Personality in Middle Childhood: A Hierarchical Structure and Longitudinal Connections With Personality in Late Adolescence

The development of personality-From metatraits to facets-Across adolescence and into adulthood in a sample of Mexican-origin youth

The time between adolescence and adulthood is a transformative period of development. During these years, youth are exploring work, relationships, and worldviews while gaining the capacities needed to take on adult roles. These social and psychological processes are reflected in how personality develops across this period. Most youth personality development research has focused on the Big Five domains, ignoring the hierarchical structure of personality and missing broader, higher order processes and more specific, lower order processes. Toward a more comprehensive account, this study examines how personality develops from adolescence into the early years of adulthood at the metatrait (stability, plasticity), domain (Big Five), and facet levels. Data come from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth (N = 645) with few socioeconomic resources who were assessed 5 times from Ages 14 to 23. We used latent growth curve models to investigate mean-level change, rank-order consistency, and the maintenance of trajectories for self-reported personality metatraits, domains, and facets. We found distinct developmental processes unfolding at each level of the hierarchy, including (a) mean-level changes in the metatraits and domains indicating increases in exploratory tendencies (i.e., plasticity) and maturity (i.e., increases in agreeableness and conscientiousness, decreases in neuroticism), and divergent change patterns between facets within each domain indicating nuanced maturational processes; (b) comparable levels of rank-order consistency for metatraits, domains, and facets; and (c) evidence that deviations from youth's developmental trajectories did not persist over time. Our findings offer insights into personality development that would be impossible to glean from the domain-level alone and adds needed sociocultural diversity to the literature. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Fair sharing is just caring: Links between justice sensitivity and distributive behavior in middle childhood

Justice sensitivity (JS), the tendency to perceive and adversely respond to injustice, was related to prosocial behavior in different age groups and to distributive preferences in adults. To test influences of JS on sharing and distributive preferences, middle childhood as an important phase for moral development may be particularly interesting. We asked 1320 5- to 12-year-old children (M = 8.05 years, SD = 1.02; 51.2 % girls, 1.3 % transgender and gender-nonconforming) to read five vignettes that made salient the different principles of distributive justice (equality, merit, and need) and to distribute imaginary sweets between themselves and one described child (sharing) or between two described children (distributing). Children also rated their JS, and parents rated children's theory of mind (ToM) abilities and empathy. More concerns for justice for the self (victim JS) predicted distributions following the merit principle and a preference for need over equality and merit when forced to choose among the three. Caring for justice for others (altruistic JS) predicted more sharing, equal distributions, less distributions according to the merit principle, and a preference for equal distributions over merit and need when forced to choose among the three. These associations prevailed when ToM and empathy were included as control variables. The findings underline the importance of justice-related personality traits, such as JS, for moral development in middle childhood.

Temperament in middle childhood questionnaire: New data on factor structure and applicability in a child clinical sample

The Temperament in Middle Childhood Questionnaire (TMCQ) is one of a family of instruments representing one of the major conceptual models of child temperament. The present study reports new psychometric information on the TMCQ using a larger sample than in prior factor-analytic studies of this instrument. Data from parent ratings of 1,418 children were utilized. The sample of community volunteers included 697 typically developing youth and 721 defined by research diagnostic procedures as having attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Results failed to support the original proposed structure of the TMCQ, but found support for a structure with 12 subscales that confirmed a substantial portion of the lower order factor structure. However, the intended three-factor higher order structure was not able to be fully recovered. Two-group invariance was supported in the final model, supporting use in studies of typical and atypical development. In conclusion, with some modifications the TMCQ remains a useful research measure at the lower order factor level. The validity of the higher order structure is less clear, likely due to measure-specific limitations, and suggests a need for some refinement to the measure. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Examining interactions between negative emotionality and effortful control in predicting preadolescent adjustment problems

