The role of ethnic identity, self-concept, and aberrant salience in psychotic-like experiences.

OBJECTIVES

Social-cognitive models of psychosis suggest that aberrant salience and self-concept clarity are related to the development and maintenance of psychoticlike experiences (PLEs). People with high aberrant salience but low self-concept clarity tend to have the highest levels of PLEs. Ethnic identity may also be related to PLEs. The current research aimed to (a) replicate the interaction between aberrant salience and self-concept clarity in their association with PLEs in an ethnically diverse sample, (b) examine whether ethnic identity and aberrant salience interact in their association with PLEs, and (c) determine if self-concept clarity and ethnic identity independently interact with aberrant salience in their association with PLEs.

METHOD

An ethnically diverse group of undergraduates (n = 663) completed self-report measures of aberrant salience, self-concept clarity, ethnic identity, and PLEs.

RESULTS

There was an interaction between aberrant salience and self-concept clarity such that people with high levels of aberrant salience and low levels of self-concept clarity had the highest levels of PLEs. Similarly, there was an interaction between aberrant salience and ethnic identity such that people with high aberrant salience but low ethnic identity had the highest PLEs. These interactions independently contributed to explaining variance in PLEs. This interaction was present for the Exploration but not Commitment subscales of ethnic identity.

CONCLUSION

These results suggest that, in addition to low self-concept clarity, low ethnic identity may be a risk factor for the development of psychosis. (PsycINFO Database Record