Effects of response styles on the report of psychological and somatic distress.

Abstract

The present study (N = 247) assessed the impact of two major response style dimensions (self-deception and impression management) on the report of psychological and somatic symptoms. Self-deception was assessed with the Self-Deception Questionnaire (SDQ) and the Repression-Sensitization (R-S) scale. Impression management was assessed with the Other-Deception Questionnaire (ODQ). The study confirmed that response styles were more predictive of psychological than somatic symptoms. Nevertheless, the SDQ and R-S explained a surprising 13%-15% of the variance in physical symptom reports over and above the effects of impression management. Self-deceivers and repressers reported significantly fewer symptoms of both types. Although women reported more symptoms of both types, no significant sex differences were noted in the effects of response style on symptom reporting. Both anxiety and depression were associated with a high rate of physical symptoms, particularly among women. In recent research on stress and anxiety, response styles such as defensiveness , repression,' denial, and socially desirable responding have received considerable attention. Such response styles provide a challenge to psychological research because they may serve two distinct roles: First, they may be characteristic of particular stress-related disorders like the hypertensive personality (Jorgensen & Houston, 1983; Linden, 1984; Linden & Feuerstein, 1983; G. Schwartz, 1983). Second, they have been alleged to be confounds in the self-report assessment of a variety of stressrelated characteristics including trait anxiety (Edwards, 1957; Kimble & Posnick, 1967), state anxiety (Asendorpf & Scherer, 1983; Linden & Prankish, 1984; Weinberger, Schwartz, & Davidson, 1979), self-monitoring of stressful events (Kiecolt-Glaser & Murray, 1980; Linden & Feuerstein, 1983), as well as hopelessness and suicidal tendencies (Linehan & Nielsen, 1981, 1983). Relative to this large body of literature on reponse styles in self-reports of psychological symptoms (e.g., anxiety and depression), little attention has been given to stylistic responding in self-reports of physical symptoms (e.g., nausea, headache, and itching). Consistent with psychosomatic theory, less frequent and less severe health problems are reported by those scoring as repressers on Byrne's Repression-Sensitization (R-S) scale (Byrne, Steinberg, & Schwartz, 1968). A later study (M. Schwartz, Krupp, & Byrne, 1971) was designed to test whether R-S tendencies in symptom reporting were merely a response style or whether they could be linked to definitive differences in psychological and