Repression and Sensitization

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In psychology, repression and sensitization are the two poles of a continuous scale on which a person can be located in terms of the probability of encountering a threatening situation with care or avoidance over many situations.

  • Repressors are people who frequently avoid stimuli associated with threats or who deny their existence.
  • Sensitizers, on the other hand, are people who more often turn to stimuli associated with threats, pay attention to them, i.e. deal intensively with them.

This dimension is seen as a personality trait .

Development of the RS construct

Freud already differentiated persons according to the preferred defense mechanisms with which they react to fear and distinguished between “ suppressors ”, “ deniers ”, “ rationalizers ” etc. B. Krohne (1975) makes:

In differential psychology , the RS construct developed from the results of investigations into the “perceptual defense phenomenon”. This describes the phenomenon that emotional stimuli in tachistoscopic examinations have higher recognition thresholds than neutral stimuli in some of the test subjects. Bruner and Postman (1947) discovered, however, that there are also people who recognize stimulus patterns with high emotional implications faster than neutral stimuli. They called this phenomenon "perceptual vigilance". It was thus shown that there are inter-individual differences in the response to emotional stimuli, especially those that pose a threat.

As a result, several authors developed concepts to operationalize the RS construct, such as B. Byrne (1961) (revised version: Byrne et al. 1963) and in a German version Krohne (1974). Its RS scale includes e.g. B. Items with questions about shyness, anxiety, depression, self-confidence, fatigue, physical symptoms, negative self-image etc.

Newer concepts

One problem with the one-dimensional RS construct described so far is that the values ​​of the RS scale are highly correlated with values ​​of anxiety inventories , which shows that the RS construct is confused with the anxiety construct . Low values ​​in the RS scale can be caused by low levels of anxiety or by habitual repression tendencies of anxious people in a threatening situation. This also applies to high values ​​in the RS scale. The problem arises that neither the RS construct nor the fearfulness construct can be validly recorded on their own .

In order to be able to separate the two constructs better, one has switched to recording the RS construct two-dimensionally. This is done by measuring a person's anxiety on the one hand and their tendency to defensively avoid negative emotions on the other. The latter is typically recorded using a “social desirability” scale, since it is assumed that people who are strongly motivated to behave in a socially desirable manner show less fear, since fear tends to be something socially undesirable. Repressors and sensitizers are therefore defined as follows:

  • Repressors show little fear and a high degree of fear denial, i.e. high SDS values ​​(Social Desirability Scale, measuring scale for social desirability ).
  • Sensitizers show a lot of fear and only a slight tendency towards fear denial or towards socially desirable behavior, i.e. low SDS values.

The dichotomization of these two characteristics results in two further classifications:

  • Individuals with non-defensive anxiety coping who score both low and low levels on the SDS scale.
  • People who have failed to cope with anxiety and who show high levels of anxiety despite high levels of anxiety denial.

Krohne (1986) captures the RS concept in his model of coping modes from a cognitive psychological perspective and analyzes the processes of attentional alignment in threatening situations. In this context, he describes two constructs that are considered to be independent of one another, which was also confirmed by factor analysis :

  • Vigilance : Information processing strategy that aims to increase the absorption and processing of threatening information.
  • Cognitive avoidance : Information processing strategy that aims to avoid threatening stimuli.

It is further assumed that people show two general reactions in threatening situations, "insecurity" and "physical excitement", and that people differ in the extent to which they can tolerate insecurity and physical excitement.

This results in four types of coping strategies in threatening situations:

  • People who are intolerant of insecurity, but can bear physical excitement relatively well, tend to be vigilant in threatening situations. In the terminology of the RS construct, they are referred to as sensitizers .
  • People who are intolerant of physical excitement, but who can tolerate insecurity relatively well, tend to behave cognitively avoidance in threatening situations. They are referred to as repressors in the terminology of the RS construct .
  • When intolerant of both insecurity and physical excitement, a person tends to switch back and forth between the two coping strategies indiscriminately as both have negative effects on the person. This leads to what is known as a fluctuating coping style. Krohne describes these people as unsuccessful copers .
  • If a person can tolerate both insecurity and physical excitement well, they can - depending on the situational conditions - use vigilance or cognitive avoidance as a coping strategy and thus display flexible coping behavior. Krohne describes these individuals as non-defensive individuals .

literature

  • M. Amelang, D. Bartussek: Differential Psychology and Personality Research. 5th edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart / Berlin / Cologne 2001.
  • J. Asendorpf: Psychology of the personality. 3. Edition. Springer-Verlag, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 2004.
  • HW Krohne: Fear and fear processing. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1975.
  • HW Krohne: Repression Sensitization. In: M. Amelang (ed.): Temperament and personality differences. (= Encyclopedia of Psychology. Vol. 3). Hogrefe, Göttingen 1996.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JS Bruner, L. Postman: Emotional selectivity in perception and reaction. In: Journal of Personality. Volume 16, 1947, pp. 69-77.
  2. ↑ D. Byrne: Repression-sensitization as a dimension of personality. In: BA Maher (Ed.): Progress in experimental personality research. Vol. 1, Academic Press, New York 1964.
  3. ^ HW Krohne: Investigations with a German form of the repression-sensitization-scale. In: Journal of Clinical Psychology. Volume 3, 1974, pp. 238-260.
  4. ↑ HW Krohne, J. Rogner: Multi-variable diagnostics in coping research. In: HW Krohne (Ed.): Coping with fear in performance situations. VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim 1985.

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