Avoidant personality disorder and implicit schema-congruent information processing bias: a pilot study with a pragmatic inference task

Cognitive theory of personality disorders hypothesizes that each personalit y disorder is characterized by typical maladaptive schemas and that these s chemas direct the processing of information resulting in schema-congruent b iases. With regard to the avoidant personality disorder, these hypotheses w ere put to an initial test in a pilot study, using a self-report questionna ire to asses DSM-III-R personality pathology, a belief questionnaire to ass ess avoidant schemas and a pragmatic inference task to assess schema-congru ent implicit attributional bias. Participants were students (n = 57) who sc ored high or low on DSM-III-R avoidant personality pathology. As predicted from cognitive theory, DSM-III-R avoidant personality pathology was associa ted with avoidant beliefs (t(45.1) = 4.68, p < 0.001) and avoidant beliefs were associated with schema-congruent information processing bias (t(55) = 2.17, p = 0.02, one-tailed test). However, DSM-III-R avoidant personality p athology was not associated with schema-congruent information processing bi as (t(55) = 0.17, p = 0.43, one-tailed test). In addition to avoidant belie fs, low self-esteem was also related to the information processing bias. So cial phobia and general personality pathology, two other control variables, were not. The findings warrant further study using the pragmatic inference task in a clinical group. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserv ed.