Partial and directional relationships between negative metacognitive beliefs and the big five personality traits

Personality traits represent consistent patterns of expressions in an individual's cognition, behaviour and emotion and are therefore relevant to psychopathology and present markers for psychological vulnerability. The S-REF model has implications for personality and trait theory because it describes higher-order cognitions involved in self-regulation, persistence and the stability of cognitive-behavioural patterns. Variability in features of the S-REF should be associated with personality dimensions and most strongly associated with those reflecting stable psychological vulnerability. Individual differences in metacognitive knowledge representing beliefs about the personal uncontrollability and dangerousness of thoughts is a central variable in the S-REF. The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that such negative metacognitions are associated with personality factors, with the most robust relationships predicted to be with personality dimensions representing psychological vulnerability (e.g., neuroticism). However, we also predicted wider (but weaker) associations between the MCQ factor and a range of personality dimensions because negative metacognitive beliefs in the S-REF model influence the stability of broader cognition-behaviour patterns.

We tested relationships among 296 individuals who completed the full NEO-PI-R. Using a network approach, the structure of partial correlations between negative metacognitions and Big Five personality traits were visualized and explored with an exploratory directed acyclic graph (DAG) of the conditional-dependence structure among these variables.

Negative metacognitions showed the highest expected influence in the network. The conditional-independence pattern was more consistent with negative metacognitive beliefs preceding neuroticism than the reverse, but this ordering should not be interpreted as evidence of a causal relationship due to the cross-sectional design.

The results are consistent with predictions based on the S-REF model, that negative metacognitive beliefs are associated with, and structurally central among personality dimensions linked to psychological vulnerability. The directional findings are offered as an exploratory hypothesis for future longitudinal or experimental testing rather than as established causal or mechanistic relationships.