Preliminary Validation and Correlation of New Self-Report Scales of Rogerian Conditions of Worth and Initial Evidence Autistic People Experience Heightened Conditional Regard

This study was undertaken in 2023 in follow-up to earlier work (Bolton et al., 2022) which preliminarily quantified a new construct operationalized around the ideas of psychologist Carl Rogers. While we were interested in re-formulating from a humanistic psychological perspective, after Rogers’ original conditions of worth concept (1957, 1959), the behavioral formulation of conditional regard, we also tested and provided evidence for the hypothesis that autistic people experience heightened conditions of worth relative to non-autistic people. We validated through a brief online survey (n = 162, including 109 autistic and 53 non-autistic individuals) two distinct sets of items, one retrospective for the adolescent period between ages 12 and 17 and the other for adulthood, to assess the extent to which individuals perceive conditions of worth. The items were then correlated with an array of individual difference variables. Perceived emotional safety recalled as an adolescent and felt as an adult, perceived psychological control of one’s parental figure when an adolescent, adult fear of criticism and rejection, adult masking or camouflaging of parts of oneself, adult incongruence or inauthenticity, adult acceptance of external influence, and adult self-alienation were all positively correlated in support of the measures’ convergent and predictive validity. Adult self-esteem, unconditional positive self-regard, adolescence-perceived parental autonomy support, authentic adult living, and congruence or authenticity were all, with some exceptions, negatively correlated in theoretically expected directions. Perfectionism was also variously correlated. Implications and applications are offered for academics as well as mental health practitioners.