Depressive personality disorder: rates of comorbidity with personality disorders and relations to the five-factor model of personality

Depressive personality disorder (DPD) is listed in the DSM-IV as one of the "Disorders for Further Study." In this investigation we examined (1) the rates of comorbidity of DPD with the 10 personality disorders (PDs) in the main text of DSM-IV, and (2) the convergent and discriminant validity of DPD in its relation to the 30 facet traits of the Five-Factor Model of personality (FFM). One hundred and sixty-nine participants with psychiatric diagnoses were interviewed with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders Questionnaire (SCID-II) and completed the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R). A total of 26 (15%) of the participants met diagnostic criteria for at least one of the 10 main text PDs, and 15 (9%) met criteria for DPD. Of those who met criteria for DPD, 10 (59%) of the participants also met criteria for one or more of the 10 main text PDs. Regression analyses indicated a four-facet trait set derived from the NEO PI-R thought to be uniquely associated with DPD accounted for a significant amount of variance in DPD SCID-II PD scores and was significantly larger for DPD than it was for the 9 of the 10 main text PDs; the sole exception was for avoidant PD. Diagnostically, DPD overlaps significantly with other PDs but is distinguishable in its unique relation with traits from the FFM.     

Age-cognition relations and the personality trait of Conscientiousness

Increasing age has been found to correlate with a decrease in many cognitive abilities and an increase in the personality trait of Conscientiousness. The first goal of this study was to examine whether an age-related decline in cognitive abilities, in particular Fluid ability, accounts for the age-related increase in Conscientiousness. The second goal was to investigate whether the role of cognitive abilities in the relation between age and Conscientiousness is similar among people of different levels of education.Our results support the conclusion that the relation between age and Conscientiousness is mediated by fluid ability and working memory abilities, and that these effects are stronger in people with lower levels of education.Altogether, these findings are consistent with the hypothesis that age differences in characteristics such as persistence, self-motivation and dutifulness may help compensate for age differences in cognition.     

Smoking, mood regulation, and personality: an event-sampling exploration of potential models and moderation

The aim of the present study was to test potential models of smoking-related changes in mood and how these are moderated by personality (behavioral activation and inhibition systems). Three models yielding distinct predictions regarding mood changes associated with cues to smoking and effects of ingestion were identified: the negative reinforcement model, the appetitive-incentive model, and the incentive-sensitization model. Seventy participants provided baseline data on personality and mood, and subsequently monitored their smoking behavior over 48 hours using an event-contingent diary--eliciting reports of mood state immediately prior to, and after, each cigarette smoked. MANOVA and multilevel modeling indicated that mood (hedonic tone and energetic arousal) improved significantly (p<.001) from baseline to pre-smoking, but did not change from pre- to post-smoking, thereby supporting the incentive-sensitization model. Further multilevel analyses indicated that significant variability in hedonic tone was moderated by the behavioral activation system.     

Object relations in borderlines, depressives, and normals: an examination of human responses on the Rorschach

Recently, researchers and clinicians have become increasingly interested in diagnostic distinctions between borderline and mood disorders. Object relations theory provides a useful framework for the comparison of these two overlapping diagnostic categories. In our study, a measure of object relations as represented on the Rorschach, developed by Blatt, Brenneis, Schimeck, and Glick (1976), was applied to data produced by borderline and depressive inpatients and by normal comparison subjects. Portions of the Blatt measure that tap the subject's experience of human action and interaction distinguish among the three diagnostic groups. Specifically, borderlines tend to understand human action as more highly motivated and human interaction as more malevolent in nature than do either depressive or normals. The data indicate that borderlines experience the object-relational world in a way that is fundamentally different from the way normals and depressives perceive it. Implications are discussed for theories of borderline object relations.     

Object relations and regression in groups.

This article uses a psychoanalytic ego-psychological framework to examine the regression experienced by an individual group member and the defenses mobilized to counter it, focusing in particular on the defensive functions of constituting leadership somewhere in the group. The leader, regarded as an internal object in the member's object world, is hypothesized to be a combination of projected and personified part-objects and at the same time an integrating whole object. Various phenomena of group life are discussed from this viewpoint, notably the lability of the relationship with the leader, the externalization of various endopsychic regulations, and the conditions supporting the defensive utility of the leader for the group member. The foundation for the emergence of social roles and consensual perception of the group and its leadership becomes apparent. A strictly intrapsychic view is maintained throughout.     

