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Rejection sensitivity across sex, sexual orientation, and age: Measurement invariance and latent mean differences.

ABSTRACT: Intergroup differences in personality might be determined by systematic variation in social status and social experiences across groups. Because of its close association with social experiences, rejection sensitivity (RS)-a tendency toward anxious expectations of, and hypersensitivity to, interpersonal rejection-represents one such personality disposition that might differ across social groups, with implications for understanding mental health disparities. After first evaluating measurement invariance of the Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (A-RSQ), the present research sought to assess whether latent mean differences in RS emerged across sex, sexual orientation, and age in a population-based sample of Swedish young adults (age 18-36; N = 1,679). Analyses revealed that the scale achieved full configural, metric, and scalar invariance across sex and sexual orientation and partial scalar invariance across age. As expected, tests of latent mean differences indicated that women, sexual minorities, and people 18-29 years old exhibited significantly higher RS levels than men, heterosexuals, and people 30-36 years old, respectively. Findings from the present research highlight the utility of attending to group differences in maladaptive personality dispositions and information processing styles and their potential role in contributing to persistent mental health hardships uniquely affecting women, sexual minorities, and younger people. Implications for scale administration and future research into the social causes and consequences of RS are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

SUBMITTER: Maiolatesi AJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9328167 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Studies of animal personality attempt to uncover underlying or "latent" personality traits that explain broad patterns of behaviour, often by applying latent variable statistical models (e.g., factor analysis) to multivariate data sets. Two integral, but infrequently confirmed, assumptions of latent variable models in animal personality are: i) behavioural variables are independent (i.e., uncorrelated) conditional on the latent personality traits they reflect (local independence), and ii) personality traits are associated with behavioural variables in the same way across individuals or groups of individuals (measurement invariance). We tested these assumptions using observations of aggression in four age classes (4-10 months, 10 months-3 years, 3-6 years, over 6 years) of male and female shelter dogs (N = 4,743) in 11 different contexts. A structural equation model supported the hypothesis of two positively correlated personality traits underlying aggression across contexts: aggressiveness towards people and aggressiveness towards dogs (comparative fit index: 0.96; Tucker-Lewis index: 0.95; root mean square error of approximation: 0.03). Aggression across contexts was moderately repeatable (towards people: intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.479; towards dogs: ICC = 0.303). However, certain contexts related to aggressiveness towards people (but not dogs) shared significant residual relationships unaccounted for by latent levels of aggressiveness. Furthermore, aggressiveness towards people and dogs in different contexts interacted with sex and age. Thus, sex and age differences in displays of aggression were not simple functions of underlying aggressiveness. Our results illustrate that the robustness of traits in latent variable models must be critically assessed before making conclusions about the effects of, or factors influencing, animal personality. Our findings are of concern because inaccurate "aggressive personality" trait attributions can be costly to dogs, recipients of aggression and society in general.

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Rejection sensitivity across sex, sexual orientation, and age: Measurement invariance and latent mean differences.

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