title: Personality traits and personality disorders.
abstract: The structure of personality disorder traits was examined in a sample of 400 undergraduates who completed the personality disorder questionnaire from the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID-II). The relations between personality disorder and normal personality traits indexed by the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire-Revised (EPQ-R) were examined. The three-cluster model of personality traits--as described in the DSM scheme--found equivocal support. Exploratory principal components analysis and confirmatory factor analysis found four broad factors of personality disorder that overlapped with normal personality traits: an asthenic factor related to neuroticism; an antisocial factor associated with psychoticism; an asocial factor linked to introversion-extraversion; and an anankastic (obsessive-compulsive) factor. There is growing agreement about the number and type of broad personality disorder dimensions; similar dimensions may be found in clinical and non-clinical samples, suggesting that those people with personality disorders differ quantitatively rather than qualitatively from others; and there is substantial overlap between normal and abnormal personality dimensions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh, UK.
authors.forename: I J
authors.initials: IJ
authors.lastname: Deary
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Peter
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Austin
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Gibson
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000145:classification / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010555:Personality Inventory / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D011594:Psychometrics; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013334:Students / Q000523:psychology