INDIVIDUAL-DIFFERENCES IN RELATEDNESS AND INDIVIDUALITY - AN EXPLORATION OF 2 CONSTRUCTS

Sociotropy and autonomy are two personality dimensions that relate to an individual's vulnerability to depression. Independent and interdepe ndent self-construals are two distinctive cognitive formulations of th e self derived from cross-cultural research. Both of these sets of con structs reflect self and other orientations. The purpose of the presen t study was to empirically examine the various factors that emerge whe n these two constructs are integrated. 652 participants responded to t he Personal Style Inventory [Robins, C. J., Ladd, J., Welkowitz, J., B laney, P. H., Diaz, R. & Kutcher, G. (1991). The Personal Style Invent ory: Preliminary validation studies of new measures of sociotropy and autonomy. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral Assessment, 16, 27 7-300.], the Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale [Clark, D. A. & Beck, A. T. (19 91). Personality factors in dysphoria: A psychometric refinement of Be ck's Sociotropy-Autonomy Scale. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavio ral Assessment, 13, 369-388.] and the Self-Construal Scale [Singelis, T. M. (1994). The measurement of independent and interdependent self-c onstruals. Personality and Serial Psychology Bulletin, 20, 580-591.]. Four factors emerged from a factor analysis conducted on the items of the three scales measuring sociotropy-autonomy and independent and int erdependent self-construal. These four factors are discussed in the co ntext of vulnerability to depression. Crown copyright (C) 1998 Publish ed by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.