Negative emotionality and effortful control consistently predict child adjustment, yet few studies explore their interactive effects on adjustment. In concurrent and longitudinal (one-year follow-up) analyses, we examined negative emotionality-by-effortful control interactions in predicting anxiety, depression, and conduct problems in 214 children aged 8-12. Temperament was assessed using behavioral tasks measuring fear, frustration, executive control, and delay ability. An interaction between frustration and executive control predicting conduct problems was observed; higher executive control was related to fewer concurrent conduct problems for those moderate to high in frustration, but did not predict conduct problems for those low in frustration. This interaction did not predict conduct problems one year later. No support was found for negative emotionality-by-effortful control interactions predicting anxiety or depression. Our findings highlight the importance of executive control during preadolescence and provide mixed evidence regarding whether facets of negative emotionality and executive control interact with one another to influence adjustment.

Multimodal indicators of risk for and consequences of substance use disorders: Executive functions and trait disconstraint assessed from preadolescence into early adulthood

Risk for substance use disorders (SUDs) is hypothesized to include behavioral disinhibition, a genetically mediated inability to inhibit or regulate behavior given task demands or motivational drives. In the present study, we examined developmental trajectories of multiple indicators of behavioral disinhibition assessed from preadolescence into early adulthood among individuals with versus without alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use disorders. Participants were a population-based sample of 1512 male and female twins from the Minnesota Twin Family Study, prospectively assessed at ages 11, 14, 17, 20, and 24. Multimodal indicators of behavioral disinhibition included measures of executive function (visuospatial working memory accuracy, antisaccade task performance) and mother- and self-reported trait disconstraint. Multilevel modeling analyses that accounted for the repeated measures and nested nature of the twin family data were used to examine premorbid (age 11) indicators of executive function and trait disconstraint prior to the onset of any SUD symptoms, as well as changes from preadolescence into early adulthood (ages 11 to 24). Premorbid deviations evident at age 11 among individuals who subsequently developed SUDs included poorer performance on the visuospatial working memory test and higher levels of trait disconstraint. In addition, individuals with SUDs did not demonstrate developmentally normative improvements in inhibitory control (i.e., antisaccade performance did not improve) or in their levels of trait disconstraint. We conclude that these deviations in both neurocognitive and dispositional correlates of behavioral disinhibition precede onset of SUDs and may confer risk for their development, and in addition, problematic substance use may exacerbate preexisting deviations and interfere with normative developmental trajectories of executive function and trait disconstraint, with deleterious consequences for functioning.

Correlates between Five-Factor Model traits and the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines dimensions in an adolescent clinical sample

OBJECTIVE

Extensive evidence supports the association between Five-Factor Model (FFM) traits involving high neuroticism, low agreeableness and low conscientiousness and borderline personality disorder (BPD) characteristics, particularly among adults in community samples. However, studies supporting this link in adolescent samples are relatively limited, and few studies have examined the links between FFM traits and specific dimensions of BPD, such as those distinguished by the Revised Diagnostic Interview for Borderlines (DIB-R). In this study, we examined associations between FFM traits and BPD characteristics in a group of clinical and non-clinical adolescents.

METHOD

We evaluated the correlations between the FFM personality traits, as measured by the NEO-Five-Factor Inventory and BPD characteristics as measured by the DIB-R in a sample of adolescents (N = 162).

RESULTS

Consistent with previous research, BPD dimensions were highly associated with high neuroticism, low conscientiousness, low agreeableness and to a somewhat lesser extent with low extraversion. Specificity of associations between FFM traits and DIB-R section scores was limited, in part because of strong intercorrelations among DIB-R scores.

