inverse relationship between perceptual defensiveness and verbal reports of anxiety, that is, the perceptual defensiveness respondents would be expected to deny or suppress such anxiety. Furthermore, and quite surprisingly, of the 30 subjects tested, only two could be classified as perceptually vigilant. 'Requests for reprints should be sent to S. J. Fleming, Department of Psychology, Atkinson College, York University, 4700 Keele St., Downsview, Ontario M3J 2R7.
392
s. J.
FLEMING
Lester and Lester (1970) investigated the relationship between the fear of death, the fear of dying, and threshold differences for death and neutral words. In contrast to Golding, et al. (1966), these later results indicated that the recognition thresholds for death-related words were significantly lower than for neutral words. Furthermore the division of the death-related words into a group of four active (die, strangle, kill, suicide) and 11 passive words (all other death words on the list, e.g., cemetaty, tomb) gave recognition thresholds significantly lower for active words than for matched neutral words; there was no significant difference in recognition thresholds for passive words versus neutral words. In other words, the four active words were responsible for the differential recognition thresholds. Unfortunately, as the authors acknowledge, these results are difficult to interpret in light of the revelation that the active words have a higher frequency of occurrence. It is now well-established that visual recognition thresholds are strongly related to the relative frequency of occurrence of the stimuli, especially when an extended frequency range is sampled (Inglis, 1961; Postman & Schneider, 1951; Richards, 1964; Solomon & Howes, 1951). It is important that one control for frequency if one desires to attribute differences in threshold to the emotionality of the stimuli. Clearly the relationship between perceptual defensiveness-perceptual vigilance and h e recognicion of death-related words and neutral words is in need of further investigation and more stringent experimental controls. The present study investigated the relationship between death anxiety, as measured by a paper-and-pencil inventory, and visual recognition thresholds for death and neutral words. On the basis of previous research indicating that repressers tend not only to score significantly lower on a death anxiety inventory (Handal & Rychlak, 1971; Tolor & Reznikoff, 1967) but also to have elevated perceptual recognition thresholds for emotional as compared to neutral words (Tempone, 1964), it is hypothesized that respondents who use a characteristic repressive avoidance defense in a perceptual recognition task, i.e., who have elevated thresholds for death as opposed to neutral stimuli, will have lower death anxiety scale scores than perceptually vigilant participants.
METHOD Subjects The participants were 61 female volunteers enrolled in the first year of a 2-yr. diploma nursing program. A p paratas Tachi~toscopicstima1i.-A list of 40 death words (omitting present and past participles and plurals) and 120 neutral words (three matched neutral words for each death word) were selected from the Thorndike-Lorge general word count (1944) and presented to 40 females in an undergraduate class in
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSIVENESS A N D DEATH ANXIETY
393
introductory psychology. The students were required to rate each of these words on a scale from 1 ("highly related to life") to 7 ("highly related to death';). Only those five, six, and seven-letter words with a mean rating in excess of 6.0 were considered death words. For each of the 17 selected death words, a corresponding "most" neutral word was selected based on its mean rating (position 4 on the scale was considered to be the neutral position). Examples of the emotional or death words included burial, coffin, cancer, corpse, death, funeral, and suicide; fabric, lesson, cinder, paper, fence, and eleven are examples of neutral stimuli. Each of the stimulus words was mounted for presentation in a Gerbrands Type T-2B tachistoscope which was connected to ( a ) a Hunter Decade Interval Timer (which regulated the preparatory interval prior to presentation of the visual stimuli) and ( b ) a Gerbrands Model 130 Tachistoscope Timer which governed exposure duration during the determination of word recognition thresholds. Death anxiety scale.-The decision to use Handal's ( 1969) death anxiety scale, which is a modified version of Livingston and Zimet's (1965) inventory, was based on the fact that it is one of the few death anxiety inventories with published reliability and validity (Handal & Rychlak, 1971). The scale has 20 items; for each statement there are six possible responses ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Responses are scored on a six-point scale yielding a potential score range of 20 to 120.
