Investigation of the role played by pathological personality, interpersonal problems and emotion dysregulation in Facebook addiction

Background and aims.– Facebook Addiction is traditionally thought to be underlined by a difficulty in emotion regulation processes.Also, previous research showed that Facebook addicted may suffer from personality disorders and to present dysfunctional interpersonal styles. However, to our knowledge, the complex pattern of potential relationships between these variables and FacebookAddiction is still unexplored. Objective.– To investigate the role played by pathological personality and emotional dysregulation in Facebook Addiction. Methods.– We administered to a sample of community participants(N= 270) the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale (BFAS, Andreassen et al., 2012), the Personality Inventory Index for DSM-V (PID-5, Krueger et al., 2011), the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale(DERS, Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and the Interpersonal Problem Index-47 (IIP-47, Lindberg et al., 2018). Results.– Controlling for Age and Gender, we found that the IIP Aggression subscale, the Negative Affectivity domain of the PID-5and the DERS Total score positively and significantly predicted BFAS scores. Moreover, results showed that emotion dysregulation partially mediated the relationship between pathological personality and Facebook addiction severity whereas interpersonal problems moderated the direct relationship between pathological personality and Facebook Addiction severity. Conclusions.– Our results support previous studies showing the role played by pathological personality, emotion dysregulation and interpersonal problems in behavioral addictions. Moreover, the study shed light on the complex pattern of relationships between these variables. Clinical implications are outlined focusing on the importance of a dual focus, targeting both interpersonal competences and emotion regulation capacities. Future directions are discussed.