DISCUSSION

These results imply that evidence about trait-BPD associations in adult samples generalizes well to adolescents. Clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Preschool Oppositional Defiant Disorder: A Disorder of Negative Affect, Surgency, and Disagreeableness

Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) is conceptualized as a disorder of negative affect and low effortful control. Yet empirical tests of trait associations with ODD remain limited. The current study examined the relationship between temperament and personality traits and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.) ODD symptom domains and related impairment in a preschool-age sample. Participants were 109 children ages 3-6 (59% male), overrecruited for ODD from the community, and their primary caregivers (87% mothers). ODD symptoms and impairment were measured using the Kiddie-Disruptive Behavior Disorder Schedule, temperament traits were measured using parent report on the Child Behavior Questionnaire and the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery, and personality traits were measured using examiner report on the California Child Q-Sort. Results suggest that high negative affect was associated with all three ODD symptom domains, whereas low agreeableness was specifically associated with the angry/irritable ODD symptom domain, and high surgency was associated with the argumentative/defiant and vindictive ODD symptom domains. Negative affect and surgency interacted with agreeableness to predict impairment, but not symptoms: Low agreeableness was associated with high impairment, regardless of other trait levels, whereas high negative affect and high surgency predicted high impairment in the presence of high agreeableness. Overall, results suggest ODD is a disorder of high negative affect. Furthermore, low agreeableness is differentially associated with affective ODD symptoms, and high surgency is associated with behavioral ODD symptoms. These traits interact in complex ways to predict impairment. Therefore, negative affect, agreeableness, and surgency may be useful early markers of ODD symptoms and impairment.

Neuroanatomical Correlates of Hierarchical Personality Traits in Chimpanzees: Associations with Limbic Structures

A converging literature has revealed the existence of a set of largely consistent, hierarchically organized personality traits, that is broader traits are able to be differentiated into more fine-grained traits, in both humans and chimpanzees. Despite recent work suggesting a neural basis to personality in chimpanzees, little is known with regard to the involvement of limbic structures (i.e., amygdala and hippocampus), which are thought to play important roles in emotion. Using saved maximum likelihood estimated exploratory factor scores (two to five factors) in the context of a series of path analyses, the current study examined associations among personality dimensions across various levels of the personality hierarchy and individual variability of amygdala and hippocampal grey matter (GM) volume in a sample of captive chimpanzees (N=191). Whereas results revealed no association between personality dimensions and amygdala volume, a more nuanced series of associations emerged between hippocampal GM volume and personality dimensions at various levels of the hierarchy. Hippocampal GM volume associated most notably with Alpha (a dimension reflecting a tendency to behave in an undercontrolled and agonistic way) at the most basic two-factor level of the hierarchy; associated positively with Disinhibition at the next level of the hierarchy (“Big Three”); and finally, associated positively with Impulsivity at the most fine-grained level (“five-factor model”) of the hierarchy. Findings underscore the importance of the hippocampus in the neurobiological foundation of personality, with support for its regulatory role of emotion. Further, results suggest the importance of the distinction between structure and function, particularly with regard to the amygdala.

The stability of temperament from early childhood to early adolescence: A multi-method, multi-informant examination

Temperament is a core aspect of children's psychological functioning and is assumed to be at least somewhat stable across childhood. However, little research has assessed the stability of temperament from early childhood to early adolescence. Moreover, few studies have examined the influence of measurement and analytic methods on the stability of early temperament over periods of more than a few years. We obtained laboratory observations and mother and father reports of temperamental negative and positive emotionality and effortful control from 559 three-year olds. Approximately 9 years later, children and both parents completed questionnaire measures of similar temperament constructs. Zero-order correlations revealed greater within- than cross-informant stability. In addition, compared to parent reports, early childhood laboratory measures showed greater convergent and divergent validity with child, mother, and father reports at age 12. Finally, latent temperament variables at age 3 composed of laboratory and parent-report measures and latent variables at age 12 composed of parent and child reports showed moderate stability. There was also a weak but significant association of early effortful control with later negative and positive emotionality. Results have implications for assessing temperament and knowledge of the stability of temperament across childhood.

