REALITY ATTENTIVENESS-INATTENTIVENESS AND EXTERNALIZATION-INTERNALIZATION IN DEFENSIVE STYLE

Attempts to link the degree of attentiveness or inattentivenss characteristically displayed toward the immediate environment and the locus of conflict in subjective experience. It was hypothesized that Ss who avail themselves of opportunities to withdraw attention from reality when such an option is an adaptive alternative in a particular situation would also tend subjectively to experience conflict as lying within themselves, whereas Ss who remain attentionally anchored in their immediate surroundings even when the task requirements do not demand sustained environmental attentiveness would tend to experience conflict as lying between themselves and something else. Several measures of different aspects of reality attentiveness-inattentiveness were all found to correlate significantly with an index of externalization-internalization in defensive style among a sample of 83 female college students. (20 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.