Self Ratings, Level of Ideal-Self Ratings, and Defensiveness

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Abstract
Four self-regard measures referring to specific traits and to over-all self-regard, and four defensiveness measures referring to corresponding dimensions were applied to a male and/or a female sample. Major findings are: (a) A strong self-favorability bias occurred, plausibly indicative of denial influencing the self concept. (b) Personally stated ideal-self ratings (PSI) correlated across Ss with self ratings (SRs), and, to a limited extent, with a rationalization measure, suggesting that PSI has psychodynamic significance. (c) Defense measures having face validity and satisfactory reliability failed to intercorrelate even when purporting to index the same defense regarding the same trait. This suggests that defensiveness is not a unitary construct, and more work on defense measures is needed. (d) High self-regard tended to be associated with less rationalizing and projecting than did low self-regard.

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