Assessing self-schema content: The relationship of psychological needs to early maladaptive schemas, rejection sensitivity, and personality traits

Abstract

ABSTRACT In contemporary self-schema theory, there is considerable consensus on the structure of the self, which emphasizes multiple self representations, with each individual self-schema containing associative links to context (usually another person or role) as well as to typical scripts and goals. Yet there is less consensus on the content of these self-schema structures, and research has not systematically investigated content when self-schemas are assessed in a content-valid manner. In the present study, participants identified their six most accessible self-with-other and/or self-in-role contexts and were also assigned a “self-as-student” context. For each individual self-schema, participants wrote descriptions of associated scripts and goals and listed self-descriptive adjectives. This self-schema content revealed relatedness, competence, and autonomy psychological need themes which were coded reliably. Participants also completed measures of early maladaptive self-schemas, rejection sensitivity, and personality traits. Participant’s self-sche4ma content revealed both consistency and variability across individual self-schemas and correlated in expected directions with related self-schema and personality trait measures. Moreover, across individual self-schemas, variability in content accounted for unique variance in related self-schema and personality trait measures. Overall, our findings provide evidence for the representation of psychological needs when the self-schema construct is properly assessed as multiple self-in-context structures with embedded scripts and goals.