Shared Understanding and Perception of Stressors and Symptoms

Shared understanding can be conceptualized as the degree to which individuals are perceived by their acquaintances as they see themselves. These perceptions include not only the self, but includes experiential perceptions such as perceptions of specific experiences or the environment. Having some degree of shared understanding in these areas is likely important to the functioning of healthy relationships. There is reason to believe that individuals with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have self-perceptions that differ from the perceptions that their acquaintances have of them because individuals with BPD tend to interpret social stimuli more negatively than individuals without BPD. These differences in shared understanding likely have important implications for how the relationships of individuals with BPD function. To assess whether individuals have significantly different levels of shared understanding regarding the stressors in their lives compared to the levels of shared understanding between individuals without BPD and their acquaintances, various methods could be employed. However, answers to the same question may vary depending on the method used. This work proposes three methods that various could be employed to explore this question and also investigates the interpretative differences that result from type of method employed. The conceptualization of agreement using each method is orthogonal. Therefore, in order to most fully grasp the depth of the answer to whether individuals with BPD differ on degree of shared understanding with their acquaintances when compared to individuals without BPD it is important to explore this question from using multiple approaches.

Grantor dc:publisher

Wake Forest University

Year dc:date.issued

2016

Author dc:creator

• Bradley, Savannah Jolie

• Agreement

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10339/59285

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:wakespace.lib.wfu.edu:10339/59285