Procedille Word recognition thresholds were collected while the student was comfortably seated in front of the tachistoscope. The experimenter was seated to the front and slightly to the left of the respondent and hidden from the latter's view by a large screen affixed to the tachistoscope. Prior to data collection a series of practice words (of similar length and frequency of occurrence but not from the experimental list) was tachistoscopically presented to each participant. The four practice words served to familiarize the students with the task and to establish a base level of perceptual performance from which threshold determinations could begin. Thresholds were determined by the ascending method of limits. After the thresholds for the'four practice words had been determined, the initial threshold for the test words (death-related words and neutral words) was determined by setting the duration of exposure at least two exposures below the lowest threshold for the practice words. The order of presentation, except for the four practice words which were always constant, was counterbalanced. The position within the serial order was initially randomly determined. The only restriction was that no more than two death-related words and neutral words could be tachistoscopically presented in succession.
394
S. J. FLEMING
After the familiarization procedure, each student was exposed to the recognition threshold task; five randomly selected death words and five neutral words were tachistoscopically presented at gradually increasing exposure duration until correct recognition occurred. A 3-sec. preparatory interval preceded the tachistoscopic presentation of each word. The beginning of the preparatory interval was signalled by the experimenter's verbal alert ("Look now") and simultaneous depression of a microswitch activating the preparatory interval timer. Durations of recognition thresholds were recorded; the intertrial interval was approximately 30 sec. Whether respondents had lower recognition thresholds for neutral as compared to death words, or recognized death words more quickly, determined their classification as perceptually defensive or perceptually vigilant, respectively.
RESULTS Classification of respondents as defensive or vigilant was determined by subtracting the mean threshold recognition time for the five neutral words from the mean for the five death words and dividing by the standard deviation of the 10 recognition times. The resulting emotional response index wzs calculated separately for each respondent. Perceptually defensive students, then, had positive emotional response indices while negative emotional response indices indicated perceptually vigilant responding. It was hypothesized that a significant negative correlation exists between death anxiety scale score ( M = 69.02; SD = 8.45) and emotional response index (M = 0.10; SD = 0.58), i.e., a high death anxiety scale score was related to vigilant responding on the perceptual recognition task. A Peaison productmoment coefficient was calculated for these data. The resulting correlation of 0.17 was nonsignificant (with df = 43, significance is 0.24, one-tailed).
DISCUSSION The failure to find a significant correlation between perceptual defensiveness and death anxiety scale score is not consistent with previous research into response characteristics of repressers-sensitizers which suggested that repressers are less likely to verbalize anxiety or disturbance than are sensitizers (Lomont, 1965; Sullivan & Roberts, 1967). However, in spite of significant procedural and methodological differences between this investigation and that of Golding, et al. (1769), similar results are reported in that no s~gn~ficant relationship was found between magnitude of defensive responding (measured by tachistoscopic recognition time) and death anxiety. Feifel's research into multilevel criteria of death anxiety is relevant in interpreting these results. Feifel and Branscomb (1973) reported a negation of personal death fear at a verbal level and, in contrast, an aversion for death at a nonconscious level (using a word-association test and the Color-Word Interference Test). In the present study one cannot rule out the possibility that,
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSIVENESS A N D DEATH ANXIETY
395
