Basic personality model.

The personality structure of persons within clinical populations may not be fundamentally different from the personality structure of persons who have not sought treatment for their maladaptive personality traits. Indeed, there has long been an interest in understanding personality disorders as maladaptive variants of general personality structure. Presented herein is an understanding of personality disorder from the perspective of basic personality research; more specifically, the five factor model (FFM) of general personality structure. Potential advantages of understanding personality disorders from the perspective of the FFM are provided.

Convergent and Discriminant Validity of the Five Factor Form and the Sliderbar Inventory.

Existing measures of the five factor model (FFM) of personality are generally, if not exclusively, unipolar in their assessment of maladaptive variants of the FFM domains. However, two recently developed measures, the Five Factor Form (FFF) and the Sliderbar Inventory (SI), include items that assess for maladaptive variants at both poles of each item. This structure is unique among existing measures of personality and personality disorder, although there is a historical, infrequently used Stone Personality Trait Schema (SPTS) that had also included this item structure. To facilitate an exploration of their convergent and discriminant validity, the SI and SPTS items were reorganized into FFM scales. The convergent and discriminant validity of the FFF, SI-FFM, and SPTS-FFM scales was considered in a sample of 450 adults with current or a history of mental health treatment. The FFF, SI-FFM, and SPTS-FFM were also compared with respect to their relationship with FFM domains. Finally, the FFF items and SI-FFM scales were tested with respect to their relationship with measures of maladaptive variants of both high and low agreeableness and conscientiousness. The implications of the results are discussed with respect to the assessment of maladaptive personality functioning, and suggestions for future research are provided.

The effects of symptom information coaching on the feigning of adult ADHD.

College students without ADHD may feign symptoms of ADHD to gain access to stimulant medications and academic accommodations. Unfortunately, research has shown that it can be difficult to discriminate malingered from genuine ADHD symptomatology, especially when evaluations are based only on self-report questionnaires. The present study investigated whether nonclinical college students given no additional information could feign ADHD as successfully as those who were coached on symptoms of the disorder. Similar to Jasinski et al. (2011) and other research on feigned ADHD, a battery of neuropsychological, performance validity, and self-report tests was administered. Undergraduates with no history of ADHD or other psychiatric disorders were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 simulator groups: a coached group that was given information about ADHD symptoms, or a noncoached group that was given no such information. Both simulator groups were asked to feign ADHD. Their performance was compared to a genuine ADHD group and a nonclinical group asked to respond honestly. Self-report, neuropsychological, and performance validity test data are discussed in the context of the effect of coaching and its implications for ADHD evaluations. Symptom coaching did not have a significant effect on feigning success. Performance validity tests were moderately effective at detecting feigned ADHD. (PsycINFO Database Record

Coverage of the DSM-IV-TR/DSM-5 Section II Personality Disorders With the DSM-5 Dimensional Trait Model.

Section III of DSM-5, for emerging measures and models, includes a five-domain, 25-trait model, assessed by the Personality Inventory for DSM-5. A primary concern with respect to the trait model is its coverage of the DSM-IV-TR personality disorder syndromes (all of which were retained in DSM-5). The current study considered not only total scale scores of three independent measures of DSM-IV-TR personality disorders but also the coverage of each diagnostic criterion included within six personality disorders: antisocial, borderline, avoidant, dependent, narcissistic, and obsessive-compulsive. Participants were 425 community adults, all of whom had received mental health treatment (36% currently; 75% within the past year). Results provided support for the coverage of the diagnostic criteria for the antisocial, borderline, avoidant, dependent, and narcissistic personality disorders. Coverage could perhaps be improved for a few of the criteria for obsessive-compulsive personality disorder.

The discriminant (and convergent) validity of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5.

A considerable body of research has rapidly accumulated with respect to the validity of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5) dimensional trait model as it is assessed by the Personality Inventory for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (PID-5; Krueger et al., 2012). This research though has not focused specifically on discriminant validity, although allusions to potentially problematic discriminant validity have been raised. The current study addressed discriminant validity, reporting for the first time the correlations among the PID-5 domain scales. Also reported are the bivariate correlations of the 25 PID-5 maladaptive trait scales with the personality domain scales of the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (Costa & McCrae, 1992), the International Personality Item Pool-NEO (Goldberg et al., 2006), the Inventory of Personal Characteristics (Almagor et al., 1995), the 5-Dimensional Personality Test (van Kampen, 2012), and the HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised (Lee & Ashton, 2004). The results are discussed with respect to the implications of and alternative explanations for potentially problematic discriminant validity. (PsycINFO Database Record

Convergent and discriminant validity of the Five Factor Form.

The current study tests the convergent and discriminant validity of a modified version of the Five Factor Model Rating Form (FFMRF), a one-page, brief measure of the five-factor model. The Five Factor Form (FFF) explicitly identifies maladaptive variants for both poles of each of the 30 facets of the FFMRF. The purpose of the current study was to test empirically whether this modified version still provides a valid assessment of the FFM, as well as to compare its validity as a measure of the FFM to other brief FFM measures. Two independent samples of 510 and 330 community adults were sampled, one third of whom had a history of some form of mental health treatment. The FFF was compared with three abbreviated and/or brief measures of the FFM (i.e., the FFMRF, the Ten Item Personality Inventory, and the Big Five Inventory), a more extended measure (i.e., International Personality Item Pool-NEO), an alternative measure of general personality (i.e., the HEXACO-Personality Inventory-Revised), and a measure of maladaptive personality functioning (i.e., the Personality Inventory for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition). The results of the current study demonstrated convergent and discriminant validity, even at the single-item facet level.