Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Psychiatry Research journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/psychres Expanding the validity of the malignant self-regard construct in an Italian general population sample Roberto Pedone a, ⁎ , Steven K. Huprich b , Sharon M. Nelson c , Marina Cosenza a , Antonino Carcione d , Giuseppe Nicolò d , Antonio Semerari d , Livia Colle e a Deparment of Psychology, University of Campania "Luigi Vanvitelli", Italy b Department of Psychology, University of Detroit Mercy, USA c Department of Psychology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, USA d Third Centre of Cognitive Psychoterapy, Rome, Italy e Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Italy ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Malignant self-regard Depressive personality Vulnerable narcissism Masochism ABSTRACT Malignant self-regard (MSR) was proposed as a particular type of self-structure that may account for similarities among a set of clinically relevant Personality Disorders (PDs) such as masochistic/self-defeating and depressive PDs that yet have failed to be adequately represented in the diagnostic manuals. The investigation on the MSR may provide a better framework upon which to understand the nature of these personality types and their discrimination from related constructs. The present study examines the psychometric properties of the Italian adaptation of the Malignant Self-Regard Questionnaire (MSRQ). Reliability and validity indicators are de- termined in a large sample of adults from general population (n = 2574). The measure was found to be reliable and valid, given its correlations with measures of depressive personality, negative affectivity, self-defeating, and vulnerably narcissistic personalities. MSR also can be meaningfully differentiated from a nomological network of related constructs, including sadness rumination, depression, neuroticism, extraversion, and grandiose narcis- sism. These findings suggest that MSR may be a personality component which includes a negativistic self-re- presentation, vulnerability and hypersensitivity to judgment, sometimes compensated by perfectionistic ten- dencies. As a whole, results seem to support the reliability and the validity of the Italian adaptation of the MSRQ as a measure of the MSR. 1. Introduction The fact that more than 50% of patients diagnosed with a PD also receives the diagnosis of another PD (Clark, 2007; Zimmerman et al., 2005) is a problem which has troubled the debate in the field of Per- sonality Disorders for at least two decades. However, this problem can turn into a research opportunity as an invitation to explore the presence of factors that are common to the general pathology of personality and that could help explain the frequency of this comorbidity (Clark, 2007; Hopwood et al., 2011; Sharp et al., 2015). The idea of common ele- ments to the general pathology of personality is expressed in Section 3 of the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), indicating that some of these factors are expressed as impairments in self and inter- personal functioning. However, the clinical phenomenology with which these impairments occur can be extremely varied. For example, some patients may present themselves unable to experience genuine feelings of sadness, remorse or guilt, while others present excessive self-criti- cism, moral rigidity and self-defeating behavior (Kernberg et al. 2007). This makes it extremely important to have theoretical constructs and valid tools to assess the specific way in which individuals construct their sense of self inside the progress of their own relations. Malignant Self-Regard (MSR; Huprich, 1998; 2014) is a concept developed for this purpose. Huprich (1998, 2011, 2014; Huprich et al., 2005) had noted the similarity of the theoretical and clinical descriptions of a number of PDs as the masochistic/self-defeating (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) and depressive (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), which had not been maintained in subsequent editions of the DSM, but which continued to be studied by clinicians as “higher level personality pathology” (Caligor et al., 2007). Clinical characteristics shared by these disorders are the vulnerability to ex- periences of depression, guilt and shame, a tendency toward https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.10.059 Received 15 January 2018; Received in revised form 23 October 2018; Accepted 23 October 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: roberto.pedone@unicampania.it (R. Pedone). Psychiatry Research 270 (2018) 688–697 Available online 25 October 2018 0165-1781/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. T