Defensive copers show a deficit in passive avoidance learning on newmans gono go task implications for self deception and socialization

Defensive Copers Show a Deficit in Passive Avoidance Learning on Newman’s Go/No-Go Task: Implications for Self-Deception and Socialization Matthew S Shane and Jordan B Peterson University of Toronto ABSTRACT The present study investigated whether passive avoidance learning was retarded by defensive coping strategies designed to minimize exposure to negatively valenced stimuli High-anxious individuals, lowanxious individuals, and defensive copers completed a computerized go/ no-go task, in which they learned when to press or not to press a button, in response to contingent positive and negative feedback The duration that feedback remained onscreen was self-regulated Defensive copers showed preferential reflection away from negative feedback, committed more passive-avoidance errors, and were characterized by impaired learning, overall Further, the ratio of reflection on negative feedback to reflection on positive feedback directly mediated both passive-avoidance errors and overall learning Defensive coping strategies, therefore, appear to interfere with passive avoidance learning, thereby fostering perseverative, dysfunctional action patterns by reducing knowledge gained from previous mistakes Implications for the learning of effective socialization strategies, and for psychopathy—which is commonly characterized by similar passive-avoidance deficits—are subsequently considered This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and by a Connaught Grant from the University of Toronto We gratefully acknowledge Jessica Aurora’s help in the data collection and Phil Zelazo’s willingness to read and offer advice on previous versions of the manuscript Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jordan B Peterson, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St George St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3G3 Journal of Personality 72:5, October 2004 Blackwell Publishing 2004 940 Shane & Peterson Research conducted over the last two decades has suggested that individuals who self-report low levels of anxiety may not constitute a homogeneous group Rather, it appears meaningful to distinguish between those who are genuinely low-anxious, and those who utilize defensive coping strategies to minimize their level of subjectively experienced or reported anxiety (Weinberger, Schwartz & Davidson, 1979).1 Individuals in both hypothetically low-anxious groups consistently score below the median on self-report anxiety measures, but diverge dramatically on measures of conformity, defensiveness, or restraint That is, whereas genuinely low-anxious individuals score quite low on measures of defensiveness, defensive copers manifest elevated levels of defensiveness despite showing similarly low anxiety levels This combination of traits seems somewhat counterintuitive: it is unlikely that individuals who are clearly defensive and sensitive to the opinions of others could be genuinely free of anxiety In consequence, researchers have suggested that the defensive coper’s subjective level of anxiety may not accurately reflect his or her objective sensitivity to anxiety-provoking or threatening environmental stimuli Recent investigations have generally supported such suggestions Defensive-copers manifest a unique pattern of threat processing, characterized by increased physiological responses to aversive or threatening stimuli (e.g heart rate: Fuller, 1992; cortisol: Brown et al., 1996; b-endorphins: Jamner & Hoyle, 1999) and, paradoxically, to reduced attention to such stimuli Mogg and colleagues (2000), for example, have systematically demonstrated that individuals who utilize repressive coping styles allocate significantly fewer attentional resources toward threatening than toward neutral or positive stimuli This complex avoidant bias has a clearly defensive quality and stands in marked contrast to the unbiased attentional A number of different personality constructions have, in the past, fallen under the umbrella of individuals who utilize defensive coping mechanisms, including self-deceptive individuals and individuals with repressive coping styles Although there are important differences between each of these personality constructs, a core characteristic of each is the use of defensive strategies to reduce subjective levels of negative emotionality (be it fear, anxiety, sadness, guilt, or otherwise) Following the sound advice of an anonymous reviewer, rather than choose one of these particular personality constructs to refer to the participants in the present study, we have instead used the more global and straightforward term ‘‘defensive coper’’ throughout Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 941 processing of genuinely low-anxious individuals (Mogg & Bradley, 1998) Furthermore, experimental demonstrations of such defensive processing are in accordance with a large body of evidence that has less systematically demonstrated defensive copers’ reluctance to process aversive information Mischel, Ebbeson, and Zeiss (1973), for instance, demonstrated that individuals high in the use of selfdeception were less likely to consider negative self-relevant information, while Davis and Schwartz (1987) found these individuals characterized by reduced ability to recall negative memories In line with these findings, Eysenck (2000) has suggested, more generally, that defensive coping may occur in part through minimization of threatening information across four broad categories: external stimuli, internal physiological stimuli, personal behavior, and personal cognitions The fact that