Validation of the english version of the Multidimensional Mentalizing Questionnaire (MMQ)

Abstract

Background: Mentalizing refers to the ability to understand one's own and others' mental states. Mentalizing is considered a key component of social cognition and healthy personality development. A multinational assessment tools able to appraise the multidimensional and multifaceted aspects of this complex construct are needed.

Objective: The present study had two aims: (a) validate an English version of the Multidimensional Mentalizing Questionnaire (MMQ, 33 items) which was designed to assess mentalizing based on an integrated and multilevel model of mentalizing; (b) explore the correlational relationships between the six dimensions of the MMQ and a set of sociodemographic, psycho-cognitive, mental health, and socio-functional variables.

Methods: Overall, 1823 individuals (age: 19-76 years old [M = 45; SD = 16]; sex: male = 48.51%, female = 50.57%, non-binary = 0.9%) participated in an online survey. While the participants came from 77 different countries, most of them were residents in UK and USA (95%). Data analytics include confirmatory factorial analysis and Pearson correlations.

Results: The CFA results validated the factorial structure of a 28-items MMQ-English version, with acceptable goodness of fit indices. Regarding the psychometric properties, the MMQ-English version showed good internal reliability and significant positive correlation with another scale designed to assess an analogue construct showing a fair convergent validity. The findings indicated that males, individuals with lower levels of education, lower socio-economic status, depressed, and with a higher score of loneliness are significantly more likely to report poor mentalizing compared with females, individuals with higher education level, greater SES, happier, and with lower scores of loneliness.

Conclusion: The present study validated the English version of the MMQ.

Keywords: Cognition; Loneliness; Mentalizing; Mood; Social functioning.

Fig. 1

The CFA path diagram of the first improved model (model-2, 28 items) with the standardized estimates Confirmatory factor analysis of the questionnaire. The rectangles represent the different items, and the ellipses represent the factors (F1 = reflexivity; F2 = ego-strength; F3 = relational attunement; F4 = relational discomfort; F5 = distrust; F6 = emotional dyscontrol). The values on the arrow linking the six factors between them are the correlations. The values on the arrow linking each of the six factors to the corresponding items are the factors loadings (standardized estimates). The factor loadings indicate how well each item is representative of its unobservable construct (factor). Its values go from 0 to 1. The values on top of each rectangle are the square of the standardized factor loadings; they give the proportion of the explained variance (R²) in each item, which indicates how much of the variance in the item is explained by the unobserved construct. If a standardized factor loading value is greater than 0.70 or explains at least half (0.50 = 50%) of the variance in the item, then the corresponding item is important in explaining the unobserved construct it belongs to. The small rounds are the error terms (measurement errors for each item), and the values on the arrow linking the error terms are the covariances established to improve the model fitting metrics