Intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies and Schizotypic personality characteristics

Schizotypy refers to a set of personality dimensions reflecting the underlying vulnerability for the development of schizophrenia spectrum pathology. Schizotypy is characterized by deficits in expressing and understanding emotions, contrasted with unimpaired experiences of emotion, a discrepancy that may be explained through an emotion regulation framework. Prior emotion regulation research on schizotypy has largely focused on intra-personal emotion regulation, and despite documented impairments in social contexts, research on the use of interpersonal emotion regulation strategies is sparse. The present study sought to examine the incremental validity of both intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use in the prediction of schizotypic traits, over and above previously established risk factors in a sample of adults (N = 418). Results demonstrated that both intra- and intrapersonal emotion regulation strategies accounted for significant incremental variance in the prediction of schizotypic traits, after controlling for covariates. Further exploratory analyses revealed that emotion regulation strategy use exhibited a divergent pattern of relations with dimensions of schizotypic traits. Results suggest interpersonal emotion regulation strategies may be important in understanding the emotional experiences and social contexts of individuals with schizotypic personality traits.