Development and Validation of a Sentence Completion Test Measure of Defensive Responding in Military Personnel Assessed for Nonroutine Missions

Abstract

We present a scoring system for common defensive responses to a sentence completion test in 190 male volunteers who were screened in an operational assessment and selection program for nonroutine military assignment. Common defensive efforts include the following: omissions (blanks, incomplete responses), denial (negation), redundant responses (tautologies), flippant responses, responses about the test, and simple associations. These responses are reliably coded using exemplar ratings. Sentence completion test (SCT) verbal defensiveness is largely independent of verbal ability. Participants higher in verbal defensiveness are judged by psychologists as lower in suitability for high demand military missions and by peers as less desirable coworkers in a high stress military mission. SCT verbal defensiveness is higher among personnel who fail to complete an operational assessment and selection program. Two dimensions underlie common defensive efforts: inhibition and resistance. Neither factor is very extensively related to the “Big Five” personality dimensions.

Notes

1 The scoring manual is available from the first author.

2 Of the nearly 80 significance tests run on the personality and intelligence tests used in this study, only two facet scales of the NEO–PI–R, Activity and Straightforwardness, differentiated the two groups (selected vs. nonselected) at the p < .05 level, fewer than might be expected by chance alone. When these scales were entered into a logistic regression analysis along with the SCT scores, only the total number of defensive responses significantly predicted group membership.