Personality disorders are the exaggeration of normal personality traits that are inflexible and maladaptive. Coping flexibility refers to individual differences in the use of different coping strategies and the ability to use this variability in coping responses in a manner that is adaptive to changes in life circumstances. Psychological flexibility is the individual ability to alter internal experiences by responding flexibly to negative thoughts, emotions and events and thereby increase well-being and adaptive functioning. While there is literature on personality disorders and coping, there is very little research on how these disorders are related to coping flexibility or psychological flexibility. It was predicted that with undergraduate students, there will be a negative association between personality disorder and coping flexibility and psychological flexibility. The overall results confirmed these predictions. Specifically, coping rigidity was correlated with several of the personality disorders. Multiple coping strategy use was negatively related to the antisocial, avoidant, borderline and dependent personality disorder scales. Overall, personality disorder was related to psychological inflexibility. With the specific psychological inflexibility scales, inaction and fusion were the major predictors of the PD scales. These results add to the understanding of the relationship between personality disorders and coping and may provide insight into methods to increase coping flexibility.
David C Watson (Tue,) studied this question.