Examining the Structure of Personality Dysfunction

Personality impairment is a core feature of personality disorders in both current (i.e., DSM-5 Personality Disorders, ICD-11 Personality Disorders) and emerging (i.e., DSM-5’s Alternative Model of Personality Disorders) models of psychopathology. Yet, despite its importance within clinical nosology, attempts to identify its optimal lower-order structure have yielded inconsistent findings. Given its presence in diagnostic models, it is important to better understand its empirical structure across a variety of instantiations. To the degree that impairment is multifaceted, various factors may have different nomological networks and varied implications for assessment, diagnosis, and treatment. Therefore, participants were recruited from two large public universities in the present pre-registered study (N = 574) to explore the construct’s structure with exploratory “bass-ackward” factor analyses at the item level. Participants completed over 250 items from six commonly used measures of personality dysfunction. Criterion variables in its nomological network were also collected (e.g., general and pathological personality traits, internalizing/externalizing behavior, personality disorders) using both self and informant reports. These factor analyses identified four lower-order facets of impairment (i.e., Negative Self-Regard, Disagreeableness, Intimacy Problems, and Lack of Direction), all of which showed moderate to strong overlap with traits from both general and pathological models of personality.