REPRESSORS RESPONSES TO HEALTH-RELATED QUESTIONNAIRES

Objectives. To investigate whether individuals who possess a repressiv e coping style (repressors) present themselves in an overly positive f ashion on health-related questionnaires. Design. There were two cross- sectional studies. Repressors (low trait anxiety, high defensiveness) were compared with (a) total non-repressors and (b) a subset of non-re pressors which consisted of extreme scoring control groups on trait an xiety and defensiveness: low anxious, high anxious and defensive high anxious. Methods. Participants completed three health-related question naires: a measure of coping resources (the Coping Resources Inventory, CRI; Hammer & Marting, 1988) (Study 1); a measure of psychological sy mptomatology, the 12-item General Health Questionnaire, GHQ-12; Goldbe rg, 1992) (Study 2); and a measure of physical symptoms, the Pennebake r Inventory of Limbic Languidness (PILL; Pennebaker, 1982) (Study 2). Results. In Study 1, repressors scored significantly higher on the CRI than total non-repressors and all extreme scoring control groups. A s imilar pattern was shown for the subscales of the CRI. In Study 2, rep ressors scored significantly lower on the GHQ-12 and the PILL, compare d to total non-repressors. Repressors scored significantly lower on th e GHQ-12 compared to two extreme control groups: high anxious and defe nsive high anxious, although there was no significant effect for the P ILL. Conclusions. The results support the hypothesis that repressors a re presenting themselves in an overly positive fashion on self-report health-related measures.