An investigation of role-taking in histrionic personalities

Gough's theory that psychopathy stems from a deficiency in role taking, the ability to perceive and evaluate one's own behaviour as it is perceived and evaluated by others in the same culture, was tested. The Socialization scale, developed by Gough to assess role taking, was administered to a group of 20 female psychiatric patients with histrionic personality disorders, and a control group of female depressives of similar age and intelligence. Socialization scores of the histrionic personalities were significantly lower, indicating impaired role taking, and this difference was not attributable to depression of mood. The Socialization scale was a better discriminator between the groups than the scales of two other personality inventories or a test to elicit meta-impressions.