Delineating the joint hierarchical structure of clinical and personality disorders in an outpatient psychiatric sample

BACKGROUND

A large body of research has focused on identifying the optimal number of dimensions - or spectra - to model individual differences in psychopathology. Recently, it has become increasingly clear that ostensibly competing models with varying numbers of spectra can be synthesized in empirically derived hierarchical structures.

METHODS AND MATERIALS

We examined the convergence between top-down (bass-ackwards or sequential principal components analysis) and bottom-up (hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis) statistical methods for elucidating hierarchies to explicate the joint hierarchical structure of clinical and personality disorders. Analyses examined 24 clinical and personality disorders based on semi-structured clinical interviews in an outpatient psychiatric sample (n=2900).

RESULTS

The two methods of hierarchical analysis converged on a three-tier joint hierarchy of psychopathology. At the lowest tier, there were seven spectra - disinhibition, antagonism, core thought disorder, detachment, core internalizing, somatoform, and compulsivity - that emerged in both methods. These spectra were nested under the same three higher-order superspectra in both methods: externalizing, broad thought dysfunction, and broad internalizing. In turn, these three superspectra were nested under a single general psychopathology spectrum, which represented the top tier of the hierarchical structure.

CONCLUSIONS

The hierarchical structure mirrors and extends upon past research, with the inclusion of a novel compulsivity spectrum, and the finding that psychopathology is organized in three superordinate domains. This hierarchy can thus be used as a flexible and integrative framework to facilitate psychopathology research with varying levels of specificity (i.e., focusing on the optimal level of detailed information, rather than the optimal number of factors).

Constructing a short form of the hierarchical personality inventory for children (HiPIC): the HiPIC-30

Children's personality traits are invaluable predictors of concurrent and later mental and physical health. Several validated longer inventories for assessing the widely recognized Five-Factor Model of personality in children are available, but short forms are scarce. This study aimed at constructing a 30-item form of the 144-item Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) (Mervielde & De Fruyt, ). Participants were 1543 children aged 6-12 years (sample 1) and 3895 children aged 8 years (sample 2). Sample 1 completed the full HiPIC, from which we constructed the HiPIC-30, and the Child Behaviour Checklist (Achenbach, ). Sample 2 completed the HiPIC-30. The HiPIC-30 personality domains correlated over r = .90 with the full HiPIC domains, had good Cronbach's alphas and correlated similarly with CBCL behaviour problems and gender as the full HiPIC. The factor structures of the HiPIC-30 were convergent across samples, but the imagination factor was not clear-cut. We conclude that the HiPIC-30 is a reliable and valid questionnaire for the Five-Factor personality traits in children. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The contribution of genetics and early rearing experiences to hierarchical personality dimensions in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

A reliable literature finds that traits are related to each other in an organized hierarchy encompassing various conceptualizations of personality (e.g., Big Three, five-factor model). Recent work suggests the potential of a similar organization among our closest nonhuman relative, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), with significant links to neurobiology suggesting an evolutionarily and neurobiologically based hierarchical structure of personality. The current study investigated this hierarchical structure, the heritability of the various personality dimensions across levels of the hierarchy, and associations with early social rearing experience in a large sample (N = 238) of socially housed, captive chimpanzees residing in 2 independent colonies of apes. Results provide support for a hierarchical structure of personality in chimpanzees with significant associations with early rearing experiences. Further, heritabilities of the various dimensions varied by early rearing, with affective dimensions found to be significantly heritable among mother-reared apes, whereas personality dimensions were largely independent of relatedness among the nursery-reared apes. Taken together, these findings provide evidence for the influence of both genetic and environmental factors on personality profiles across levels of the hierarchy, supporting the importance of considering environmental variation in models of quantitative trait evolution.

Personality Traits in Childhood and Adolescence

Like adults, children and adolescents can be described in terms of personality traits: characteristic patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. We review recent research examining how youths’ specific behavioral tendencies cohere into broader traits, how these traits develop across childhood and adolescence, and how they relate to important biological, social, and health outcomes. We conclude that there are both key similarities and key differences between youth and adult personality traits, that youths’ personality traits help shape the course of their lives, and that a full understanding of youth personality traits will require additional research at the intersection of personality, developmental, and clinical psychology.

