Defense Style Questionnaire

34
10
16

I wonder if forum members are statistically identical to, or differ from the background population?
 
Mature : 37
Neurotic : 17
Immature : 16

ignis.intimus said:
My results:

Mature :: 43
Neurotic :: 4
Immature :: 13

I tried to be as objective as possible, although for some I was a bit torn. For instance, I can laugh pretty readily at myself when I am not tired or stressed. The last question about needing to do something to compensate for an aggressive thought, I took to mean "if I think something bad about a person, I need to think something good about a person to compensate for that" - which doesn't make any sense to me so I put strongly disagree on that one. I was thinking it could also mean, if I have an aggressive thought I need to do something to deal with it, like breathing, reminding myself to not get carried away, etc. But I guess the keyword being compensate and not address, or deal, or handle. My immature rating is so high because doctors really never did understand what is wrong with me :D

Not sure what to think of the results, though. I am surprised I didn't score higher on the neurotic and immature scales.
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I had the same problem - what did they mean by 'compensating for'? If I recognize my negative emotions (anger, aggressiveness) as coming from my internal considering, of course I try to 'compensate' for them or go against the tide of where those emotions would drive me to. Perhaps I don't really get what this compensating really means. And yes, doctors had usually hard time to understand what wrong was going on with me, but is it surprising given the general state of medicine as it is nowadays?
 
Possibility of Being said:
Mature : 37
Neurotic : 17
Immature : 16

ignis.intimus said:
My results:

Mature :: 43
Neurotic :: 4
Immature :: 13

I tried to be as objective as possible, although for some I was a bit torn. For instance, I can laugh pretty readily at myself when I am not tired or stressed. The last question about needing to do something to compensate for an aggressive thought, I took to mean "if I think something bad about a person, I need to think something good about a person to compensate for that" - which doesn't make any sense to me so I put strongly disagree on that one. I was thinking it could also mean, if I have an aggressive thought I need to do something to deal with it, like breathing, reminding myself to not get carried away, etc. But I guess the keyword being compensate and not address, or deal, or handle. My immature rating is so high because doctors really never did understand what is wrong with me :D

Not sure what to think of the results, though. I am surprised I didn't score higher on the neurotic and immature scales.
Click to expand...

I had the same problem - what did they mean by 'compensating for'? If I recognize my negative emotions (anger, aggressiveness) as coming from my internal considering, of course I try to 'compensate' for them or go against the tide of where those emotions would drive me to. Perhaps I don't really get what this compensating really means. And yes, doctors had usually hard time to understand what wrong was going on with me, but is it surprising given the general state of medicine as it is nowadays?
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I think with questionnaires like this it is important to remember that most people taking the test and probably even the people making it, are not familiar with those kinds of ideas. When I read the statement, "If I think something bad about a person, I need to think something good about that person to compensate for that." I feel a lot is implied in just this one statement. I feel this statement implies no matter what the reason, if you think something bad about someone, that negative thought brings out feelings of guilt, thus causing you to try to force yourself to think good thoughts about that person to "make up for" your previous negative thoughts.

Of course, if your negative thoughts are coming from a place of internal considering (and you are someone who is able to recognize this) you are going to try to adjust your actions/reactions/thoughts, but I personally would not use the word "compensate" for that because compensate, for me, implies guilt and making changes out of guilt (guilt, which to me is a feeling stemming from external factors NOT actual remorse which comes from within) is neurotic (or so I think). Besides that, this kind of compensating simply for having a bad thought about someone seems like a symptom of black and white thinking and being unable to reconcile that people can be both good and bad or make you feel both positively and negatively in different situations.

With the statement about doctors, I originally was thinking, too, about how many doctors today really aren't up to date on things and may miss stuff, but again, there is a lot more implied in the statement, "Doctors never really understand what's wrong with me." With the word NEVER, it is made a much too strong statement for most people. It might not be as bad if the statement was "MY doctor..." but it says "Doctors" implying ALL doctors NEVER (not even with a simple cold, for instance?) understand what's wrong with me? This is very extreme, black and white thinking yet again.

Just my 2 cents for what they may be worth.
 
Brenda86 said:
I think with questionnaires like this it is important to remember that most people taking the test and probably even the people making it, are not familiar with those kinds of ideas.
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Absolutely, and I keep it in mind while doing this kind of questionnaires, but not always I'm successful in translating my understanding into theirs and vice versa.


When I read the statement, "If I think something bad about a person, I need to think something good about that person to compensate for that." I feel a lot is implied in just this one statement. I feel this statement implies no matter what the reason, if you think something bad about someone, that negative thought brings out feelings of guilt, thus causing you to try to force yourself to think good thoughts about that person to "make up for" your previous negative thoughts.
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Thank you, Brenda. The guilt aspect was completely missed by me (not English native speaker). And it does change a lot!

