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Running Head: SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 1 Subjective Running head: SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 1 Subjective Emptiness: A Clinically Significant Trans-diagnostic Psychopathology Construct 1Stephanie L. Price, 1Heike I.M. Mahler, 2Christopher J. Hopwood 1California State University San Marcos, 2University of California, Davis Contact information: Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Stephanie Price; Email: [email protected] SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 2 Abstract Subjective emptiness is a pervasive transdiagnostic construct. The aim of this series of studies was to use construct validation procedures to better understand the nature and correlates of subjective emptiness. A literature review led to 88 items which were then trimmed to 53 via qualitative interviews with patients and experts. This preliminary scale was administered to 543 university students and 1,067 clinical participants along with measures of depression, meaning in life, borderline personality disorder, and impulsivity. The scale was reduced to 17 items following item analysis, factor and item response theory analyses, extreme groups comparisons, and examinations of criterion validity. This 17-item scale, along with measures of identity disturbance and maladaptive personality traits, was then administered to 1,016 clinical participants. The scale was trimmed to 7 items based on results from these data. Results strongly supported the unidimensionality of subjective emptiness and its transdiagnostic clinical value. Keywords: Emptiness, Scale, Instrument, Measure, Construction, Validation SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 3 Subjective emptiness is a state of profound hollowness (Freeman, 2007; Kernberg, 1975; Levy, 1984; Singer, 1977a, 1977b) in which the individual feels bereft of fulfillment and connection to the external world (Bateman & Krawitz, 2013; Freeman, 2007; Kernberg, 1975; LaFarge, 1989). Emptiness is most typically conceived in assessment practice as a diagnostic criterion for borderline personality disorder (BPD). Relative to other borderline features, emptiness is associated with greater impairment across the broadest range of psychosocial domains and is one of the slowest remitting symptoms (Ellison Rosenstein, Chelminski, Dalrymple, & Zimmerman, 2016; Zanarini et al., 2007). Although it is most commonly studied in the context of BPD, emptiness is a transdiagnostic construct shown to be associated with agoraphobia (Milrod, 2007), anxiety (Klonsky, 2008; Ribeiro, Ribeiro, Ribeiro, & von Doellinger, 2013; Silk, 2010; Mann, Laitman, & Davis, 1989; Trull & Widiger, 1991), depression (Klonsky, 2008), narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders (Gunderson & Ronningstam, 2001; Zerach, 2016), and dissociation (Rallis, Deming, Glenn, & Nock, 2012). Preliminary research suggests that higher levels of emptiness are related to diverse negative outcomes including impulsive and self-harming behavior (Blasco-Fontecilla et al., 2013, 2015; Ellison et al., 2016; Khantzian, Halliday, & McAuliffe, 1990; Klonsky, 2008; Lloyd, Raymond, Miner, & Coleman, 2007; Orbach, Mikulincer, Gilboa-Schechtman, & Sirota, 2003; Rallis et al., 2012), emotion dysregulation (Beck, Freeman et al., 1990; Brown, 1998; Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996; LaFarge, 1989; Linehan, 1993), social dysfunction (Ellison et al., 2016; Klonsky, 2008; Lamprell, 1994; Peteet, 2011; Richman & Sokolove, 1992), and problems with identity and self-concept (Kernberg, 1975; Kohut, 1977; Levy, 1984). Individuals who experience significant emptiness also report higher rates of psychiatric hospitalization, absenteeism at work, and reliance on disability benefits (Ellison et al., 2016). SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 4 Although preliminary evidence suggests that electroconvulsive therapy (Sadeghi, Davoodi, & Hoseini, 2016) and group schema therapy (Farrell, Shaw, & Webber, 2009) may alleviate feelings of emptiness, thus far efficacious pharmacological (Bellino, Bozzatello, Rinaldi, & Bogetto, 2011; Bellino, Bozzatello, Rocca, & Bogetto, 2014; Bellino, Paradiso, Bozzatello, & Bogetto, 2010; Pascual et al., 2008) psychotherapeutic approaches (Scheel, 2000; Verheul et al., 2003) have not been identified for treating subjective emptiness. Despite this initial evidence that subjective emptiness represents a transdiagnostic risk factor for a host of clinically important outcomes, sustained programs of research on the concept are missing from the literature. The purpose of this project was to identify the core markers and correlates of subjective emptiness via the process of construct validation. Existing Measures of Emptiness Given that it is a diagnostic criterion of BPD, a common approach to studying emptiness has been to use a single item from