Monitoring and blunting coping styles: The Miller behavioural style scale and its correlates, and the development of an alternative questionnaire

Abstract The present article presents two studies concerning the measurement of monitoring (information seeking under threat) and blunting (information avoidance) coping styles. Study 1 ( n = 69) showed that the widely used Miller Behavioural Style Scale suffers from a number of weaknesses such as insufficient internal consistency, susceptibility to correlate with measures of anxiety and other psychopathology, poor quality of scenarios, and moderate face validity. In study 2 ( n = 42), an alternative instrument is presented: the Monitoring-Blunting Questionnaire (MBQ). The MBQ has high face validity, good reliability, and is unrelated to trait anxiety. Furthermore, in a “thought experiment” some indications were found for the predictive validity of the MBQ.