as an overt measure, the Handal death scale may be relatively insensitive in tapping affective orientation toward death at lower levels of awareness. An additional consideration concerns the internal consistency of the Handal scale itself. Since there was no previous assessment of the internal consistency of this inventory, Cronbach's ( 1951 ) coefficient alpha was calculated; this is an estimate of reliability based on the average correlation among items and indicating extent of homogeneity of test items. The alpha coefficient was .58. As Nunnally (1967) has noted, this is within the .50 to .60 range for basic research purposes but below the .80 reliability suggested as "adequate." It is suggested that further research not only be directed toward explicating the relationship between death anxiety and levels-of-awareness but also toward more conclusively establishing the internal consistency of the Handal scale through extensive testing of diverse samples. REFERENCES B,-
D . The repression-sensitization scale: rationale, reliability, and validity. lournal of Personali~y, 1961, 29, 334-349. CRONBACH, L. J. Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 1951, 16, 297-334. ERIKSEN. C. W. Perception personality. In R. W. Heine & J. M. Wepman (Eds.), Concepts o f personality. Chicago: Aldine, 1963. Pp. 31-62. ERIKSEN, C. W. Cognitive responses to internally cued anxiety. In C. D. Spielberger ( E d . ) , Anxiety and behavior. New York: Academic Press, 1966. Pp. 327-360. FEIPEL,H., 8r BRANSCOMB, A. B. Who's afraid of death? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1973, 81, 282-288. GOLDING, s.-L., ATWOOD, G.E., & GOODMAN, R. A. Anxiety and two cognitive forms of resistance to the idea of death. Psychological Reporis, 1966, 18, 359-364. HANDAL, P. J. The relarionship between subjective life expectancy, death anxiety and general anxiety. Jousnal o f Clinical Psychology, 1969, 2 5 , 39-42. HANDAL,P. J., & RYCHLAK, J. F. Curvilinearity between dream content and death . anxiety and the relationship of death anxiety to repression-sensitization. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1971, 77, 11-16. INGLIS,J. Abnormalities of morivation and "ego functions." In H. J. Eysenck (Ed.), Handbook of abnormal psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1961. Pp. 262-297. LESTER, G., & LESTER, D. The fear of death, the fear of dying, and threshold differences for death words and neutral words. Omega, 1970, 1, 175-179. LMNGSTON, P. B., & ZIMET,C. N. Deach anxiety, authoritarianism, and choice of specialty in medical students. Iournal of Nervous a d Mental Diseases, 1965, 140, 222-230. LOMONT,J. F. The repression-sensitization dimension in relation to anxiety responses. lournal of Consulting Psychology, 1965, 29, 84-86. NUNNALLY, J. C. Psychometric theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. POSTMAN, L., & SCHNEIDER, B. H. Personal values, visual recognition and recall. Psychological Reuiezu, 1951, 58, 27 1-284. RICHARDS, B. S. Defensiveness in perception and self-description. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Dalhousie Univer., Halifax, 1964. SOLOMON, R. L., & HOWES,D . H. Word frequency, personal values, 2nd visual duration thresholds. Psychological Review, 1951, 58, 256-270. SULLIVAN, P. F., & ROBERTS, L. K. Relationship of manifest anxiety to repression-sensirization on the MMPI. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1969, 33, 763-764.
S. J. FLEMING TEMPONE,V. J. Extension of the repression-sensitization hypothesis to success and failure experience. Psychological Reports, 1964, 1 5 , 39-45. THORNDIKE,E. L., & LORGB,I. Teacher's word book o f 30,000 words. New York: Teacher's College, Columbia Univer., 1944. TOLOR,A,, & RBZNIKOFF, M. Relation between insight, repression-sensitizatio~~,internalexternal control, and death anxiety. Journal o f Abnormal Psychology, 1967, 72,
426-430.
Accepted June 22,1977.
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSIVENESS AND DEATH ANXIETY S. J. FLEMING' Atkkson College, York University Summmy.-This study investigated the relationship between the extent of defensive responding on a perceptual recognition task and score on the Handal death anxiety scale. The results did not confirm the hypothesis that perceptually defensive respondents (those with elevated thresholds for death words as opposed to neutral words) would tend to have lower scores on the death anxiety inventory. Additional research into multilevel criteria of death anxiety is suggested along with improving the internal consistency of the Handal death anxiety scale.