defensive copers can accomplish this avoidance, however, suggests that they must be as threat-sensitive as high-anxious individuals, despite their low self-reported levels of anxiety In the absence of such threat sensitivity, after all, they would not be capable of easily determining which stimuli should be avoided Research suggesting that defensive copers actually show initial automatic orientation toward threatening stimuli directly supports this latter notion Calvo and Eysenck (2000) measured the time course of threat-processing biases in individuals with repressive coping styles by measuring their ability to name target words presented at various delay intervals after being primed with threatening or nonthreatening, context-framing sentences Repressors were slower at naming the target words after threat exposure when the delay interval was long (1050 ms), but were faster at naming the same target words when the word appeared after a shorter delay (550 ms) This ‘‘vigilance-avoidance’’ pattern of processing (Mogg & Bradley, 1998) indicates that defensive copers rapidly divert their attention elsewhere following initial orientation to threat The early facilitation of threat processing theoretically reflects the underlying anxiety sensitivity of defensive individuals The subsequent inhibition of the threat-related word processing theoretically indexes or represents their later onset avoidant coping strategies What purpose might such avoidant strategies serve? The processing of aversive or threatening stimuli necessarily exposes the individual to a variety of psychological dangers, and has been shown to correlate positively with levels of arousal and anxiety (Carver & 942 Shane & Peterson Scheier, 1998; Dollard & Miller, 1950; Mogg & Bradley, 1998) Furthermore, evidence exists to suggest that defensive copers may, in fact, be even more susceptible to such increased levels of arousal and anxiety in response to negative feedback than the general population (Johnson, Vincent & Ross, 1997) Presumably, therefore, avoiding prolonged processing of negatively valenced, aversive stimuli could serve to minimize the heightened anxiety that more sustained processing might cause Thus, defensive individuals may avoid thorough cognitive processing of negatively valenced information in order to minimize their level of short-term psychological risk This threat minimization would allow defensive copers to remain subjectively stress-free, despite the inconsistencies between their subjective experience and their objective body-state In keeping with such ideas, Taylor and Brown (1988) have proposed that ‘‘positive illusions’’—cognitive filters that preferentially screen out negative information—may protect against anxiety and depression, enhance creativity (through increases in positive emotion), and promote successful life adjustment Such a hypothesis stands in direct contradiction to classic clinical wisdom, however, which is predicated on the idea that accurate contact with reality and self constitutes a necessary precondition for healthy psychological adjustment (Binswanger, 1963; Freud, 1963) According to such classic notions, individuals who habitually refuse to thoroughly process aversive information should find it difficult to successfully adapt their behavior to the ever-changing environment From this perspective, effective adaptation requires constant self-regulation, based, in theory, on the operation of negative feedback systems that compare present states to ideal or goal states (Ansbacher & Ansbacher, 1956; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Peterson, 1999; Rolls, 1999) When goal-directed behavior is disrupted, discrepancy between the desired and actual states produces a rapidly elicited, aversive ‘‘error tag,’’ which indicates that a particular plan has failed (Damasio, 1994, 1998; Gray, 1982; Peterson & Flanders, in press) The mere fact of such error, however—even in combination with the initial affective response—does not provide enough information to determine the precise nature of the inadequacy (Peterson, 1999; Peterson & Flanders, in press) Rather, the generation of such detailed information requires further, effortful exploration or reconstrual of the situation (Ohman, 1979, 1987; Sokolov, 1969) Thus, decreased attention devoted towards stimuli signifying disruptions in goal- Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 943 directed behavior should logically reduce the opportunity to correct the problems that caused the disruption and should thereby increase the chances of encountering similar disruptions in the future In other words, the ability to learn from mistakes requires paying attention to the reasons for such mistakes when they occur Without such reflection, it may be difficult to obtain the information necessary to avoid committing similar perseverative errors in the future Such notions have received empirical support from a number of sources Newman and colleagues (Newman & Schmitt, 1998; Newman, Patterson, Howland & Nichols, 1990; Newman, Widom, & Nathan, 1985) were the first to propose that reflection on negative feedback may play an important role in the ability to learn from punishment These researchers demonstrated that undersocialized, disinhibited, and psychopathic individuals—predominantly characterized by an abundance of perseverative, dysfunctional behaviors— commonly reflect less on negative feedback and show marked deficits in passive avoidance learning (learning to inhibit a dysfunctional behavior to avoid punishment) In the common version of Newman’s paradigm, participants must learn to press or to not press a button as a consequence of positive or negative feedback received during