Self-Other Distinction Self-reported Questionnaire (SOD-SRQ): A multidimensional scale to measure self-other distinction in the everyday life of healthy and clinical populations

Bukowski, Henryk [UCL] Pronizius, Ekaterina [UCL] Bigot, Alix [UCL] Golab, Dominik [UCL] Bogaerts, Annabel [UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM] Horký, Martin [Masaryk University] De Meulemeester, Celine [KU Leuven] et al.[show all]

To smoothly navigate the social world, we benefit from a permeable barrier between the “self” and the “other”: information about other people is efficiently processed and often spontaneously comes to our mind whereas information about oneself can be efficiently accessed to guess other people’s mental states. However, this information about others (e.g., their opinions or emotions) can also intrude or invade our minds whereas our own opinions or emotions may bias and mislead our understanding of others. Being able to distinguish and maintain a clear barrier between the self and the other is an essential mechanism to navigate the social world, called self-other distinction (aka self-other control). Individual differences in self-other distinction (SOD) capacities are clinically observed and empirically evidenced via experimental paradigms that induce egocentric and altercentric biases. Aiming to have a more practical and ecological measure of sod, we – a multicentric international team investigating SOD in borderline personality disorder – developed a self-report questionnaire capturing everyday life manifestations of sod ranging from well-functioning sod to clinically dysfunctional sod. To separately measure distinct components of sod, the questionnaire has 5 quadrants crossing the direction of the intrusion (self-to-other versus other-to-self) and the domain of intrusion (emotional versus cognitive domain), plus an additional subscale to capture self-other awareness. The scale went through multiple rounds of empirical validation that helped inform and clarify the definition and structure of sod. In this talk, I will present the self-other distinction self-reported questionnaire, how we constructed sod, and the empirical evidence of validity.