The effects of psychopathology and shame on social representations of health and lifestyle behaviours via free association: a graph analysis approach

BACKGROUND: There is a knowledge gap in whether psychopathology aspects can shape and mark the social representations about health and lifestyle. In this work, we investigated the association of psychopathology and shame with the centrality of the words describing eight common social representations of health and lifestyle. METHODS: A convenience sample of 288 adults participated with an average age of 44.7, and 62.6% were women. The participants were asked to express three consecutive words associated with eight different health and lifestyle experiences by utilizing the free association method. The participants also were completed the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R), the Experiences of Shame Scale (ESS), and the Other as Shamer Scale (OAS). Canonical correlation analysis was applied to investigate the relationship between the set of the eight-word centralities and the psycho-demographic variables consisting of the subject's age and gender, the SCL 90 subscales, the OAS, and the ESS. Based on these findings, a structural equation explorative model was formed to test the unidimensionality of the five centralities construct. RESULTS: Τhe psychological characteristics of interpersonal sensitivity, depression, external shame, and hostility were found to affect the word selection process on the social representations concerning nightlife, health, diet, lifestyle, and alcohol consumption. Participants with increased levels of depression tend to choose more centrally positioned words when the stimulus word was diet and more decentralized responses when the stimulus word was health. At the same time, higher external shame corresponded to more decentralized words for the categories of health and lifestyle. CONCLUSIONS: Our results indicate that there is a potential interaction between the psychological state and how a social representation of health and lifestyle is constructed through selected words. Graph theory emerged as an additional tool to use to study these relations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s40359-021-00671-x.