a trial-and-error learning task Correct presses are rewarded with positive feedback (and, often, a small monetary gain) while incorrect presses are punished with negative feedback (and a small monetary loss) While engaged in this task, participants are able to voluntarily regulate the length of time that the contingent positive or negative feedback remains available for on-screen reflection and consideration Newman and colleagues (e.g Howland, Patterson, Kosson & Newman, 1987; Newman, 1987; Newman et al., 1990) have consistently reported that disinhibited and psychopathic individuals exhibit a marked reduction in reflection on the negative feedback and a marked increase in the number of passiveavoidance errors committed on the task Newman has therefore proposed that psychopaths are victim to deficits in response modulation, at the level of automatic processing, and that these deficits render them unable to take sufficient time to pause and reflect on their errors Such reduced reflection on negative feedback then decreases the opportunity for evaluative and corrective measures, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of future perseverative, dysfunctional behavior 944 Shane & Peterson Further evidence of the link between reflection and learning comes from the education literature, where Shafrir and Pascual-Leone (1990) have shown, for example, that level of reflective preference (RP) predicts ability to learn through trial and error Shafrir and Pascual-Leone (1990) operationally defined RP as length of time spent pausing after negatively valenced performance feedback/length of time spent pausing after positively valenced performance feedback.2 These authors have reported positive correlations between RP measures and various academic and nonacademic learning tasks, inference problems, and intelligence measures Shafrir and PascualLeone’s (1990) research thus demonstrates that degree of reflection on information about past failure can have direct effects on the ability to learn Furthermore—and of critical importance to theories of self-deception—Shafrir’s work suggests that it is differential attention paid to negatively valenced information versus positively valenced information that is most important with regard to the acquisition of knowledge Individuals who selectively refuse to engage in higher-order threat/failure processing therefore appear to fail to transform the information implicit in such failure into novel, productive, implementable behaviors and structures of abstract knowledge (Peterson, 1999) Individuals who deeply process such aversive stimuli, by contrast, have been shown capable of successfully adapting, even to traumatic stress (Foa & Kozak, 1985, 1986; Pennebaker, Mayne & Francis, 1997) The Present Study We therefore hypothesized that defensive copers would show comparative deficits in the ability to learn through trial and error when provided with contingent positive and negative feedback Furthermore, we hypothesized that this learning deficit would occur in conjunction with a reduced level of RP (or, alternatively stated, Shafrir and Pascual-Leone (1990) originally referred to this reflection measure as ‘‘Post-failure Reflectivity.’’ We will instead use the term ‘‘Reflective Preference’’ throughout this manuscript, because the original label seems to imply, somewhat inaccurately, that the key measure is the length of time the negative feedback remains on-screen Shafrir and Pascual-Leone’s (1990) measure was, in fact, the ratio of reflection on negative feedback to reflection on positive feedback, which seems more aptly described by the term ‘‘Reflective Preference.’’ Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 945 given the opportunity to reflect on both positive and negative feedback, defensive copers would pay comparatively less attention to the negative feedback than high- or low-anxious individuals and would therefore learn more slowly) We operationalized our hypothesis by identifying high-anxious, low-anxious, and defensive copers, using standard self-report personality indices and tested it by running classified participants through a modified version of the Newman et al (1990) computerized go/no-go task This task is the same as that described above, requiring participants to learn when to press and when not to press a button on a computer keyboard, based on contingent positive and negative feedback As in Newman et al (1990), correct presses received positive feedback, and incorrect presses received negative feedback And, as with Newman et al (1990), participants were able to regulate the length of time that feedback remained on-screen for consideration This task was specifically chosen for a number of reasons: First, it provides a direct behavioral measure of the amount of time participants choose to spend attending to both positive and negative feedback This measure allows the experimenter to derive both difference and ratio scores of reflection on negative versus positive task-related feedback (the ratio measure being Shafrir and Pascual-Leone’s [1990] RP measure), and allows for the comparison of the allocation of reflective resources between groups We hypothesized that the defensive copers would manifest lower RP than either high- or lowanxious individuals, and we felt that this would indicate their inferior reflection strategy, skewed towards lesser reflection on negative information Second, the task provides a variety of easy and accurate measures of the ability to learn through experience (number of omission errors, number of passive-avoidance errors, and overall task success), enabling multiple evaluations of performance Third, the task allows participants’ learning to