Body-product attitudes as a function of repression-sensitization.

St~mnznry.-The present study investigated the relationship between attitudes toward body-product concepts and individual differences in defenses against anxiety, as measured by the Byrne Repression-Sensitization (R-S) Scale (1965). It was expected that two groups of student Ss, repressors and sensitizers, would rate differentially a set of 21 body-product concepts assumed to be anxiety-arousing in this culture. Greater concept differentiation was shown by sensitizers but hypotheses predicting both lowered mean concept ratings and more negative ratlngs of anal-sexual body products by sensitizers were not confirmed. These findlngs were interpreted as lending minimal support to the construct validity of the R-S Scale. The data analyses further indicate the importance of age and sex as variables in the study of body-product attitudes. In his discussion of the "fantasy of dirt," Kubie (1937) suggested that affective responses toward body products are interwoven in a largely unconscious, unverbalized, and probably universal "hierarchy of dirt," a hierarchy of negative attitudes toward body products. According to Kubie, intensities of the disgust reaction to such bodily products as saliva, feces, semen, vomit, pus, and human's milk, are "as finely graded as those which on the positive side of the same scale are looked upon as laws of aesthetic taste" (p. 394). The notion of a universal hierarchy of negative attitudes toward body products has found support in several recent experiments employing the semantic differential (Ross, Hirt, & Kurtz, 1968; Kurtz, Hirt, Ross, Gleser & Hertz, in press; LeLieuvre, 1967). Ss in these studies were asked to rate each of 21 body-product concepts along 9 7point, bi-polar adjectival scales sampling Osgood's (1957)' three major attitude dimensions: Evaluation, Activity, and Potency. Without exception, it was found that Ss ordered body-product concepts and assigned to them absolute scale values in a consistent manner. Heretofore interest has been directed toward eIucidating the order of this hierarchy; individual differences in response to the anxiety-arousing properties of body-product concepts have not yet been explored. The Byrne Repression-Sensitization (R-S) Scale (1961, 1965) provides an instrument apparently meaningful for predicting differentiated modes of responses under conditions eliciting body-product attitudes. Repressors characteristically defend against anxiety by using the defense mechanism of denial, repression, and avoidance of negative feelings. Sensitizers, in contrast, have a rendency to be "vigilant," exhibiting intellectualization, obsession, doubt, and a negative self-concept. Using the semantic differential, as in previous investigations, the present study examined the following hypotheses: (1) due to tendencies to exhibit rumination and intellectualization, sensitizers should differentiate body-product concepts to a greater extent than repressors; (2) sensitizers should rate a selected group of anal-sexual products more negatively than a cluster of all other products; and (3) mean body-product concept ratings should be more negative for sensitizers than for repressors. Meihod.Ss were 53 male and 47 female undergraduate smdents between 18 and 52 vr. old. The R-S Scale was administered first. to determine individual differences in defense against anxiety. Scores on this scale were later rank ordered, separately for males and females, yielding four 14-S groups: male and female repressors and male and female