Object relations and interpersonal problems in sexually abused female patients: an empirical study with the SCORS and the IIP

In this study, we examined how retrospective reports of experiencing traumatic sexual abuse in childhood relates to both the development of self-representations and object representations and the occurrence of interpersonal problems. A total of 30 psychosomatic female patients who reported sexual abuse in childhood were compared with a corresponding number of eating-disordered patients and a nonclinical control group. The object relations technique (ORT; Phillipson, 1955), evaluated using the Social Cognition and Object Relations Scale (SCORS; Westen, 1985, 1991b), and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (Horowitz, Rosenberg, Baer, & Ureno, 1988) were used to measure the groups. The patients reporting sexual abuse achieved significantly lower scores in the cognitive scales of the SCORS; in the affective scales, they differed from the control group but not from the patients with an eating disorder. Concerning interpersonal problems, the patients reporting childhood sexual abuse reported interpersonal conflicts more frequently. The results of the study support the influence of traumatic sexual abuse on the formation of self-representations and object representations and on the occurrence of interpersonal conflicts.     

Depressive thinking and depression: relations with personality and social resources

The mechanisms by which social supports and personality variables may buffer against psychopathology are not well understood. We studied depression, depressive cognitions, social supports, and self-esteem in a sample of 68 spouse-caregivers of patients with Alzheimer's Disease in an attempt to identify possible buffering mechanisms of the latter two variables. Specifically, we hypothesized that the well-known relation of depressive cognitions to depression would vary as a function of satisfaction with social supports and with level of self-esteem. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses conducted to predict depression revealed significant and independent main effects for depressive cognitions (p less than .01), social supports (p less than .025), and self-esteem (p less than .001), with depressive cognitions associated with higher depression and the other two variables associated with reduced depression (R2 = .53 for the three main effects). In addition, the relation of depressive cognitions with depression varied substantially depending on the level of social supports (p less than .01); caregivers with high levels of depressive cognitions had high levels of depression only if social supports were low (R2 = .61 including interaction). Self-esteem and depressive cognitions showed a similar interaction, but it failed to reach significance. Analyses to determine whether self-esteem and social supports were directly associated with lower depressive cognitive activity yielded a main effect for self-esteem only (p less than .03). Thus, whereas social supports and self-esteem were directly associated with lower depression, only the social supports variable was further associated with reduced depression because it apparently buffered the impact of depressive thinking. Self-esteem was also indirectly associated with lower depression via its relation with lower depressive thinking. Implications of our results for cognitive theories of depression and for the psychosocial mechanisms of stress buffering are discussed.     

Virtue, personality, and social relations: self-control as the moral muscle

Morality is a set of rules that enable people to live together in harmony, and virtue involves internalizing those rules. Insofar as virtue depends on overcoming selfish or antisocial impulses for the sake of what is best for the group or collective, self-control can be said to be the master virtue. We analyze vice, sin, and virtue from the perspective of self-control theory. Recent research findings indicate that self-control involves expenditure of some limited resource and suggest the analogy of a moral muscle as an appropriate way to conceptualize virtue in personality. Guilt fosters virtuous self-control by elevating inter-personal obligations over personal, selfish interests. Several features of modern Western society make virtue and self-control especially difficult to achieve.     

Self- and other-reports of traits from the five-factor model: relations to personality disorder

The current study used a psychiatric sample (N = 69) to examine: (1) the correspondence between self- and other-reports of general personality, as measured by the Five-Factor Model (FFM; Costa & McCrae, 1990), and personality disorder (PD) traits, as measured by a structured interview, (2) the relations between these two sets of ratings (FFM and PD traits) and consensus ratings of PD and impairment, and (3) the incremental validity of other-rated personality scores. Agreement between raters for the five domains of the FFM ranged from .23 (agreeableness) to .71 (openness); for the PD traits agreement ranged from .37 (avoidant) to .69 (antisocial). At both the domain and facet level, the personality profiles reflected in the correlations between the FFM scores and PD criteria were consistent across raters with the exception of narcissistic PD. Substantial evidence was found for the incremental validity of other-rated personality scores, with these ratings accounting for an additional 8 to 20% of the overall variance in PD features. The other-rated FFM scores also accounted for more variance in consensus ratings of impairment in the domains of romance, work, and social relations.     

