The Stability of the Five‐Factor Model of Personality in Personnel Selection and Assessment in Greece

The stability and replicability of the Five‐Factor model of personality across samples and testing purposes remain a significant issue in personnel selection and assessment. The present study explores the stability of a new Greek Big Five personality measure (TPQue) across different samples in order to explore the suitability of the measure in personnel selection and assessment. The factor structure of the measure across three samples (students, employees, and job applicants) is examined. The results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses show that the five‐factor structure remains intact for the students’, the applicants’ and the employees’ samples – contrary to previous studies – with all the sub‐scales of the personality measure (TPQue) loading on the intended factors. Furthermore, congruence coefficients between the samples justify the stability of the model in the working settings.     

Millon's dimensional model of personality disorders: a comparative study

Millon has proposed six fundamental dimensions of general personality functioning as providing the underlying structure of personality disorders. However, this widely-cited theoretical model has been the subject of few empirical studies. The purpose of the current study was to directly compare the validity of this model to the five-factor model with respect to their hypothesized relationships with personality disorder symptomatology. Participants were administered the predominant measures of general personality functioning for each theoretical model, along with an assessment of personality disorder symptomatology. The results found only weak support for the theoretical model of Millon. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Convergent validity of alternative MMPI-2 personality disorder scales

The Morey, Waugh, and Blashfield (1985) MMPI (Hathaway et al., 1989) personality disorder scales provided a significant contribution to personality disorder research and assessment. However, the subsequent revisions to the MMPI and the multiple revisions to the diagnostic criteria sets that have since occurred may have justified comparable revisions to these scales. Somwaru and Ben-Porath (1995) selected a substantially different set of items from the MMPI-2 (Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) to assess Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American Psychiatric Association, 1994) personality disorder diagnostic criteria. In our study, we compared the convergent validity of these alternative MMPI-2 personality disorder scales with respect to 3 self-report measures of personality disorder symptomatology in a sample of 82 psychiatric outpatients. The results suggested that Somwaru and Ben-Porath's scales are as valid as the original Morey et al. scales and might be even more valid for the assessment of borderline, antisocial, and schizoid personality disorder symptomatology.     

Behandlungsleitlinie Persönlichkeitsstörungen

The S2 guidelines for the treatment of personality disorders (PD) are summarized. In the diagnostic assessment of personality disorders a clinical interview should be supplemented by (semi-) structured clinical interviews and self-report measures for the categorical and dimensional assessment of PDs. The results of the assessment process should be communicated to the patient based on a psycho-educational framework. The diagnosis should always be linked to the patient’s individual history. Psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for personality disorders. A detailed analysis of the patient’s problems as well as the definition of a hierarchy of treatment goals are part of the process of treatment planning. For three PDs empirical evidence for treatment approaches is available: (1) dialectical behavior therapy, mentalization-based therapy, schema focused therapy and transference focused therapy all proved beneficial in the treatment of borderline personality disorder. Cognitive-behavior therapy proved helpful in the treatment of (2) dissociative personality disorder and (3) avoidant personality disorder. There is limited evidence for interpersonal therapy and psychodynamic therapies in the treatment of avoidant personality disorder.     

Sadistic personality disorder in sex offenders: relationship to antisocial personality disorder and sexual sadism.

To investigate the relationship of sadistic personality disorder (SPD), as defined in the appendix of DSM-III-R, to other personality disorders and to sexual sadism, 70 sex offenders (27 child molesters, 33 rapists, and 10 murderers) were assessed by the International Personality Disorder Examination. In 19 subjects (27.2%) from the total sample, SPD was diagnosed. The highest overlap appeared with borderline personality disorder (31.6%) and antisocial personality disorder (42.1%). However, in four cases SPD was the only personality disorder diagnosed. Factor analysis of the antisocial and sadistic criteria resulted in four major factors--one factor with high loadings on the sadistic criteria and the violent criteria of antisocial personality disorder, two factors with different forms of adult and juvenile aggression, and a fourth factor with high loadings on the antisocial criteria covering exploitative behavior. The results do not support SPD as a discrete disorder. Nevertheless, SPD may be seen as an important subdimension of antisocial personality disorder, distinct from more exploitative forms of antisocial behavior with less violence. Of those patients with SPD, 42.1% also had a DSM-III-R diagnosis of sexual sadism, which may be the most dangerous configuration.     

