Manual for the Defensive Verbal Behavior Ratings Scale为防御性的言语行为评分量表手册.doc

Manual for the Defensive Verbal Behavior Ratings Scale (Version 3.0) Lisa Feldman Barrett, Janet Cleveland, and Tamlin Conner Boston College Nathan L. Williams George Mason University Last modified: March 31, 2000Table of Contents I Introduction to the Concept of Defensive Functioning 3-5 II Overview of the Defensive Verbal Behavior Rating Scale 6-9 III Additional Scoring Instructions 9-10 IV Coding Aids 11-16 Introduction to the Concept of Defensive Functioning Many psychological theories assume that people continuously organize and interpret a vast amount of self-relevant information. As a result, they construct and maintain a cohesive self-concept (Kihlstom Cantor, 1984; Markus, 1980). Emotions, thoughts, behaviors, or information from the environment that are in conflict with a person’s self-concept may be perceived as a threat that can potentially lower self-esteem or induce negative affect (Feldman Barrett, Fong, Quigley, 1996; Gedo, 1980; Horowitz, Markman, Stinson et al., 1990; Shapiro, 1989; Vaillant, 1992). Therefore, people should perceive threat when aspects of their experience that conflict with their self-concept are made salient. In an effort to protect the self, people employ defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms can be thought of as motivated cognitive-behavioral strategies that protect the self from perceived threat, maintain or augment self-esteem, reduce negative affect, and maintain positive representations of attachment figures (Feldman Barrett et al., 1996). These cognitive strategies regulate perceptions of the environment by transforming the meaning or emotional consequence of self-relevant information to be more consistent with a person’s self-concept. That is, defense mechanisms allow individuals to reduce the perception of threat in the environment by altering how events are represented in conscious thought. Sometimes people merely change the meaning of threatening information, and ot