A n impressive array of research evidence has repeatedly shown that there are marked and consistent differences between individuals in their responses to ego-threatening stimuli. Briefly, avoiding and denying responses to anxietyarousing stimuli characterize the repression extreme of the repression-sensitization dimension while attempts to approach these same stimuli through intellectualization, reaction formation, and projection are representativeresponses of sensitizers (Byrne, 1961; Eriksen, 1963, 1966; Lomont, 1965; Sullivan & Roberts, 1969; Tempone, 1964). In contrast to the previously cited research showing a consistency in responding across a number of situations, investigation~ into the relationship between perceptual defensiveness and perceptual vigilance and death anxiety yield equivocal results. For example, Golding, Atwood, and Goodman (1966) postulated that it was more difficult to recognize death-related words than neutral>words and that the magnitude of this perceptual defensiveness varied directly with death anxiety. Results indicated that neutral words were indeed recognized quicker than were death-related words, however, there was no relationship between the magnitude of perceptual defensiveness and death-anxiety score. Aside from the fact that ( a ) there were relatively few participants (8= 30 male undergraduates), ( b ) only four death and four neutral stimuli were presented, and ( c ) a death anxiety inventory was used with little or no reported reliability and validity, these authors misinterpreted the characteristics of the perceptual defensiveness-perceptual vigilance response modes. More specificdy, on the basis of previous research (Eriksen, 1963, 1966), one would expect an inverse relationship between perceptual defensiveness and verbal reports of anxiety, that is, the perceptual defensiveness respondents would be expected to deny or suppress such anxiety. Furthermore, and quite surprisingly, of the 30 subjects tested, only two could be classified as perceptually vigilant. 'Requests for reprints should be sent to S. J. Fleming, Department of Psychology, Atkinson College, York University, 4700 Keele St., Downsview, Ontario M3J 2R7.
392
s. J.
FLEMING
Lester and Lester (1970) investigated the relationship between the fear of death, the fear of dying, and threshold differences for death and neutral words. In contrast to Golding, et al. (1966), these later results indicated that the recognition thresholds for death-related words were significantly lower than for neutral words. Furthermore the division of the death-related words into a group of four active (die, strangle, kill, suicide) and 11 passive words (all other death words on the list, e.g., cemetaty, tomb) gave recognition thresholds significantly lower for active words than for matched neutral words; there was no significant difference in recognition thresholds for passive words versus neutral words. In other words, the four active words were responsible for the differential recognition thresholds. Unfortunately, as the authors acknowledge, these results are difficult to interpret in light of the revelation that the active words have a higher frequency of occurrence. It is now well-established that visual recognition thresholds are strongly related to the relative frequency of occurrence of the stimuli, especially when an extended frequency range is sampled (Inglis, 1961; Postman & Schneider, 1951; Richards, 1964; Solomon & Howes, 1951). It is important that one control for frequency if one desires to attribute differences in threshold to the emotionality of the stimuli. Clearly the relationship between perceptual defensiveness-perceptual vigilance and h e recognicion of death-related words and neutral words is in need of further investigation and more stringent experimental controls. The present study investigated the relationship between death anxiety, as measured by a paper-and-pencil inventory, and visual recognition thresholds for death and neutral words. On the basis of previous research indicating that repressers tend not only to score significantly lower on a death anxiety inventory (Handal & Rychlak, 1971; Tolor & Reznikoff, 1967) but also to have elevated perceptual recognition thresholds for emotional as compared to neutral words (Tempone, 1964), it is hypothesized that respondents who use a characteristic repressive avoidance defense in a perceptual recognition task, i.e., who have elevated thresholds for death as opposed to neutral stimuli, will have lower death anxiety scale scores than perceptually vigilant participants.
