Who adjust better: Repressors or sensitizers?

Investigated the relationship between the personality dimension Repression‐Sensitization (R‐S) and adjustment by means of two objective criteria for measuring adjustment. One criterion was the degree of sympathy or rejection that an individual gets from his peers. The second criterion was an evaluation of several characteristics of the individual by people who have known him for a long time. Ss were 465 high school students who filled out the R‐S scale (Byrne, Barry, & Nelson, 1963), as well as a sociometric questionnaire. Their teachers evaluated them twice, 2 months apart, with regard to several personality traits. Results showed that repressors were chosen more frequently by their class members as friends than sensitizers. The former also were evaluated more positively by their teachers than the latter. Teachers' evaluations were highly reliable and significantly correlated with the degree of sympathy that a S received from his peers in the class.