Personality disorder and violence: making the link through risk formulation

The extant research demonstrates that the combination of personality disorder and violence implies severe dysfunction, poor responsivity to treatment, more serious and persistent violence, and higher recidivism rates. Thus, it comes as no surprise that personality disorder is included in many of the available guidelines for assessing and managing violence. Unsurprisingly, the combination of personality pathology and violence frequently presents the greatest challenge to services, even those in whom violence risk assessment and management practice is established and routine. Conceptual and methodological limitations pervade the literature and a full explanation of the nature of the association between personality pathology and violence is still awaited. Furthermore, current approaches to risk assessment fail to provide a systematic framework for assessors to use to make sense of the heterogeneous presentations typically found in individuals with personality disorder and violence. In this paper, formulation is proposed as the critical process linking risk assessment and risk management. It is argued that assessors must move beyond a simple listing of risk factors and should instead produce detailed, comprehensive, individualized explanations of risk potential and risk management needs. Personality disorder is used in this paper to illustrate the important contribution of formulation to the risk assessment process, and in doing so, the link between personality pathology and violence is explored.     

Clinical Use of the Five-Factor Model: An Introduction

In the past decade, clinical psychologists have developed a renewed appreciation of the value of assessment. At the same time, personality psychologists have come to agree on a fundamental taxonomy of personality traits, the five-factor model. Articles in this special series describe the model and its measurement and discuss applications in three different settings: general clinical practice, a sexual behaviors consultation unit, and a behavioral medicine clinic. This introduction raises questions about the use of personality profiles in psychodiagnosis, the range of applicability of the five-factor model, the utility of personality feedback in psychotherapy, the stability of personality scores among psychotherapy patients, and the feasibility of using personality scores to select optimal forms of treatment. This special series is intended to stimulate research on such topics.     

Clinical use of the five-factor model: an introduction.

In the past decade, clinical psychologists have developed a renewed appreciation of the value of assessment. At the same time, personality psychologists have come to agree on a fundamental taxonomy of personality traits, the five-factor model. Articles in this special series describe the model and its measurement and discuss applications in three different settings: general clinical practice, a sexual behaviors consultation unit, and a behavioral medicine clinic. This introduction raises questions about the use of personality profiles in psychodiagnosis, the range of applicability of the five-factor model, the utility of personality feedback in psychotherapy, the stability of personality scores among psychotherapy patients, and the feasibility of using personality scores to select optimal forms of treatment. This special series is intended to stimulate research on such topics.     

Personality, interpersonal circumplex, and DSM-5: A commentary on five studies

Much of personality is interpersonal, and what is interpersonal can be elegantly organized through the crossing of 2 fundamental dimensions of personality: agency and communion. The interpersonal circumplex has enriched substantially what is known about personality and in particular personality disorder, emphasizing to clinicians the importance of considering maladaptive interpersonal functioning when conducting clinical assessments. The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary on 5 articles concerning the interpersonal perspective on personality assessment. The contributions of these 5 studies are also understood relative to the proposed revisions to the American Psychiatric Association's personality disorder nomenclature, as the proposed revisions will be cutting out half of the interpersonal circumplex from further recognition.     

A Rorschach Journey With Bruno Klopfer: Clinical Application and Teaching

Much of personality is interpersonal, and what is interpersonal can be elegantly organized through the crossing of 2 fundamental dimensions of personality: agency and communion. The interpersonal circumplex has enriched substantially what is known about personality and in particular personality disorder, emphasizing to clinicians the importance of considering maladaptive interpersonal functioning when conducting clinical assessments. The purpose of this article is to provide a commentary on 5 articles concerning the interpersonal perspective on personality assessment. The contributions of these 5 studies are also understood relative to the proposed revisions to the American Psychiatric Association's personality disorder nomenclature, as the proposed revisions will be cutting out half of the interpersonal circumplex from further recognition.     

