An Increase in Early Adolescent Undercontrol Is Associated With the Use of Denial

Abstract

This is a longitudinal study of change in undercontrol and its relation to the use of defense mechanisms with participants from the Berkeley Guidance Study of the Institute of Human Development, University of California, Berkeley. I predicted that use of the immature defense of Denial, but not Projection or Identification, would be related at early adolescence to an increase in undercontrol as assessed from 2 independent measures. The assessment of Ego Undercontrol indicated that the majority of children decreased with age, but for those who increased at early adolescence, the increase was significantly related to the use of Denial. Similarly, assessment of Externalizing Behavior Problems at early adolescence indicated that an increase in Externalizing Problems was related to the use of Denial. In addition to indicating psychological immaturity, the use of Denial prevents these children from recognizing the negative impact of their undercontrolled behavior.

Acknowledgments

The data for this article come from the Intergenerational Longitudinal Study conducted by the Institute of Human Development (IHD) at the University of California, Berkeley, and from the Intergenerational Studies data sets (made available in 1995, machine-readable data files). These data were collected by the Institute of Human Development and donated to the archives of the Henry A. Murray Research Center of Radcliffe College, 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Producer and Distributor). Many thanks to Dr. Pamela Bradley who facilitated the retrieval of the children's TAT stories from the IHD archival files.

Notes

¹ Ozer and Gjerde (1989) correlated the Q-sorts of children at age 7 with their Q-sorts at age 11 using the Block and Block (1980) data. Although the overall correlation coefficient was relatively high (.62), the range for different children (–.41 to +.91) indicated that marked change occurred in some individuals.

²It is not clear whether raters for ages 11–13 had access to the TAT stories told at ages 11–12. However, TAT coding for defense use was done many years after the Q-sorts. If raters intuited the presence of denial and/or of undercontrol in these stories, and these two variables co-occurred in the stories, this would provide support for the hypothesis.

³For more detail on the Q-sort procedure, see Eichorn et al., 1981.

⁴The initial ratings ranged from 1 (maximum problem) to 5 (minimum or no problem). For clarity, these ratings have been reflected in this study so that 5 = maximum problem.

⁵Card M18 is no longer part of the TAT. It depicts a man lying face down on a bed, with a table alongside.

⁶A few children were given additional cards for story-telling.

⁷Appreciation is expressed to Vladimir Miskovic for this coding.

∗p <.05.

∗∗p <.01.

∗∗∗p <.001.

∗p <.05.

∗∗p <.01.

∗p <.05.

∗∗p <.01.

∗∗∗p <.001.