The relationship between temperament and character and subclinical psychotic-like experiences in healthy adults.
BACKGROUND
Considerable data support phenomenological and temporal continuity between psychotic disorders and subclinical psychotic-like experiences (PLE's). Although numerous studies have found similar personality correlates for schizophrenia and schizotypal personality disorder patients, their unaffected first-degree relatives, and healthy adults characterized for schizotypal traits, no study has yet investigated personality correlates of PLE's measured by the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE). Our study sought to examine personality correlates of PLE's using the CAPE in healthy adults.


METHODS
The CAPE and temperament and character inventory (TCI) were administered to 415 healthy adults. Regressions examined links between TCI traits and overall PLE levels as well as positive and negative PLE's separately.


RESULTS
Consistent with past studies, lower self-directedness (SD) and reward dependence (RD) and higher self-transcendence (ST) and harm avoidance (HA) significantly predicted overall PLE levels. Higher ST and persistence (P) and lower SD significantly predicted higher levels of positive PLE's while lower SD and RD and higher HA, ST, and cooperativeness (C) predicted higher levels of negative PLE's.


CONCLUSIONS
Associations between TCI and PLE's using the CAPE are strikingly similar to past work in non-clinical and patient samples and provide additional support for phenomenological continuity between psychotic disorders and sub-syndromal psychotic symptoms.
Division of Psychiatry Research, Division of the North Shore - Long Island Jewish Health System, The Zucker Hillside Hospital, 75-59 263rd Street, Glen Oaks, NY 11004, USA. Electronic address: gnitzburg@nshs.edu.
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Nitzburg
Center for Translational Psychiatry, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY, USA; Division of Psychiatry Research, Division of the North Shore - Long Island Jewish Health System, The Zucker Hillside Hospital, 75-59 263rd Street, Glen Oaks, NY 11004, USA; Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Yeshiva University, Bronx, NY, USA; Hofstra North Shore - LIJ School of Medicine, Departments of Psychiatry and Molecular Medicine, Hempstead, NY, USA.
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Malhotra
Center for Translational Psychiatry, The Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, Manhasset, NY, USA; Division of Psychiatry Research, Division of the North Shore - Long Island Jewish Health System, The Zucker Hillside Hospital, 75-59 263rd Street, Glen Oaks, NY 11004, USA.
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DeRosse
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002605:Character; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010555:Personality Inventory; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D013694:Temperament; D055815:Young Adult
Character; Personality; Psychosis; Schizophrenia; Temperament