Premorbid risk factors for major depressive disorder: are they associated with early onset and recurrent course?

Premorbid risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) and predictors of an earlier onset and recurrent course were examined in two studies in a large, community-based sample of parents and offspring, prospectively assessed from late childhood into adulthood. In Study 1 (N = 2,764 offspring and their parents), parental psychiatric status, offspring personality at age 11, and age 11 offspring internalizing and externalizing symptoms predicted the subsequent development of MDD, as did poor quality parent-child relationships, poor academic functioning, early pubertal development, and childhood maltreatment by age 11. Parental MDD and adult antisocial behavior, offspring negative emotionality and disconstraint, externalizing symptoms, and childhood maltreatment predicted an earlier onset of MDD, after accounting for course; lower positive emotionality, trait anxiety, and childhood maltreatment predicted recurrent MDD, after accounting for age of onset. In Study 2 (N = 7,146), we examined molecular genetic risk for MDD by extending recent reports of associations with glutamatergic system genes. We failed to confirm associations with MDD using either individual single nucleotide polymorphism based tests or gene-based analyses. Overall, results speak to the pervasiveness of risk for MDD, as well as specific risk for early onset MDD; risk for recurrent MDD appears to be largely a function of its often earlier onset.

Personality and Psychopathology: A Stagnant Field in Need of Development

A dominant paradigm in psychopathology research proposes that individual differences in personality are centrally involved in the origins and manifestations of psychopathology, and structural models of personality and psychopathology have been extremely useful in helping to organize associations among many traits and disorders. However, these models merely describe patterns of covariation; they do not explain the processes by which these patterns emerge. We argue that the field is stagnated, as it is overly focused on the demonstration of concurrent associations and on confirming a spectrum model that proposes traits and disorders are manifestations of the same underlying constructs. We contend that if the field is to move toward an understanding of causal processes, it must integrate knowledge and principles of personality development and developmental psychopathology. To begin this integration, we review (1) normative trends in personality change, (2) age-related changes in the prevalence of disorders, and (3) the impact of onset and chronicity on the severity of disorders. We propose several developmental processes that may contribute to the co-development of personality and psychopathology. We then present novel empirical findings to illustrate how a developmental perspective on traits and disorders can inform new hypotheses, and propose principles and hypotheses that should guide future research.

Personality in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): exploring the hierarchical structure and associations with the vasopressin V1A receptor gene

One of the major contributions of recent personality psychology is the finding that traits are related to each other in an organized hierarchy. To date, however, researchers have yet to investigate this hierarchy in nonhuman primates. Such investigations are critical in confirming the cross-species nature of trait personality helping to illuminate personality as neurobiologically-based and evolutionarily-derived dimensions of primate disposition. Investigations of potential genetic polymorphisms associated with hierarchical models of personality among nonhuman primates represent a critical first step. The current study examined the hierarchical structure of chimpanzee personality as well as sex-specific associations with a polymorphism in the promoter region of the vasopressin V1a receptor gene (AVPR1A), a gene associated with dispositional traits, among 174 chimpanzees. Results confirmed a hierarchical structure of personality across species and, despite differences in early rearing experiences, suggest a sexually dimorphic role of AVPR1A polymorphisms on hierarchical personality profiles at a higher-order level.

