Date of Award

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA in Psychology

Department

Psychology

Second Advisor

Wilson McDermut

Third Advisor

Ernest Hodges

Abstract

This study examined the potential role of dysfunctional beliefs as moderators of the association between personality dysfunction and negative emotion. Specifically, we focused on three negative emotions, depression, social anxiety, and anger. There was a total of 454 participants, 210 males, and 243 females, all 18 years of age or older, recruited on Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) and SJU Psychology Department’s subject pool. We found that personality dysfunction and dysfunctional thinking are associated with negative emotional outcomes. Higher levels of personality dysfunction and higher levels of dysfunctional thinking were associated with higher levels of anxiety, depression, and anger. In a series of moderation analyses, we found main effects for personality dysfunction and dysfunctional beliefs in the prediction of depression, social anxiety, and anger. However, we only found partial support for our hypothesis that personality dysfunction’s relationship with negative emotions would be moderated by irrational beliefs. We did not find moderation in the prediction of depression. We did find an interaction in the prediction of social anxiety, as irrationality increased the association between personality dysfunction and social anxiety became weaker. There was also an interaction in predicting of anger, as irrationality increased the association between personality dysfunction and anger became stronger.

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