be directly correlated with the length of time they leave the positive and negative feedback on the screen The notion that the (hypothetically) reduced RP scores of defensive copers can, in fact, be linked to learning difficulties on the task can therefore be directly assessed Finally, the use of Newman et al.’s (1990) go/no-go task allowed us to compare the performance of defensive copers with that of undersocialized and disinhibited (including psychopathic) popula- 946 Shane & Peterson tions As discussed above, Newman and his colleagues have commonly used this paradigm within these selected populations and have demonstrated that such individuals exhibit chronic deficits in passive-avoidance learning Furthermore, such undersocialized populations often exhibit what may be considered an extreme inability to learn from their previous mistakes throughout their lifecourse, and thus they should be particularly interesting to investigators researching the processes involved in learning and knowledge acquisition An additional aim of this research was, therefore, to examine the possibility that use of defensive coping mechanisms could create deficits in learning similar to those of undersocialized populations Psychopathic individuals have generally been thought unable to generate enough anxiety to produce conditioning or to mediate appropriate avoidance learning (Fowles, 1980; Raine, 1989) This paper is part of a larger research program investigating the possibility that some individuals may, through the use of defensive strategies, reduce their subjective level of anxiety to such an extent that they similarly disrupt their ability to learn effectively through experience METHOD Measures Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding The BIDR (Paulhus, 1991) is a 40-item inventory consisting of two 20-item subscales: Self-Deceptive Enhancement (SDE) and Impression Management (IM) SDE assesses defensiveness towards personal weakness (e.g ‘‘I have never doubted my ability as a lover’’) and a general egoistic or overconfident response bias) (e.g ‘‘I am fully in control of my own fate’’) (Paulhus & John, 1998) IM measures the tendency to make oneself look better by denying socially undesirable behavior (e.g ‘‘I never take things that don’t belong to me’’) Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale The 20-item short form of the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (TMAS; Bendig, 1956) was used to measure trait anxiety The TMAS is highly correlated with other measures of trait anxiety and negative affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984) Group Classifications The categorical selection criteria utilized, similar to those suggested by Weinberger (1990), were based on patterns of scores Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 947 on both the TMAS and the SDE.3 Participants were classified as defensive copers (n 18) if they scored above the median on the SDE and below the median on the TMAS Defensive copers were therefore those participants who rated themselves as high on self-deceptive enhancement and low on anxiety—a pattern of self-description suggesting suppression of negative affect In contrast, the high-anxious (n 21) and low-anxious (n 21) participants obtained scores below the median on the SDE, and above or below the median on the TMAS, respectively Eight participants scored above the median on the TMAS and the SDE This group has sometimes been referred to as a ‘‘defensive highanxious’’ group, but, historically, low numbers of individuals with this classification have consistently hampered their investigation Because only eight participants were categorized in this group in the present experiment, they were not included in any of the categorical analyses discussed below Participant Selection Participants initially completed a shortened version (the first 10 items) of the SDE during a mass testing session at the beginning of the school term (N 1472) A total of 85 participants were invited to attend experimental sessions: twenty-nine individuals who scored in the top 10% of the distribution on the partial SDE and 56 individuals who scored in the bottom 10% of the distribution on the partial SDE We invited roughly twice as many participants from the bottom 10% of the distribution because we required a sufficient number of high- and low-anxious participants, both of whom would need to be selected from this low SDE group (please refer to the section above on group classifications for further details) The reliability of the partial SDE scale was moderate, a 56, but quite adequate as an initial screening device During the experimental sessions, participants were readministered the full SDE, as well as the short form of the TMAS Based on these full SDE scores, eight individuals were classified as ‘‘defensive high-anxious,’’ and thus were not included in the categorical analyses Of the remaining 77 Weinberger (1990) utilized the Marlowe-Crown Social Desirability Index (MCSD) rather than the SDE for participant classification Furnham, Petrides, & Spencer-Bowdage (2002) have demonstrated that use of either the MCSD or the SDE are valid, and similar, identifiers of individuals who utilize repressive coping styles We believe, however, that the SDE is a more appropriate measure, due to its ability to separate socially desirable responding from more internally selfenhancing tendencies (Paulhus, 1984, 1986) 948 Shane & Peterson participants, only those participants whose partial and full SDE scores were consistently within the same half of the distribution, using a median split analysis, were included in the final analysis of the data (N 60) Although the loss of 17 participants is