Understanding individuals' desire for change, perceptions of impairment, benefits, and barriers of change for pathological personality traits.

Abstract

Despite clinical theory suggesting that individuals are largely unaware of personality-related problems (Gallrein et al., 2013; Oltmanns & Powers, 2012); work in this area shows that individuals possess insight into their pathological traits and the impairment they may cause. Individuals generally dislike pathological traits and desire change in the direction of greater adaptivity (Lamkin et al., 2018; Miller et al., 2018). Individuals may also be able to make small, intentional changes in some personality domains (e.g., neuroticism; Hudson & Fraley, 2015; Hudson & Roberts, 2014) but not others (no positive change in conscientiousness or agreeableness). It remains unclear why many individuals exhibit relatively little change in their pathological traits (e.g., antagonism), given their awareness of the problems these traits cause and their desire for change. The goal of the present study was to explore the relation between personality disorder (PD) traits and desire for change, perceived impairment and benefits, and barriers to change among an online sample (N = 497). Findings suggest that most individuals were uninterested in changing their trait levels; however, individuals with elevated PD traits were more interested in change than those with lower levels. Pathological traits were generally perceived as impairing rather than beneficial; however, mean level analyses revealed similar levels of perceived impairment and benefits for those relatively high on antagonism. Individuals reported that personality change was stymied in part because it was too hard, they were unmotivated to make the changes, or they did not know how to go about making such changes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).