METHOD Subjects The participants were 61 female volunteers enrolled in the first year of a 2-yr. diploma nursing program. A p paratas Tachi~toscopicstima1i.-A list of 40 death words (omitting present and past participles and plurals) and 120 neutral words (three matched neutral words for each death word) were selected from the Thorndike-Lorge general word count (1944) and presented to 40 females in an undergraduate class in
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSIVENESS A N D DEATH ANXIETY
393
introductory psychology. The students were required to rate each of these words on a scale from 1 ("highly related to life") to 7 ("highly related to death';). Only those five, six, and seven-letter words with a mean rating in excess of 6.0 were considered death words. For each of the 17 selected death words, a corresponding "most" neutral word was selected based on its mean rating (position 4 on the scale was considered to be the neutral position). Examples of the emotional or death words included burial, coffin, cancer, corpse, death, funeral, and suicide; fabric, lesson, cinder, paper, fence, and eleven are examples of neutral stimuli. Each of the stimulus words was mounted for presentation in a Gerbrands Type T-2B tachistoscope which was connected to ( a ) a Hunter Decade Interval Timer (which regulated the preparatory interval prior to presentation of the visual stimuli) and ( b ) a Gerbrands Model 130 Tachistoscope Timer which governed exposure duration during the determination of word recognition thresholds. Death anxiety scale.-The decision to use Handal's ( 1969) death anxiety scale, which is a modified version of Livingston and Zimet's (1965) inventory, was based on the fact that it is one of the few death anxiety inventories with published reliability and validity (Handal & Rychlak, 1971). The scale has 20 items; for each statement there are six possible responses ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Responses are scored on a six-point scale yielding a potential score range of 20 to 120.
Procedille Word recognition thresholds were collected while the student was comfortably seated in front of the tachistoscope. The experimenter was seated to the front and slightly to the left of the respondent and hidden from the latter's view by a large screen affixed to the tachistoscope. Prior to data collection a series of practice words (of similar length and frequency of occurrence but not from the experimental list) was tachistoscopically presented to each participant. The four practice words served to familiarize the students with the task and to establish a base level of perceptual performance from which threshold determinations could begin. Thresholds were determined by the ascending method of limits. After the thresholds for the'four practice words had been determined, the initial threshold for the test words (death-related words and neutral words) was determined by setting the duration of exposure at least two exposures below the lowest threshold for the practice words. The order of presentation, except for the four practice words which were always constant, was counterbalanced. The position within the serial order was initially randomly determined. The only restriction was that no more than two death-related words and neutral words could be tachistoscopically presented in succession.
394
S. J. FLEMING
After the familiarization procedure, each student was exposed to the recognition threshold task; five randomly selected death words and five neutral words were tachistoscopically presented at gradually increasing exposure duration until correct recognition occurred. A 3-sec. preparatory interval preceded the tachistoscopic presentation of each word. The beginning of the preparatory interval was signalled by the experimenter's verbal alert ("Look now") and simultaneous depression of a microswitch activating the preparatory interval timer. Durations of recognition thresholds were recorded; the intertrial interval was approximately 30 sec. Whether respondents had lower recognition thresholds for neutral as compared to death words, or recognized death words more quickly, determined their classification as perceptually defensive or perceptually vigilant, respectively.
RESULTS Classification of respondents as defensive or vigilant was determined by subtracting the mean threshold recognition time for the five neutral words from the mean for the five death words and dividing by the standard deviation of the 10 recognition times. The resulting emotional response index wzs calculated separately for each respondent. Perceptually defensive students, then, had positive emotional response indices while negative emotional response indices indicated perceptually vigilant responding. It was hypothesized that a significant negative correlation exists between death anxiety scale score ( M = 69.02; SD = 8.45) and emotional response index (M = 0.10; SD = 0.58), i.e., a high death anxiety scale score was related to vigilant responding on the perceptual recognition task. A Peaison productmoment coefficient was calculated for these data. The resulting correlation of 0.17 was nonsignificant (with df = 43, significance is 0.24, one-tailed).
