Associations Between Epistemic Trust and the Severity of Personality Disorder: Results From a Study Comparing Patients With Personality Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and Controls.

Early childhood adversity may dispose an individual to adopt a rigid and pervasive hypervigilant position toward information coming from others, resulting in high levels of epistemic mistrust (EM), which is supposed to increase the risk of developing psychopathology. A more intrinsic relationship between EM and the development of personality disorders (PDs) is assumed. Although the theory of epistemic trust (ET) is rather novel, it has quickly become widely accepted in the field, despite much empirical evidence.

The development and psychometric evaluation of the Questionnaire Epistemic Trust (QET): A self-report assessment of epistemic trust.

Epistemic trust (ET) refers to the predisposition to trust information as authentic, trustworthy and relevant to the self. Epistemic distrust - resulting from early adversity - may interfere with openness to social learning within the therapeutic encounter, reducing the ability to benefit from treatment. The self-report Questionnaire Epistemic Trust (QET) is a newly developed instrument that aims to assess ET.