Hadley, Erin (12/08) The impacts of defensive
functioning and anxiety on risk taking behaviors (Howard McGuire, Ph.D.; Gary
Kose, Ph.D.; Joan Duncan, Ph.D.)
The present study addressed the
relationships between defensive functioning, anxiety, and risk taking in 79
undergraduate students. This study avoided several methodological limitations
of previous research by measuring multiple types of risk taking and using
updated assessments to quantify both anxiety and defensive functioning.
Principle measures were well-normed psychometric tests with established
reliability and validity (e.g., the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory).
Interrelationships among measures of state and trait anxiety, defensive
functioning styles, and three types of risk taking were examined.
As predicted, increased levels of specific
defense styles were associated with higher levels of hypothetical life-or-death
risk taking, self-oriented risk taking, and experimental risk taking on a
betting task. However, a hypothesized inverse relationship between anxiety and
risk taking was not confirmed. The study also supported previous research that
identified risk taking as a domain-specific construct. This finding indicates
that risk taking behaviors do not occur consistently across situational
variables but are situation-dependent.
