The Role of Metaperception in Personality Disorders: Do People with Personality Problems Know How Others Experience Their Personality?

Abstract

Do people with personality problems have insight into how others experience them? In a large community sample of adults (N = 641), the authors examined whether people with personality disorder (PD) symptoms were aware of how a close acquaintance (i.e., a romantic partner, family member, or friend) perceived them by measuring participants' metaperceptions and self-perceptions as well as their acquaintance's impression of them on Five-Factor Model traits. Compared to people with fewer PD symptoms, people with more PD symptoms tended to be less accurate and tended to overestimate the negativity of the impressions they made on their acquaintance, especially for the traits of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness. Interestingly, these individuals did not necessarily assume that their acquaintance perceived them as they perceived themselves; instead, poor insight was likely due to their inability to detect or utilize information other than their self-perceptions. Implications for the conceptualization, measurement, and treatment of PDs are discussed.