Meta-perception for pathological personality traits: Do we know when others think that we are difficult?
Thomas F. Oltmanns, Marci E.J. Gleason, E. David Klonsky, Eric Turkheimer
Abstract
The self allows us to reflect on our own behavior and to imagine what others think of us. Clinical experience suggests that these abilities may be impaired in people with personality disorders. They do not recognize the impact that their behavior has on others, and they have difficulty understanding how they are seen by others. Ee collected information regarding pathological personality traits—using both self and peer report measures—from groups of people who knew each other well (at the end of basic military training). In previous papers, we have reported that agreement between self-report and peer-report is only modest. In this paper, we address the question: Do people know that others disagree with their own perceptions of themselves? We found that expected peer scores predicted variability in peer report over and above self-report for all 10 diagnostic traits. People do have some incremental knowledge of how they are viewed by others, but they do not tell you about it unless you ask them to do so; the knowledge is not reflected in ordinary self-report data. Among participants who expect their peers to describe them as narcissistic, those who agree with this assessment are viewed as being less narcissistic by their peers than those who deny being narcissistic. It therefore appears that insight into how one is viewed by others can moderate negative impressions fostered by PD traits.* "...personality disorders are usually ego-syntonic (Hirschfeld, 1993). In other words, the characteristics or behaviors with which they are associated are acceptable to the person. They see these characteristics as being an important part of their own personality, perhaps even one of their strongest features."
* "Although the military recruits were a non-clinical sample, we did expect to find people who would qualify for a diagnosis of personality disorder. Previously reported epidemiological data suggest that approximately 10–13% of adults living in the community (i.e., people who are not selected because they are seeking psychological treatment or living in an institution) would qualify for a diagnosis of at least one DSM-IV personality disorder (Mattia & Zimmerman, 2001; Weissman,
1993)."
* "We found very high levels of agreement among peers with regard to the people whom they nominated as exhibiting features of personality disorders...data support the conclusion that peers develop meaningful perspectives on the personality problems of other group members, and there is a relatively high degree of consensus across the peer group regarding which members exhibit these characteristics.
* "People do have some small amount of knowledge of what others think of their personality problems, and the extent of that knowledge is fairly consistent regardless of the degree to which people seem to have personality disorders. Of course, we should be cautious about this conclusion because of the non-clinical nature of our sample. Our sample of military recruits did include a substantial number of people who would qualify for a diagnosis of personality disorder, but it was nevertheless not a clinical sample. People who exhibit more extreme forms of personality disorder might be more substantially impaired with regard to their insight regarding the views of others."
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