The missing link in the relations between intelligence and personality

This study investigated the relationships between performance on tasks representing five cognitive domains (quantitative, categorical, spatial, causal, and propositional reasoning), self-attribution of ability in regard to them and also in regard to three general cognitive functions (processing speed, working memory, and self-monitoring and self-regulation), and the Big Five factors of personality (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience). The participants (n=629) were about equally drawn from each of the age years 12–17. Structural equation modeling analyses were conducted to examine the construct validity of scores on the three research instruments. Moreover, structural equations modeling showed that self-attribution of ability is, to some extent, dependent on cognitive performance. Cognitive performance is weakly related only to two of the Big Five (openness and conscientiousness). Self-attribution of ability is substantially related to all but the neuroticism factor. Apart from openness to experience, the dependence of personality dimensions on the dimensions of cognitive self-representation tends to weaken with age. It is concluded that the influence of cognitive abilities on personality is mediated by self-awareness about them and implications are discussed.     

Long-term relations of personality and health: dynamisms, mechanisms, tropisms

There is now little doubt that individuals who are well-adjusted, socially stable, and well-integrated into their communities are at significantly lower risk for disease and premature mortality than those who are more unstable, impulsive, isolated, and alienated. The reasons for these associations, however, are complex and the pathways insufficiently studied. This article employs a life-span data set to explore how childhood personality relates to health-related growth and development (dynamisms), patterns of reactions and health behaviors (mechanisms), and movements toward and away from suitable environments (tropisms). Illustrations from the 7-decade Terman longitudinal data reveal important areas in which previous, cross-sectional research has misinterpreted associations between personality and health. In particular, Sociability has been overrated as a life-span health risk factor, Conscientiousness has been underrated, and Neuroticism has been confused. Without sufficient attention to the processes underlying the associations between personality and health, significant suboptimal allocations of intervention resources result.     

Personality dynamics: insights from the personality social cognitive literature

Psychodynamic and social cognitive approaches to personality assessment converge now more so than at any time in the history of experimental psychology. This contribution seeks to make this point. First, the trait of neuroticism predisposes one to multiple adverse outcomes, a point not sufficiently captured by the current version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed. [DSM-IV]; American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Second, though, self-reported levels of neuroticism are insufficient in understanding problematic outcomes for multiple reasons. Third, there are ways of experimentally modeling the many processes of interest to psychodynamic theorists such as unconscious affective biases, implicit representations of self and other, and underlying deficits in self- and emotion regulation. Implicit approaches to assessment also provide clues to interventions targeting the processes of interest, a point that will be made as well.     

Object relations and referential activity in physically abused adolescents

This study compared the object relations and language functions of 15 physically abused and 15 nonabused adolescents. The adolescents provided a 5-minute narrative about their mothers, which was scored for referential activity and object relations. As predicted, the abused adolescents tended to have lower levels of affect tone, indicating more malevolent relationship paradigms. Contrary to what was predicted, however, there were no significant differences between groups on overall measures of referential activity and object relations. Further, the abused adolescents tended to have higher levels of two elements of referential activity (concreteness, imagery), indicating increased verbal ability to express emotional experience. While predicted correlations were found between object relations and referential activity for the nonabused group, the abused group showed higher symbolizing and verbalizing capacity, associated with more malevolent representations of relationships. The findings do not support the view that physically abused adolescents experience developmental lags, instead suggesting that they organize and use emotional and symbolizing processes differently from nonabused adolescents. The implications for treatment are discussed.     

Religious coping research and contemporary personality theory: An exploration of Endler's (1997) integrative personality theory

Notable weaknesses in the literature on religion and mental health include theoretical inconsistencies and lack of integration with contemporary personality theory. The current study explored a potential solution to these theoretical limitations. A modified form of Endler's (1997) interactive model of personality was applied to the prediction of religious coping and tested using structural equation modelling. As predicted by the model, personality dispositions predicted coping directly, as well as indirectly through perception of the situation and situational anxiety. These patterns were, as expected, found to interact with the type of situation. Results indicated that having a positive disposition appears to buffer one's negative perceptions of situations over which one has little control. Participants tended to use more religious coping in low‐control situations; in high‐control situations, participants tended not to use negative religious coping techniques such as pleading for miracles.     

Object location memory: The interplay of multiple representations

This article reports three experiments in which the representational nature of human object location memory was studied. The results show that multiple frames of reference can be used to encode the spatial relationships among objects. Depending on their dominancy, availability, and validity, these multiple representations interact to determine memory performance. Specifically, representations that are automatically encoded and extensively practiced are more dominant, and their availability improves performance when they are valid. On the other hand, when the dominant representations are available but invalid, people may have to resort to the less dominant representations. As a result, the availability of these dominant but invalid representations can actually hurt performance, due to interference. If these interfering representations are eliminated, the performance is again improved. The implications of these findings for general human spatial cognition are discussed.