A Critical Evaluation of the Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ)

Abstract

The Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (RFQ) is an 8-item self-report measure of reflective functioning that is presumed to capture individual differences in hypo-and hypermentalizing. Despite its broad acceptance by the field, we argue that the validity of the measure is not well-established. The current research elaborates on problems of the RFQ related to its item content, scoring procedure, dimensionality, and associations with psychopathology. We tested these considerations across three large clinical and non-clinical samples from Germany and the US (total N = 2289). In a first study, we found that the RFQ may assess a single latent dimension related to hypomentalizing but is rather unlikely to capture maladaptive forms of hypermentalizing. Moreover, the RFQ exhibited very strong associations with measures of personality pathology, while associations with measures of symptom distress were less strong. In a second preregistered study focused on convergent and discriminant validity, however, a commonality analysis indicated that associations with indicators of personality pathology are inflated because some of the RFQ items tap into emotional lability and impulsivity rather than mentalizing. Our findings demonstrate limitations of the RFQ. We discuss key challenges in assessing mentalizing via self-report.

Individual Differences in Mentalizing Tendencies

“…Conversely, these scores were all positively correlated with uncertainty about mental states (RFQ-8). Consistent with previous work (e.g., Müller et al, 2021), The effect sizes for these associations tended to be quite large.…”

“…Furthermore, in contrast to the rest of the mentalizing dimensions which were behaviorally probed, certainty/uncertainty was the only mentalizing dimension which we measured by self-report. The relatively stronger associations observed between this dimension and psychopathology may therefore be due to the specific wording of key items on the RFQ (see Müller et al, 2021), or, at least in part, to the fact that behavioral and self-report measures tend to be weakly correlated (see Dang et al, 2020). On the other hand, the remarkably consistent patterns observed in our data underscores the extent to which the certainty/uncertainty dimension may be promising for future investigation of the relationship between mentalizing tendencies and psychopathology.…”

Development and Validation of the Certainty About Mental States Questionnaire (CAMSQ): A Self-Report Measure of Mentalizing Oneself and Others

“…For example, when predicting personality dysfunction by means of certainty about mental states, both low and high levels of certainty would be associated with high dysfunction, whereas middle levels of certainty would exhibit low dysfunction. Previous research, however, found no evidence for such associations using the RFQ (Müller et al, 2021;. Second, irrespective of the fallible nature of knowing oneself and others (e.g., Vazire, 2010), we argue that individuals should, in general, find it easier to perceive and interpret their own mental states as compared to others' mental states (e.g., Thornton et al, 2019) because others' mental states need to be inferred from external cues, whereas individuals can directly experience their own mental states consciously.…”

Maladaptive Daydreaming in Relation to Linguistic Features and Attachment Style

“…This could suggest that MDers hypermentalize less, but several studies have criticized the use of this factor as a true index of hypermentalization in the general population. In fact, it appears that the Certainty factor is instead associated with a good mentalization functioning [ 23 , 54 , 55 ]. Our study appears to confirm this.…”