somewhat unfortunate, this double classification procedure best ensures the accuracy of each participant’s group membership As evidence to this effect, the correlation between partial and full SDE scores for all included participants was r 81 Data Analytic Strategies Following Wienberger et al (1979), most recent research on defensive coping has classified participants as defensive copers in the categorical fashion described above Both the TMAS and the SDE evaluate continuous personality traits, however, and thus, by rights, should be analyzed in a continuous manner (Wright, 2003) With these two considerations in mind, we decided to supplement the categorical analyses with continuous analyses, using regression with TMAS and SDE as individual predictors of each dependent variable The categorical analysis is most easily compared to previous literature in the area However, the continuous analyses should provide a more in-depth investigation into the individual contributions of anxiety and defensiveness on attentional and learning processes.4 Apparatus and Task The experimental task was conducted on a Pentium computer with a 14" monitor in a small quiet room The experimental task was a modified version of the go/no-go discrimination task used by Newman et al (1990) Participants were instructed that they would have to learn through trial and error when to respond (by pressing the spacebar) and when not to respond Stimuli consisted of 10 two-digit numbers (e.g 15, 24, 38, 47) presented nine times each in pseudo-random order No more than three consecutive ‘‘go’’ or ‘‘no-go’’ stimuli were presented In total, there were 90 experimental trials in the task (plus 10 practice trials and a trial ‘‘go’’ pretreatment, as explained below) Two different sets of numbers were used on the task to ensure there were no unintentional patterns to the digits that could prove helpful for the participants In addition, stimuli that were ‘‘go’’ stimuli for one half of the participants Note that the ‘‘defensive high-anxious’’ participants, not included in the categorical analyses due to low numbers, are included in the regression analyses reported throughout Thus, 60 participants are included in each of the categorical analyses, whereas 68 participants are included in the continuous analyses 952 Shane & Peterson committed by defensive copers, as was demonstrated in the previous analysis of overall money earned on the task The Group  Error Type interaction approached significance, F(2,55) 2.33, Z 078, p 107, and exploratory planned comparisons indicated that defensive copers committed significantly more passive-avoidance errors than both high-anxious t(55) 2.77, d 75, p 008, and low-anxious participants, t(55) 2.98, d 80, p 004 Groups did not differ on the mean number of omission errors committed, p4.1 Once again, regression analyses were performed to investigate the individual contributions of SDE and TMAS on committed passiveavoidance and omission errors Individual regression analyses were performed to predict each error type, entering the predictors in the same fashion as described above As with overall task performance, only SDE emerged as a significant predictor of commission errors, b 401, p 002, however, both TMAS, b 203, p 109, and SDE  TMAS, b 218, p 100, trended toward significant predictions, suggesting the possibility that an interactive effect may exist Neither SDE nor TMAS emerged as significant predictors of omission errors; however, SDE  TMAS emerged as highly significant, b À 311, p 027 Reflectivity Two low-anxious participants were not included in the reflectivity data because they did not make any commission errors on the go/no-go task and, therefore, had no negative reflectivity score One additional low-anxious participant was dropped from the analysis because she waited the entire 5000 ms duration on each of the 90 trials, suggesting that she was unaware that she could proceed to the next trial by pressing the space bar again Follow-up questions during the debriefing session verified that this was, in fact, the case Rows and of Table display the mean length of time each group left the positive feedback (positive feedback reflectivity, PFR) and negative feedback (negative feedback reflectivity, NFR) on screen, respectively Row displays the mean RPs for the three groups One-way ANOVAs indicated that the only group main effect was for RP, F(2,52) 2.63, Z 107, p 040, one-tailed Subsequent planned comparisons indicated that although all three groups Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 953 showed increased reflection on the negative, compared to the positive, feedback, defensive copers showed a significantly smaller RP than low-anxious participants, t(52) 2.28, d 859, p 040, and a nearly significant smaller RP than high-anxious participants, t(52) 2.03, d 622, p 071 Hierarchical regression analyses were again performed to determine the individual contribution of SDE and TMAS to differences in RP Only SDE emerged as significant in the model, b À 300, p 027, suggesting defensiveness may play a stronger role in reflectivity strategies than anxiety In order to obtain information regarding the magnitude of the RP differences, we obtained reflectivity difference scores by subtracting the NFR from the PFR Figure displays the mean difference in negative to positive reflection for the three groups As can be seen, while the high- and low-anxious groups reflected between 700 and 1000 ms longer on the negative feedback than on the positive feedback, defensive copers showed nearly no preferential reflection at all A one-way ANOVA, with group as the within-subjects variable indicated a significant main effect of difference score, F(2,52) 4.36, Z 