1. Roommate Closeness Development and Pathological Personality Traits
Conrad A. Corretti and Robert A. Ackerman School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas
Reis and Shaver’s (1988) interpersonal process model of intimacy outlines the important role of each individual’s goals, motives, and fears in the formation of close relationships.
Relevant to this, interpersonal dysfunction is central to recent conceptualizations of personality pathology in the DSM-5 (Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012); as such individuals with greater levels of pathological traits (i.e., Negative Affect, Detachment, Antagonism, Disinhibition, and Psychoticism) may struggle to develop or maintain close relationships.
Roommate relationships provide a unique opportunity for individuals to develop an intimate relationship with someone previously unknown. Additionally, because there is a more-or-less clear starting point at which the relationship begins, roommate relationships provide a rather ideal opportunity to investigate relationship development.
Research Questions
Do individuals with higher levels of pathological personality traits experience lower levels of closeness to their roommates on average as well as declines in closeness over time?
Do individuals living with roommates with higher levels of pathological personality traits feel less close to their roommates on average and over time?
Participants & Procedure
Participants included 103 undergraduate and graduate student roommate dyads that were unacquainted prior to room assignment. Note: 9 dyads were removed from an original sample of 112 due to relationship length (>4 months) or participant age (under 18).
Roommates had known each other for an average length of 4.91 weeks (SD = 2.45; ranged from 1.5 to 15 weeks). Participants ranged from 18 to 29 years in age (M= 19.90, SD = 2.65) and were predominantly male (56.6%).
During the first lab visit, participants completed questionnaires on their own pathological personality traits and then indicated their feelings of closeness toward their roommate. Participants then revisited the lab every other week (5 visits total) and reported their feelings of closeness toward their roommate.
Measures
Self-Reported Personality Inventory for the DSM-5 (Krueger et al., 2012)
Participants indicated from 1 (Very False or Often False) to 4 (Very True or Often True) the extent to which each of 220 items described them.
Negative Affect: M = 2.26, SD = 0.53, α = .89, ṝij = .26, 23 items.
Detachment: M = 1.89, SD = 0.48, α = .90, ṝij = .29, 24 items.
Antagonism: M = 1.96, SD = 0.52, α = .91, ṝij = .31, 21 items.
Disinhibition: M = 1.98, SD = 0.49, α = .90, ṝij = .28, 22 items.
Psychoticism: M = 2.11, SD = 0.56, α = .94, ṝij = .32, 33 items.
Self-Reported Closeness to Roommate
Participants completed the Inclusion of Other in Self Scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992) in which they selected from seven pairs of overlapping circles to indicate the pair that best described their relationship with their roommate.
During each visit, participants also used a 5-point scale that ranged from 1 (Not at all) to 5 (Extremely) to rate how close they felt to their roommate. This face valid item asked “How close do you feel to your roommate?”
These measures were strongly correlated (r range: ) and were therefore standardized and averaged together for future analyses, M = -0.03, SD = 0.87.
Introduction
Results
Discussion
Actor Effects
Participants with higher levels of Detachment reported that they felt lower levels of closeness toward their roommates on average.
Albeit not statistically significant, participants with higher levels of Antagonism or Psychoticism also felt lower levels of closeness toward their roommates on average.
Additionally, participants with greater levels of Psychoticism reported decreasing levels of closeness toward their roommate over time.
Partner Effects
Although not statistically significant, participants with roommates possessing higher levels of Detachment reported lower levels of closeness on average.
These findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of pathological personality traits, specifically Detachment, may experience difficulty forming close relationships with previously unknown others. Moreover, those with high levels of Psychoticism appear to have difficulties maintaining feelings of closeness over time.
Although we did not find any statistically significant partner effects, it is possible that they will emerge after a relationship has become more well established and behaviors could become more salient and bothersome.
It is possible that self-reports of closeness may be distorted among individuals with higher levels of pathological traits. Therefore, future work would do well to replicate these findings with more objective assessments.
Related work by us has investigated how interpersonal values and behaviors help to explain the relations between pathological traits and intimacy-related outcomes in roommate relationships (Ackerman & Corretti, in press). Future research should use smaller time intervals to better understand the processes by which traits relate to relationship development.
References
Ackerman, R.A., & Corretti, C.A. (in press). Pathological Personality Traits and
Intimacy Processes within Roommate Relationships. European Journal of Personality.
Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclusion of other in the self scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63,
Kashy, D. A., Donnellan, M. B., Burt, S. A., & McGue, M. (2008). Growth curve models for indistinguishable dyads using multilevel modeling and structural equation modeling: The case of adolescent twins’ conflict with their mothers. Developmental Psychology, 44,
Krueger, R. F., Derringer, J., Markon, K. E., Watson, D., & Skodol, A. V. (2012). Initial construction of a maladaptive personality trait model and inventory for DSM-5. Psychological Medicine, 42,
Reis, H. T., & Shaver, P. (1988). Intimacy as an interpersonal process. In S. Duck, D. Hay, S. E. Hobfoll, W. Ickes, & B. M. Montgomery (Eds.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research and interventions (pp. 367–389). Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons.
Dyadic growth-curve models for indistinguishable members were used to investigate relations between pathological traits and participants’ intercepts (i.e., average closeness; b = -.01, SE = .08) and slopes (i.e., linear change in closeness; b = .05, SE = .02) for closeness.
All models were estimated in SAS using Multilevel Modeling with Restricted Maximum Likelihood (Kashy, Donnellan, Burt, & McGue, 2008).
Results are presented as potential Actor Effects (i.e., links between individuals’ pathological traits and their own feelings of closeness) and Partner Effects (i.e., links between individuals’ pathological traits and their roommate’s feelings of closeness).
Table 1. Predicting Average Levels of Closeness (i.e., Intercepts)
Predictors
Actor Effects
Partner Effects b SE β
Negative Affect
-.01
.12
-.00
-.15
-.09
Detachment
-.39*
-.20
-.24†
-.12
Antagonism
-.22†
.16
.09
Disinhibition
-.18
-.10
-.07
-.04
Psychoticism
-.19†
.11
-.11
-.05
Conclusions
Method
Table 2. Predicting Linear Changes in Closeness (i.e., Slopes)
Predictors
Actor Effects
Partner Effects b SE β
Negative Affect
.02
.03
.01
Detachment
.04
-.02
Antagonism
-.03
-.04
Disinhibition
-.05
-.01
Psychoticism
-.06*
-.00
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Conrad A. Corretti at
†p<.10. *p<.05.