ARISE Scholar: Rebecca Oliver
Social Defensiveness, Stress Induced Response Discrepancy, and Physical Symptom Reporting
Health care providers are often confronted with physical symptom complaints that do not exhibit physiological underpinnings (Salovey & Birnbaum, 1989). Factors that may influence symptom perception, and, consequently, symptom reporting, may be social and psychological in nature (Leventhal & Leventhal, 1993). The combination of stress and negative affect is hypothesized to lead to an increased probability of seeking medical services. A critique of self‑report measures of health has been that they may not be related to objective organic tests (Skelton, 1991). Nonetheless, separation of physical symptoms into organic versus psychological factors has not been successfully accomplished (Kirmayer, 1986). Weinberger et al (1979) first proposed an interaction between social defensiveness and negative affect. Weinberger suggested that individuals who are high in social defensiveness and low in self‑reported anxiety are utilizing a "repressive coping style". These people present themselves as non‑anxious but put great physiological efforts into maintaining this collected demeanor. In actuality, they show heightened physiological arousal and they attempt to avoid negative stimuli. Given links between response discrepancy, social defensiveness, and low levels of some aspects of negative affect, it is possible, due to its apparent link to negative affect, that physical symptom reporting may also be inversely related to persons with elevated heart rate response discrepancy. In other words, defensiveness, as marked by the two markers of defense (i.e., response discrepancy and the Marlowe‑Crowne Social Desirability Scale or MCSDS), is expected to be a better predictor of physical symptom reporting, due to the usage of two markers of social defensiveness for purposes of categorization.