instruments designed to measure BPD (Blasco-Fontecilla et al., 2015; Ellison et al., 2016; Gunderson & Ronningstam, 2001; Klonsky, 2008; Stepp, Pilkonis, Yaggi, Morse, & Feske, 2009; Rallis, Deming, Glenn, & Nock, 2012). Although this work has helped establish the clinical relevance of emptiness, there are two significant limitations to this approach to conceptualizing emptiness. First, single items are generally less reliable than multi- item scales. Second, emptiness appears to be a transdiagnostic construct that merits investigation in its own right, independent of its functioning within the context of a BPD diagnosis. A related approach has been to use multi-item emptiness scales that are embedded in measures of higher order constructs like BPD. For instance, Poreh et al. (2006) constructed the Borderline Personality Questionnaire using items based on DSM-IV diagnostic criteria for BPD, including emptiness. The internal consistency of the emptiness subscale ranged from .73-.81 SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 5 across three university student samples. However, the correlates of the scale were only assessed at the level of the overall BPD construct, and the contents of the emptiness scale included items involving loneliness, identity disturbance, meaning or purpose in life, and boredom. The Mental Pain Questionnaire (Orbach, Mikulincer, Sirota, & Gilboa-Schechtman, 2003) includes an emptiness subscale for which items were generated using transcripts from interviews with individuals in clinical and non-clinical samples. In initial validation work, the emptiness subscale showed acceptable internal consistency (α = .75) and was moderately correlated with both anxiety (r = .37) and depression (r = .43). However, the scale includes items assessing meaning or purpose in life, in addition to those measuring emptiness, suggesting that it is assessing a somewhat broader construct than what is intended by the clinical literature. Finally, items for the Experienced Levels of Emptiness Scale (Hazell, 1984) were generated using existing theories of emptiness and transcripts from interviews with non-clinical adults and refined using factor analysis. The scale exhibited acceptable internal consistency (α = .92) and a strong relationship with depression (r = .69) in a sample of 265 college students and 5 psychiatric patients. However, validation of this measure beyond these initial results has been limited, and the scale includes content related to alexithymia and depersonalization, again suggesting that it is somewhat broad and possibly multidimensional. Each of these multi-item scales has potential utility. However, they were developed in the context of overarching models of other constructs, and they often included heterogeneous item content that may not reflect a core emptiness construct, but other associated albeit distinct dimensions. We sought to focus more exclusively on the core features of emptiness, by eschewing content related to empirically similar but conceptually distinguishable concepts. Overview of Present Studies SUBJECTIVE EMPTINESS 6 We approached this task by adopting the three steps of construct validation articulated in modern psychometric theory (Jackson, 1970; Loevinger, 1957; Simms & Watson, 2007; Tellegen & Waller, 2008). Construct validation theory asserts that the articulation of a theoretical construct and the development of a method with which to measure that construct are fundamentally intertwined endeavors: the process of creating a measure is how the scientist creates and tests a theory. The first step in this process is to define the construct of interest, including relatively precise assertions regarding what psychological features and behaviors are and are not aspects of that construct. This is challenging because many psychological features tend to be correlated in nature and in psychological assessment. This step corresponds to the psychometric principle of content validity and establishes the boundaries of the construct of interest. As described in greater detail below, we used a variety of procedures to establish content validity, including literature review and item reviews by experts and patients. The second step involves testing this definition in terms of its internal structure. To the degree that the initial definition is correct, the contents thought to reflect a single construct should be internally consistent and should reliably discriminate people at different levels of the latent trait. If multiple dimensions are proposed, those dimensions should be apparent in factor analytic models. Given our goal of identifying the core features of emptiness, we sought to identify a robust unidimensional model, as free as possible from the impact of correlated but independent factors. The third step involves examining the associations of the resulting measure (Cronbach & Meehl, 1955). To the
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