Defense mechanisms in minority African-American and Hispanic youths: standardization and scale reliabilities

The Defense Mechanisms Inventory (DMI), which has been standardized for White populations and has been used frequently in a variety of personality and interpersonal interaction studies, was administered to 229 minority noncollege youths. Reliability and sex difference data are presented, and the pattern of defenses is compared to published patterns among the White population. Normative tables are presented as references for future DMI studies with minorities, with comparisons for archival data on 504 college students. Data analyses demonstrate the reliability of the DMI for minorities, with tendencies toward the internalizing polarity of the composite (object relations) measure. Evidence is also presented that the DMI is more salient for the minority population on the composite cluster, rather than for the specific defenses.