144, p 018, and subsequent planned comparisons indicated that the difference between the defensive copers and both the lowanxious, t(52) 2.870, d 1.008, p 006, and high-anxious, t(52) 2.045, d 690, p 046, participants was significant Figure Reflective preference of high anxious, low anxious, and self-deceptive individuals on the go/no-go task 954 Shane & Peterson Does Reflective Preference Affect Task Success? Table displays the correlational matrix of the various performance and reflectivity measures we collected As can be seen, RP correlated significantly with both passive-avoidance errors and money earned on the task Importantly, neither PFR nor NFR showed significant predictions with performance, strongly suggesting that only those individuals who reflected comparatively less on negative feedback showed performance deficits Hierarchical regression analyses, entering NFR, followed by PFR, confirmed this notion Despite the low zero-order correlations, both variables, when combined, accounted for 23.5% of the variance in commission errors and 26.2% of the variance in money earned Thus, it appears to be the combined reflection on positive and negative feedback that is of ultimate importance In addition, we investigated the possibility that total reflection time, averaged across positive and negative feedback, would predict task performance, as would occur if a general lack of reflection—or a general increase in impulsivity—were to influence performance Overall reflection time showed no correlation with commission errors or overall performance, however, ruling out this possibility It should be noted that overall reflection time was, by contrast, significantly positively associated with omission errors However, this relationship was likely due to the fact that the best way to avoid omission errors is to press the button as often as possible—a pattern that seems descriptive of the defensive coper Finally, we performed a test of mediation to provide solid evidence of RP’s influence on the relationship between the SDE (which Table Correlation Matrix of the Various Performance and Reflectivity Measures Across All Participants Positive Negative Feedback Feedback Total Reflective Reflectivity Reflectivity Reflectivity Preference (RP) Omission errors Commission errors Money earned n po.05, nn po.01, nnn 272n 116 À 227 263n À 166 004 po.001, two-tailed .295n 059 À 194 À 097 À 459nnn 416nn Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 955 appears to hold most of the predictive ability in the performance and reflection measures) and task performance Following the recent advice of Mackinnon, Lockwood, Hoffman, West, and Sheets (2002), we divided the estimate of the intervening variable effect (calculated as the unstandardized coefficient between SDE and RP multiplied by the unstandardized coefficient between RP and task performance) by its standard error and compared this value to the distribution of scores developed by MacKinnon et al (2002) This calculation produced a t-value of À 5.51, po.01 for commission errors, and 4.09, po.01, for overall performance, providing strong evidence of RP mediation It should be noted that the relationship between SDE and task performance remained significant even with RP in the regression model, suggesting that defensive copers may utilize alternative methods to deflect negative feedback, in addition to reduced levels of RP DISCUSSION As predicted, defensive copers made more passive-avoidance errors and earned less money than high- or low-anxious individuals on Newman et al.’s (1990) go/no-go task, which required participants to learn cue contingencies through trial and error Defensive copers also manifested decreased attentional preference for the negative over the positive feedback (decreased RP) when compared to either high- or low-anxious participants Finally, learning ability across all groups was strongly correlated with the extent to which participants differentially reflected on negative versus positive feedback This combination of results suggests strongly that the defensive coper’s tendency to attend less to negative compared to positive feedback interfered with his or her ability to learn Although other possibilities exist, it seems parsimonious to presume that this reduced RP is a coping strategy used by defensive copers to minimize exposure to negative affect as a consequence of performance failure (see Johnson, Vincent & Ross [1997] for an alternative, but not inconsistent, hypothesis) By minimizing the arousal and anxiety that detailed investigation of the error might produce, however, they also minimize exposure to corrective information lying latent within the context revealed by the error (Peterson, 1999; Peterson & Flanders, in press) The present study therefore suggests that reduced ability to tolerate 956 Shane & Peterson negative affect also limits the extent to which the information that produces such affect might be transformed into implementable knowledge Implications for Defensive Coping Taylor and Brown (1988) have claimed that 95% of persons hold cognitive biases that are both pervasive and overly positive and, further, that these cognitive biases provide specific protection against anxiety (see Sackeim & Gur, 1979) and depression (see Linden, Paulhus & Dobson, 1986), and promote happiness, productivity and creativity Research from other laboratories has supported this viewpoint Mazur, Wolchik, and Sandler (1992) found, for example, that use of positive illusions predicted fewer measures of symptomatology in children of recently divorced parents, while Wright (2000) showed that college students with overly positive self-views achieved higher grades in the school semester