Assessing mentalizing beyond personality pathology: exploring the psychometric properties of the Slovak version of the CAMSQ and its associations with personality traits and well-being.

Abstract

Background: The Certainty About Mental States Questionnaire (CAMSQ) is a recently developed measure of mentalizing designed to assess certainty about one's own and others' mental states. While it was originally validated using personality pathology measures, this study explores the relevance of the CAMSQ for understanding personality traits and well-being in the general population.

Participants and procedure: The sample consisted of 462 Slovak participants aged 18-79 years (M = 34.0). To assess temporal stability, 128 participants completed a retest after a minimum interval of two weeks. Participants completed the CAMSQ and measures of well-being (life satisfaction, subjective happiness, positive and negative affect, and self-esteem), Big Five personality traits, and Dark Tetrad traits. Psychometric properties of the CAMSQ were examined, including internal consistency, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), measurement invariance across age and gender, and test-retest reliability.

Results: Self-Certainty and Other-Certainty were primarily positively associated with well-being measures, extraversion, and conscientiousness, and negatively associated with negative emotionality. Other-Self Discrepancy was negatively associated with well-being. Condition-based regression analysis (CRA) revealed significant effects of discrepancy on psychopathy, sadism, and some well-being measures. The Slovak version of the CAMSQ exhibits acceptable psychometric properties including adequate temporal stability.

Conclusions: The results suggest that the CAMSQ is not only relevant for assessing personality pathology but can also provide insights into personality psychology and well-being in the general population. Limitations include the predominantly female and young sample, cross-sectional design, reliance on self-report, and examination of a clinically relevant construct in a non-clinical population. These findings support the tool's utility beyond clinical settings, highlighting its potential for broader psychological research.