Betrayal Trauma and Histrionic Personality Pathology

Histrionic personality disorder is among the most common forms of personality pathology, and recent research has focused on its associations with trauma. This research has focused primarily on the types of traumatic experiences people endure, highlighting the role of sexual trauma in particular. However, recent research on the association between traumatic events and histrionic personality characteristics has not taken into account the role of traumatic experiences characterized by interpersonal betrayal, which research suggests is associated with personality pathology in general. In this study, we examine this, evaluating the association between traumatic experiences with varying degrees of betrayal and histrionic personality characteristics in a sample of men and women recruited online (N = 364). The results suggested that interpersonal trauma without a high degree of betrayal as well as non-interpersonal trauma had positive associations with histrionic personality characteristics, but interpersonal trauma with a high degree of betrayal did not. Further analysis indicated that sexual trauma, both with and without a component of betrayal, was associated with histrionic personality characteristics for women but not men. Study findings add to the research on the potential traumatogenic origins of histrionic personality characteristics and provide numerous directions for future research.