Differences in Defensive Styles in Males and Females as Disclosed by the Repression-Sensitization Scale

Males and females differ in their defensive responses to verbal stimuli that are most directly sexually suggestive. 200 subjects were administered Byrne\u27s Revised Repression-Sensitization Scale creating a normative distribution, in which only the upper and lower 27% of the sample (106 subjects) (repressers and sensitizers) were administered the Galbriath Word Association Test. It was hypothesized that females as a group would behave as repressers”, exhibit shorter latencies and respond to sexually suggestive words with neutral or nonthreatening interpretations. Males as a group were hypothesized to behave as sensitizers , exhibit longer response latencies and respond to sexually suggestive words with conflict-laden and emotional content. Responses were analyzed using one-way analysis of variances and a CRF 2,2 analysis of variance. Results indicate that males and females are dichotomized on the R-5 scale with males responding as sensitizers and females as repressers (p \u3c .05). Females responded to sexually suggestive stimuli with neutral or nonthreatening interpretations and males with conflict-laden and emotional content (p \u3c .01). Differences in latencies were not evidenced; this is probably due to the nature of the Word Association Test, in that, it did not produce enough anxiety in which to measure defensiveness in regard to latencies. The major hypothesis that males and females have different defensive reactions as measured on the R-S scale was supported