Ego-defensive Function Research Articles

Modeling the ego-defensive function of attitudes

Studying the psychological needs served by holding certain attitudes is the focus of the functional approach to attitudinal research. One function evidenced consistently in attitudinal studies is the ego-defensive function. Attitudes serving an ego-defensive function protect one's self-concept from counterattitudinal messages about the self. This paper presents an alternative perspective for understanding the ego-defensive function by conceiving and modeling it as a causal process. The data were consistent with a hypothesized model in which a message threatening to a salient aspect of self-concept, as opposed to a non-threatening message, initiates ego-defensiveness resulting in more negative message-related thoughts, discounting message content, and source derogation. Source derogation was related negatively to conformity to message recommendations. These findings suggest a new way of thinking about the ego-defensive function and the ways in which people respond to counterattitudinal information about an issue on which they are highly ego-involved.

Matching Messages to Motives in Persuasion: A Functional Approach to Promoting Volunteerism1

This study examined a functional strategy for investigating audience responses to motivationally‐based persuasive appeals. It was predicted that people exposed to advertisements informing them how they could satisfy personally relevant motivations through volunteering (i.e., functionally matched messages) would judge these ads to be more persuasive, more emotionally positive, and would report being more likely to volunteer than people exposed to advertisements unrelated to their personally relevant motivations (i.e., functionally mismatched messages). These predictions were confirmed in an experiment wherein participants whose attitudes toward volunteerism served a Social Adjustive, Value Expressive, Utilitarian, Knowledge, or Ego Defensive function viewed advertisements promoting volunteerism that either matched or mismatched their personally relevant motivations. Results confirmed predictions as participants responded more favorably to the functionally matched than mismatched messages. The implications of this research for understanding the mechanisms by which functionally matched messages exert persuasive influence and the ramifications of the research for the practice of volunteerism are discussed.

A Functional Approach to Understanding Attitudes toward AIDS Victims

Attitudes toward victims of AIDS were conceptualized as serving three possible functions: a value-expressive function (e.g., stigmatization), an ego-defensive function (e.g., homosexual prejudice), or a knowledge function (e.g., victim derogation). These functions were evaluated by having a sample of U.S. undergraduates respond to a victim who had contracted AIDS by one of three different means: a blood transfusion, a sexual encounter of a homosexual nature, or intravenous drug use. Subjects then indicated their beliefs about the victim's responsibility for the disease, feelings toward the victim, and likely behavioral interactions with the victim. The findings provided most support for the knowledge function of attitudes toward AIDS victims.

Acute bereavement, threatened loss, ego defenses and adrenocortical function.

In this study of 43 acutely bereaved widows and widowers and a comparison group of 24 nonbereaved married persons who experienced critical illness in a spouse, we found no evidence of higher levels of affective arousal, higher levels of adrenocortical activity, less effective ego defenses, or higher levels of defensive work among bereaved persons by comparison with nonbereaved persons. Furthermore, we failed to observe expected relationships between ego defensive function and adrenocortical activity among either bereaved or nonbereaved persons. These observations are consistent with one previous study of bereaved parents.

A Functional Approach to Attitude Measurement

In this research, Katz's functional theory is used to examine theoretical, measurement, and statistical issues surrounding the problems of operationalizing the utilitarian, value-expressive, knowledge, and ego-defensive functions. The results are very encouraging in that they show the functional approach offers a multifaceted, motive-based measure which links motives to attitudes.

Racial prejudice and authoritarianism: a test in white South Africa.

The relationship between authoritarianism and racial prejudice in white South Africa was investigated by means of a forced-choice version of the F-scale, a social distance scale and a specially constructed anti-African scale. The insignificant correlations between the F-scale and the latter two prejudice scales are taken as indicating that, in a ‘prejudiced’ society, prejudiced attitudes serve a utilitarian rather than an ego-defensive function for its members.

Corticosteroid responses to milieu therapy of chronic schizophrenics.

OVER the past two decades, it has been well established in both animals and man that emotional distress can stimulate adrenal cortical activity through neuroendocrine pathways. In man, however, emotional distress is regarded as being closely regulated by ego defenses (in a manner perhaps analogous to a buffer system). It appears useful, then, to study both the dimensions of affect state and ego defensive functions as a system, in psychoendocrine investigations in man. This paper will report on corticosteroid excretion in four chronic schizophrenic men during a year's course of intensive milieu therapy. Changes in affect state and in corticosteroid excretion will be related to alterations in the psychosocial equilibrium maintained by these chronic patients. The present study grows out of previous work by Sachar et al^1,3,4which described changes in corticosteroid excretion in acutely schizophrenic men as they moved through clinical phases in their