Repression and Repressors

Abstract

The present article reviews and evaluates the history of theory and research on the concept of repression and, its personality characteristic, the repressive coping style. The four-factor theory ( Eyseneck, 1997 ), a comprehensive cognitive theory of repressors, attempts to provide evidence for the avoidant or defensive cognitive processors allegedly underlying repression. According to the four-factor theory, individuals with a repressive coping style (repressors) possess opposite cognitive biases for both external and internal stimuli. In other words, they avoid attending to, and tend to interpret, four sources of information — environmental stimuli, their own physiological activity, their own behavior, and information stored in long term memory — in a nonthreatening fashion. Some evidence consistent with these predictions is discussed. Also, the four-factor theory attempts to account for some failures of concordance among the self-report, behavioral, physiological, measures of anxiety found in repressors.