Validation of the apperception test God representations, an implicit measure to assess God representations. Part 3: associations between implicit and explicit measures of God representations and self-reported level of personality functioning

Research with self-report measures of God representations suggests an association with personality pathology. However, according to object-relations theory, God representations are predominantly implicit. This observational study aimed at validating the implicit Apperception Test God Representations (ATGR). In a group of 74 patients with personality pathology and a group of 71 non-patients, correlations of measures of self-reported personality functioning with the implicit ATGR were compared with correlations with the explicit Questionnaire God Representations (QGR). Only in the clinical group, results corroborated the validity of three ATGR main scales by showing significant correlations with mostly nearly medium effect sizes.