Reconsidering the Ego-Syntonicity of Personality Disorder Traits

Abstract: Personality disorders (PDs) are thought to be ego-syntonic, but evidence on this matter is limited. To expand on the evidence, we examined whether people with varying levels of PD traits show tendencies to adjust their behavior to create correspondence with their (self-perceived) PD trait levels. Specifically, we examined whether people higher (vs. lower) in five PD traits would present the self to others in ways that expressed relatively more (vs. less) of those traits regardless of situational advantages. Nonclinical participants ( N = 343) self-reported their levels of five PD traits and then imagined participating in a study wherein conveying personality pathology to an experimenter could be advantageous (unhealthy-advantage condition) or disadvantageous (healthy-advantage condition). Overall, participants higher (vs. lower) in a PD trait conveyed relatively more (vs. less) of that PD trait to the experimenter regardless of experimental condition. Broadly, the present work has implications for understanding the ego-syntonic nature of PDs.