The structure of axis II disorders in adolescents: a cluster- and factor-analytic investigation of DSM-IV categories and criteria

The aim of this study was to ascertain whether the structure of personality disorder (PD) symptoms in adolescents assessed using DSM-IV diagnoses and diagnostic criteria resembles the structure intended for the diagnosis of PDs in adults. A national sample of clinicians rated DSM-IV Axis II criteria on 294 adolescent patients in treatment for enduring maladaptive personality patterns. Cluster analysis replicating procedures used in an adult sample by Morey (1988) identified considerable similarity between adult and adolescent PDs, as did exploratory factor analysis of ratings of diagnostic criteria, which yielded ten empirically derived factors that resembled the ten DSM-IV PDs. Cluster analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with indicators of Axis II symptoms produced mixed results in replicating the DSM-IV hierarchical structure of PDs (Clusters A, B, and C), although hierarchical models generally fared better than models specifying only first-order factors or clusters. The structure of personality pathology as assessed by Axis II criteria in adolescents resembles that outlined in DSM-IV Axis II for adults, suggesting that PDs can be assessed in adolescents as in adults. Whether this is an optimal way of diagnosing personality pathology in adolescence, however, requires further investigation.     

Developing an integrative social-cognitive strategy for personality assessment at the level of the individual: An illustration with regular cigarette smokers

Basic advances in social cognition have not fully translated into similar advances for personality assessment. In this study, we evaluated whether an integrated social cognitive approach to personality assessment (i.e., one that employs an idiographic assessment of a multi-faceted self-system, priming procedures, and reaction time tasks) could be applied to assess a social cognitive personality system at the individual level in a particularly challenging population: cigarette smokers. This integrative approach was necessary to detect the idiosyncratic content and contextualized structure of the three self-schemas (smoker self-schema, abstainer ideal possible self, abstainer ought possible self) that composed this social cognitive personality system. Priming different self-structures enhanced reaction times to contextually bound self-referent information. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for social cognitive theories of personality and personality assessment.     

Two-year stability of Psychosis Proneness Scales and their relations to personality disorder traits

Two-year stability of Physical Anhedonia (PhA), Perceptual Aberration (PER), and Magical Ideation (MI) scale scores and their relation to personality disorder traits were examined. Additionally, the effects of a time-lagged (prospective) versus concurrent measurement of psychosis proneness and personality disorder traits were studied to examine the specificity of MI, PER, and PhA. With a non-college-student sample (n = 404), stability for PhA was sufficiently high, but for PER and MI, stability was moderate to low. The correlations between personality disorder traits and psychosis proneness scales demonstrate that simultaneous assessment leads to a more nonspecific pattern of associations for MI and PER, although the correlation to schizotypal personality disorder traits were the highest. However, prospectively only MI, but neither PER nor PhA, emerged as a significant predictor for schizotypal and paranoid personality disorder traits in multiple-regression analysis. This suggests that MI may allow for a more specific assessment of psychosis proneness than PER.     

Emergent Issues in Assessing Personality Pathology: Illustrations from Two Studies of Adolescent Personality and Related Pathology

As illustrated by two articles that each investigate personality pathology and its correlates in adolescents—Aelterman et al. (2010) on obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) from a dimensional personality perspective, and Barry and Wallace (2010) on indicators of pathological and normative development of youth narcissism—this commentary discusses four important assessment issues that have become more salient as the field considers a shift, through proposed changes in the DSM, to an approach that incorporates trait dimensions as an important aspect of diagnosis: (1) the importance of using multiple information sources for valid personality/ PD assessment; (2) relations of personality traits to (mal)adaptivity in general and also with regard to (3) trait uni- versus bi-polarity; and (4) whether personality types have incremental predictive value beyond their component personality traits and related pathology. The article also discusses why research on childhood and adolescent personality/ PD is important in addressing these issues.     

Introduction to the Special Issue on the Role of Personality Assessment in Consulting to Organizations

This special issue aims to advance the integration of personality assessment across applied contexts. Personality assessment is an integral part of clinical and organizational case conceptualizations, intervention planning, and change efforts. Yet, as the present historical account will illustrate, the literatures in relation to personality assessment have developed rather independently. The articles in this special issue highlight the importance of organizational personality assessment as relates to how (a) academics vs. practitioners look at standards for test selection (Furnham), (b) the intended use of tests (selection vs. employee development) impacts the criteria used to establish assessment tool validity (Moyle & Hackston), (c) personality models developed in social and personality psychology can be applied in organizational contexts (Shorey & Chaffin), (d) assessments are modified to more accurately assess operational definitions of constructs (Belwalker & Tobacyk), (e) perception and knowledge about personality of others can be assessed as an ability (Mayer, Lortie, Panter & Caruso), and (f) performance-based techniques can be used in organizational personality assessment to curtail faking and socially desirable responding (Harms, Krasikova & Luthans). The present introduction highlights the important contributions of these articles, individually and as a body, in advancing the integration and application of personality assessment in organizational contexts.