Antagonistic personality and symptoms of psychological distress: Feeling less bad about being impaired

Abstract

People will inevitably encounter life problems, and symptoms of mental distress that arise from these problems, such as low self-esteem, unhappiness, or anxiety, may motivate people to change or seek professional help. While antagonistic personality features are often associated with increased impairment, positive mental distress relations are weak or inconsistent. It is possible that people with antagonistic personality features may be aware of their impairments yet suffer less mental distress from them. Here, we tested this “antagonistic-buffering hypothesis.” Participants (N = 446) completed measures assessing sadism, psychopathy, impairments in various life domains, and signifiers of mental distress. Results supported the antagonistic-buffering hypothesis: Sadism and psychopathy were associated with greater self-reported impairments, and the positive association between impairments and mental distress was smaller as a function of sadism and psychopathy. These effects could not be attributed to sex and held across tested domains of life impairment.