The role of intersubjective and intrapersonal traits in the sociality of healthy young adults

Self-other relations are fundamental in shaping an individual’s mind and health. Two principal aspects of the social self can be distinguished. Intersubjectivity comprises empathy and other relational phenomena, whereas subjectivity includes an intrapersonal sense of agency and identity. We hypothesized that individual differences in sociality, in particular friendships and loneliness, depend not only on interpersonal factors, but also on intrapersonal personality features. We administered a comprehensive set of psychometric questionnaires to a random sample of non-clinical, young adults. Relational outcome variables concerned personal experiences of friendship and loneliness. Factor analysis confirmed the duality of latent intrapersonal and intersubjective factors. The results showed that intrapersonal traits exert a critical influence on friendships and loneliness of healthy young adults, independent of intersubjective factors and COVID-19 pandemic effects. A low sense of agency together with high psychotic-like experiences and schizotypal traits strongly predicted less friendships and more loneliness. Our study empirically supports a central role of self-concept in individual sociality. These findings provide a novel perspective on low social life quality combined with possible subclinical alterations of self-experience. The results also offer potential contributions to prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation strategies for psychopathological conditions associated with both self-disturbances and social deficits.