The present study was conducted to estimate the association of the scores on the subscales of the Defense Mechanisms Inventory to the Denial Score on the COPE for 91 volunteers who were undergraduates and 7 graduate students. There were 31 men and 67 women; 77 were white and 21 were nonwhite. Both inventories were administered in a group format. The intercorrelations of COPE—Denial and subscales of the Defense Mechanisms Inventory did not approach significance; this supports the Haan/Kroeber hypothesis suggesting that a qualitative difference be made between coping and defensiveness and the Lazarus/French hypothesis suggesting a dichotomy of “problem-focused” coping and “emotion-focused” coping.
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