DISCUSSION The failure to find a significant correlation between perceptual defensiveness and death anxiety scale score is not consistent with previous research into response characteristics of repressers-sensitizers which suggested that repressers are less likely to verbalize anxiety or disturbance than are sensitizers (Lomont, 1965; Sullivan & Roberts, 1967). However, in spite of significant procedural and methodological differences between this investigation and that of Golding, et al. (1769), similar results are reported in that no s~gn~ficant relationship was found between magnitude of defensive responding (measured by tachistoscopic recognition time) and death anxiety. Feifel's research into multilevel criteria of death anxiety is relevant in interpreting these results. Feifel and Branscomb (1973) reported a negation of personal death fear at a verbal level and, in contrast, an aversion for death at a nonconscious level (using a word-association test and the Color-Word Interference Test). In the present study one cannot rule out the possibility that,
PERCEPTUAL DEFENSIVENESS A N D DEATH ANXIETY
395
as an overt measure, the Handal death scale may be relatively insensitive in tapping affective orientation toward death at lower levels of awareness. An additional consideration concerns the internal consistency of the Handal scale itself. Since there was no previous assessment of the internal consistency of this inventory, Cronbach's ( 1951 ) coefficient alpha was calculated; this is an estimate of reliability based on the average correlation among items and indicating extent of homogeneity of test items. The alpha coefficient was .58. As Nunnally (1967) has noted, this is within the .50 to .60 range for basic research purposes but below the .80 reliability suggested as "adequate." It is suggested that further research not only be directed toward explicating the relationship between death anxiety and levels-of-awareness but also toward more conclusively establishing the internal consistency of the Handal scale through extensive testing of diverse samples. REFERENCES B,-
D . The repression-sensitization scale: rationale, reliability, and validity. lournal of Personali~y, 1961, 29, 334-349. CRONBACH, L. J. Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 1951, 16, 297-334. ERIKSEN. C. W. Perception personality. In R. W. Heine & J. M. Wepman (Eds.), Concepts o f personality. Chicago: Aldine, 1963. Pp. 31-62. ERIKSEN, C. W. Cognitive responses to internally cued anxiety. In C. D. Spielberger ( E d . ) , Anxiety and behavior. New York: Academic Press, 1966. Pp. 327-360. FEIPEL,H., 8r BRANSCOMB, A. B. Who's afraid of death? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1973, 81, 282-288. GOLDING, s.-L., ATWOOD, G.E., & GOODMAN, R. A. Anxiety and two cognitive forms of resistance to the idea of death. Psychological Reporis, 1966, 18, 359-364. HANDAL, P. J. The relarionship between subjective life expectancy, death anxiety and general anxiety. Jousnal o f Clinical Psychology, 1969, 2 5 , 39-42. HANDAL,P. J., & RYCHLAK, J. F. Curvilinearity between dream content and death . anxiety and the relationship of death anxiety to repression-sensitization. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 1971, 77, 11-16. INGLIS,J. Abnormalities of morivation and "ego functions." In H. J. Eysenck (Ed.), Handbook of abnormal psychology. New York: Basic Books, 1961. Pp. 262-297. LESTER, G., & LESTER, D. The fear of death, the fear of dying, and threshold differences for death words and neutral words. Omega, 1970, 1, 175-179. LMNGSTON, P. B., & ZIMET,C. N. Deach anxiety, authoritarianism, and choice of specialty in medical students. Iournal of Nervous a d Mental Diseases, 1965, 140, 222-230. LOMONT,J. F. The repression-sensitization dimension in relation to anxiety responses. lournal of Consulting Psychology, 1965, 29, 84-86. NUNNALLY, J. C. Psychometric theory. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967. POSTMAN, L., & SCHNEIDER, B. H. Personal values, visual recognition and recall. Psychological Reuiezu, 1951, 58, 27 1-284. RICHARDS, B. S. Defensiveness in perception and self-description. Unpublished M.A. thesis, Dalhousie Univer., Halifax, 1964. SOLOMON, R. L., & HOWES,D . H. Word frequency, personal values, 2nd visual duration thresholds. Psychological Review, 1951, 58, 256-270. SULLIVAN, P. F., & ROBERTS, L. K. Relationship of manifest anxiety to repression-sensirization on the MMPI. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1969, 33, 763-764.
S. J. FLEMING TEMPONE,V. J. Extension of the repression-sensitization hypothesis to success and failure experience. Psychological Reports, 1964, 1 5 , 39-45. THORNDIKE,E. L., & LORGB,I. Teacher's word book o f 30,000 words. New York: Teacher's College, Columbia Univer., 1944. TOLOR,A,, & RBZNIKOFF, M. Relation between insight, repression-sensitizatio~~,internalexternal control, and death anxiety. Journal o f Abnormal Psychology, 1967, 72,
426-430.
Accepted June 22,1977.
