Self and rules in a sample of adults experiencing homelessness: Relationships to shame, well-being, and psychological inflexibility

Abstract

Identification with a stigmatized group, such as people experiencing homelessness, is an important contributor to shame. Shame is relevant to issues of the self, other-generated conceptualizations of the self, and rule-governed behavior. Contextual behavioral science outlines a philosophically sound, theoretically coherent, evidence-based account of the self that lends itself to empirical work. More specifically, recent developments in relational frame theory have resulted in a behavioral measure of both self and other discriminations and types of rule-governed behavior evident in naturally occurring language, namely the Functional Self-Discrimination Measure (FSDM). Using the FSDM with a sample of adults experiencing homelessness (n = 22), the present study examined the relationships between occurrences of self and other discriminations and shame, well-being, and psychological inflexibility. The present study also explored whether occurrences of self, other, and rules codes were related. Findings indicated that both shame and psychological inflexibility were associated with greater unfavorable self-evaluations and greater references to rule-governed behavior and the self as distinct from private events. Well-being was associated with greater favorable self-evaluations and greater references to values-oriented self-rules and beliefs. Findings are discussed with reference to a need to further refine existing FSDM codes, examine FSDM data at more than one time-point, and explore other aspects of relational responding in addition to the frequency of occurrence in natural-language speech.