With the statement about doctors, I originally was thinking, too, about how many doctors today really aren't up to date on things and may miss stuff, but again, there is a lot more implied in the statement, "Doctors never really understand what's wrong with me." With the word NEVER, it is made a much too strong statement for most people. It might not be as bad if the statement was "MY doctor..." but it says "Doctors" implying ALL doctors NEVER (not even with a simple cold, for instance?) understand what's wrong with me? This is very extreme, black and white thinking yet again.
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Well, I don't seek doctor's help for a simple cold! But whenever I'm clueless about a health issue, so are they. :D
OK, maybe not always, but more often than not. And when you add that "really understand" from the questionnaire, it's getting even closer to "never".
 
Mature: 42

Neurotic: 12

Immature: 8

I'm going to take this test 3 days in a row being as honest as possible. (curiosity)
There are so many variables to these types of tests - like meaning and definition which have already been mentioned.

I'm off to see if I can find the full version.

Interesting find Laura, thank you! :cool2: :cool:
 
Brenda86 said:
With the statement about doctors, I originally was thinking, too, about how many doctors today really aren't up to date on things and may miss stuff, but again, there is a lot more implied in the statement, "Doctors never really understand what's wrong with me." With the word NEVER, it is made a much too strong statement for most people. It might not be as bad if the statement was "MY doctor..." but it says "Doctors" implying ALL doctors NEVER (not even with a simple cold, for instance?) understand what's wrong with me? This is very extreme, black and white thinking yet again.
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I was thinking about that this morning, that I got caught up on the word never. When I put my answer down, I wasn't thinking about every doctor I have ever seen, I was thinking only of the frustrating scenarios, so I was operating on a narrow band of the actual available information. There have been plenty of times where I went for a broken bone or laceration, and they did listen to me and how I received the injury, where it hurt, etc. But at the time I was only thinking of the chronic pain complaints I've taken to doctors and how it felt like they didn't listen - and even then, not all doctors, just the majority.

It's funny because I am usually a stickler for that word, because it is rarely used accurately. Even if you limit the scope to say, the lotto, you can find the word is not used accurately. A person might say they 'never win' but really, they mean they have never 'won'. To say they never 'win' is present tense, which is constantly changing as we move forwards into the future, so it's basically saying they will never win, which they could not know.

I was wondering about how accurate this test may be, but that one question at least seemed to nail down an emotional (immature) response of mine pretty well. (Emoting) Thinking of all the frustrating experiences, not thinking rationally, I strongly agreed that doctors never listen to me. Taking this usage of the word never to an extreme example, I am reminded of a teenager yelling "you never listen to me!!!" which I think drives the point home pretty well.

I agree people tend to over "think" these sorts of tests, applying their own subjective interpretations to words instead of answering the question as asked. Which, appears to be, exactly what the test is designed to elicit from people. The ways in which their system 1 / emotional center overrides their system 2 / thinking center.
 
FACTOR YOUR SCORE SAMPLE OF 388 mean (SD)
Mature 40 31.55 (1.6)
Neurotic 15 15.79 (1.5)
Immature 17 14.79 (1.6)


Still trying to figure out what this really means. But maybe I need to be better in touch with my inner child, I take things a little bit too seriously, and have not tuned in well enough to my neurotic abilities!
 
I did it before and got different results, haven't recorded those but I did it again with this:

Mature: 41
Neurotic: 12
Immature: 5

A big issue I have with this test is it's black and white. It doesn't seem to account for how different people interpret these questions, which from a certain standpoint, could be entirely different person to person.

"I can keep the lid on my feelings if letting them out would interfere with what I'm doing."

I figure a 9 would likely go to the "mature" score for that question, but what if you're a person who is always doing something that is "important" (which could mean different things), then you would never let out feelings? That, I'd suggest would make a person quite neurotic - i.e. holding in anger and frustration etc.

What happened to number "6" (as a score), strangely missed??

An interesting test though...

Edit: clarity
 
I went back to do the test because then I realized that I answered a question not understanding it well. "12. 82. No matter how much I complain, I never get a satisfactory response."

It was understood that the complaint does not produce satisfactory results and I agreed, but as it's are affirmations mean I'm a person who complains, and I'm not a person who complains about things, I act on my own.

Then the result is now:

Mature 41
Neurotic 16
Immature 9
 
Mature 28
Neurotic 11
Immature 11

It's sometimes hard to judge on a scale. Unfortunately, most of these tests depend on this method.
I wonder if there is a test that has specific situations that cause thought of a response, to dig deeper into motivations/drives than a simple question with a subjective, self-assessed rating system.
 
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