following their self-evaluations than those with more realistic self-views These findings stand in clear contradiction to the classical clinical notion that mental health requires accurate contact with reality Moreover, numerous additional studies have produced results countering Taylor and Brown’s (1988) claims Colvin, Block and Funder (1995) demonstrated that individuals with overly positive cognitive biases at age 18 were rated as less socially skilled and more psychologically maladjusted by unbiased, external raters at age 23 Jamner and Schwartz (1986) reported that high levels of self-deception were associated with poorer long-term medical outcomes, and Baumeister, Smart, and Boden (1996) reported an association between overly high, unstable self-esteem and aggressive tendencies in young boys (see also Olweus, 1993) Baumeister et al (1996) suggested that the exaggerated self-evaluations of these boys inflated the chances that their self-esteem would be challenged, which, in turn, led to aggressive retaliation These findings, among others, have led Robins and Beer (2001) to suggest that self-deceptive coping, while potentially ‘‘adaptive’’ in the short-term, is clearly detrimental in the medium- to long-term The present study has provided additional evidence in support of Robins and Beer’s (2001) claim The use of coping mechanisms that reduce the impact of anxiety-provoking stimuli may increase an individual’s short-term level of present happiness and motivation However, the present findings suggest that there are Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 957 costs involved in deflecting this negative information, and these costs, which include a decreased ability to utilize information inherent within error feedback, may lead to perseverative, dysfunctional action patterns In the present case, the inability to learn the incorrect nature of a particular button press significantly increased the likelihood that similar button press errors would be repeated over again More general deficiencies in individuals who habitually utilize defensive cognitive mechanisms appear both important and disparate and include reduced levels of social facility (Colvin et al., 1995), poorer health status (Barger, Marsland, Bachen, & Manuck, 2000; Jamner & Hoyle, 1999; Jamner & Schwartz, 1986), more avoidant relationships (Vetere & Myers, 2002), aggressive behavior when challenged (Baumiester et al., 1996), inferior memory processes (Shane & Peterson, in press), decreased IQ (Johnson, Vincent & Ross, 1997), and lower levels of trustworthiness and sincerity (Colvin et al., 1995) We believe that the present findings may support the application of a particular causal framework, capable of explaining each of these specific dysfunctions Self-regulatory processes depend, in theory, on negative feedback systems (Carver & Scheier, 1998; Gray, 1982; Peterson, 1999) that identify discrepancies between ideal and actual states, and tag those discrepancies with nonspecific negative affect (Gray & McNaughton, 2000; see also Damasio, 1998) Reduced allocation of processing resources towards the investigation of events signaling such discrepancies (particularly in comparison to the allocation of processing resources toward the investigation of nondiscrepancy signaling events) should logically, therefore, reduce the ability of these feedback loops to guide behavior effectively The reluctance of defensive copers to attend to error-signaling information might therefore cause global dysfunction throughout their self-regulatory systems, as rejection of corrective information becomes habitual Implications for Socialization The socialization process entails internalization of societal standards, as well as the ability to behave in a manner that conforms to such standards Effective socialization often requires the use of threat or punishment to indicate the inappropriateness of particular behaviors Thus, the ability or willingness to adjust expectation and behavior as a consequence of exposure to contingent threat and 958 Shane & Peterson punishment appears critical to successful socialization Research by Kochanska and her colleagues (1993, 1997) on the development of conscience provides direct support for such notions Kochanska has argued that children characterized by low levels of fearfulness may have a more difficult time developing a fully internalized conscience, as a consequence of normal parental disciplinary practices Fowles and Kochanska (2000) have demonstrated, for example, that individual differences in both parental practices and child temperament are individual contributors to the development of conscience in 4-year-old children In particular, children who manifested signs of a fearless temperament at 32 months were less likely to have developed rudimentary conscience at age when disciplinary practices were utilized as a socialization strategy Presumably, the fearless children were less affected, emotionally, by the milder disciplinary strategies What Kochanska’s research does not speak to is the level of automaticity involved in the toddler’s disregarding of the punishment There are, after all, two groups of low-anxious adults Does the same hold true for children? Are the fearless toddlers in her study unaffected, emotionally, by their parent’s reprimands? Or they simply choose not to heed the information their parents are providing? This is an important question to answer, as it speaks to the potential automaticity, or lack thereof, of the decreased reflective preference of the defensive copers in the present sample This decreased reflective preference could, for instance, arise from an attentional style that orients processing resources toward positive stimuli and away from negative stimuli Conversely, such reductions in reflective preference could result from a strategic unwillingness to go through the potential psychological turmoil that the processing of negative information may require The former possibility suggests automaticity, whereas the latter suggests voluntariness The results of the present study not directly address such issues In our view, however, the length of time spent reflecting before pressing the button to go onto the next trial (2059 ms, on average), as well as the fact that an active button press was necessary to end the reflection interval, suggests that the participants chose the length of time they wished to view the positive and negative feedback, respectively Thus, the decreased reflective preference of highly defensive individuals would similarly be interpreted as a choice not to reflect Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 959 on the negative feedback to the same extent as high- and low-anxious individuals Certainly, this is not direct evidence to argue for the voluntariness of defensive copers’ reflection strategies; however, the possibility of this certainly raises important questions for future research to tackle What the present study does demonstrate quite clearly is that such a processing bias, voluntary or not, can have profound and detrimental effects on the ability to learn to adapt behavior to conform to environmental challenges and situational feedback A comparison of the performance of the defensive copers in the present study with that of the psychopaths in Newman et al (1990) helps make the nature of this relationship even more clear Figure presents a comparison of the results derived from the current study’s population of self-deceivers and the classic psychopaths assessed previously by Newman et al (1990) As can be seen, both groups of participants made a comparable number of errors on the task; both also acquired a comparable amount of money in the process Furthermore, both populations spent a similar amount of time reflecting on the positive and negative feedback Most striking, however, is the pattern of poor performance, characterized by similarly elevated numbers of passiveavoidance errors Thus, the avoidant processing biases of defensive copers, while likely not performed with malicious intent, may nonetheless lead them to adopt behavioral patterns that closely mimic those characteristic of undersocialized or blatantly antisocial individuals Figure Performance comparison of self-deceivers in the present study versus psychopaths in Newman et al (1990) on the go/no-go task 960 Shane & Peterson Implications for Psychopathy Psychopathic individuals commonly commit an overabundance of passive-avoidance errors, and demonstrate reduced reflection on the negative feedback on the go/no-go task used in the present study Newman and Patterson (1993) have used such findings to buttress a theory of psychopathy, predicated on the idea that psychopathic individuals are characterized by poor response modulation arising from deficits in automatic processing According to Newman and Patterson (1993), the reduced reflection characteristic of psychopaths is due to the automatic activation of a dominant response set, in the face of aversive information The psychopath cannot help but to pause and reflect less on the punishment, because of his subjugation to an involuntary mechanism that speeds his behavior up when punishment is experienced In keeping with this notion, the increased number of passive-avoidance errors committed on the go/no-go task by psychopaths has been attributed to uncontrollable or automatic disinhibition (e.g., Gorenstein & Newman, 1980; Newman & Patterson, 1993) Certainly, the present results not speak directly to the nature of psychopaths processing deficits However, the high levels of defensiveness or restraint common to individuals who utilize defensive coping styles (Weinberger, 1995) suggest that it may not be necessary to propose an impulsive or disinhibitory mechanism to explain the psychopath’s lack of reflection on the negative feedback Rather, it could also be that such decreased reflection is controlled behavior, aimed at reducing the impact that such information has on arousal and affective systems More closely in line with the authors’ predilection, perhaps there are two pathways to decreased reflective preference: automatic, incentive-reward driven disinhibition or controlled, anxiety-sensitive defensive behavior Furthermore, perhaps this reduced reflective preference, rather than the actual state of inhibition/disinhibition, may be responsible for the inability of each group to profit from punishment Heusmann, Eron, & Dubow (2002) recently proposed a similar model of aggressive behavior, in which both highly overanxious and highly underanxious individuals are at risk for heightened levels of aggression It seems plausible to propose, then, that some psychopathic individuals may exhibit extreme levels of disinhibition, whereas others may manifest high levels of defensiveness This is, of course, a question for future research to investigate Defensiveness, Reflectivity, and Socialization 961 CONCLUSION The present study demonstrates that reduced relative attention to negative feedback signaling error in goal-directed behavior interferes with the ability to learn to avoid punishment through experience Individuals who utilized defensive coping mechanisms were more likely to manifest such attention patterns, and such individuals also learned more poorly on a simple trial-and-error learning task This deficit in passive-avoidance learning, 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