Construct Validity of Adolescents’ Self-Reported Big Five Personality Traits

While there are a number of short personality trait measures that have been validated for use with adults, few are specifically validated for use with adolescents. To trust such measures, it must be demonstrated that they have adequate construct validity. According to the view of construct validity as a unifying form of validity requiring the integration of different complementary sources of information, this article reports the evaluation of content, factor, convergent, and criterion validities as well as reliability of adolescents’ self-reported personality traits. Moreover, this study sought to address an inherent potential limitation of short personality trait measures, namely their limited conceptual breadth. In this study, starting with items from a known measure, after the language-level was adjusted for use with adolescents, items tapping fundamental primary traits were added to determine the impact of added conceptual breadth on the psychometric properties of the scales. The resulting new measure was named the Big Five Personality Trait Short Questionnaire (BFPTSQ). A group of expert judges considered the items to have adequate content validity. Using data from a community sample of early adolescents, the results confirmed the factor validity of the Big Five structure in adolescence as well as its measurement invariance across genders. More important, the added items did improve the convergent and criterion validities of the scales, but did not negatively affect their reliability. This study supports the construct validity of adolescents’ self-reported personality traits and points to the importance of conceptual breadth in short personality measures.

Delineating personality traits in childhood and adolescence: associations across measures, temperament, and behavioral problems

The current investigation addressed several questions in the burgeoning area of child personality assessment. Specifically, the present study examined overlapping and nonoverlapping variance in two prominent measures of child personality assessment, followed by tests of convergent and divergent validity with child temperament and psychopathology. Informant report (72.1% mother) was obtained for a community sample of 803 youth (M age = 11.34 years; 51.6% female). The results revealed strong convergence between two empirically based measures of child personality traits, although some discrepancies were noted. The results from analyses predicting temperament and psychopathology were complex, suggesting that higher order child personality traits account for both shared and unique variance in these constructs, relative to one another. Overall, the current investigation provides a multifaceted contribution to evidence for construct validity of child personality traits and highlights the need for subsequent research in this area.

Structure of observed temperament in middle childhood

Although much is known about the structure of adult temperament and personality, significantly less is known about the structure of child temperament. We examined the structure of child temperament in 205 seven-year-olds using observational measures. Exploratory factor analysis identified factors representing positive emotionality/sociability, disinhibition/anger, fear/behavioral inhibition, and sadness. The predictive validity of these dimensions was evaluated by examining their associations with children's internalizing and externalizing symptoms: positive emotionality/sociability showed positive associations with ADHD symptoms, disinhibition/anger showed positive associations with externalizing symptoms, fear/behavioral inhibition showed negative associations with ADHD and CD symptoms, and sadness showed positive associations with both internalizing and externalizing problems. These associations were consistent with extant literature on temperament and psychopathology, supporting the validity of the structure obtained.

Traits in transition: the structure of parent-reported personality traits from early childhood to early adulthood

The present research was conducted to map the hierarchical structure of youths' personality traits, to identify the foundational level of this structure, and to test whether the meanings of some youth personality dimensions shift with age. We addressed these issues by analyzing personality parent reports describing a cross-sectional sample of 16,000 children, adolescents, and young adults (ages 3 to 20). These parent reports were made using a broadband measure of youths' personal characteristics, the common-language California Child Q-Set. Analyses of the full sample and comparisons of 16 age groups supported three main conclusions. First, the hierarchical structure of youths' personality traits both resembles and differs from the adult personality hierarchy in important ways. Second, a set of six dimensions--Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, and Activity--may constitute the foundational level of the youth personality hierarchy from middle childhood through adolescence. This "Little Six" structure represents a union of the most prominent personality and temperament dimensions. Third, the meanings of some youth personality dimensions (e.g., Activity, Conscientiousness) shift systematically with age. These findings advance our understanding of when and how personality structure develops during the first two decades of life.

The Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality for Youth (SNAP-Y): a new measure for assessing adolescent personality and personality pathology

The Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality-Youth Version (SNAP-Y) is a new, reliable self-report questionnaire that assesses 15 personality traits relevant to both normal-range personality and the alternative DSM-5 model for personality disorder. Community adolescents, 12 to 18 years old (N = 364), completed the SNAP-Y; 347 also completed the Big Five Inventory-Adolescent, 144 provided 2-week retest data, and 128 others completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent. Outpatient adolescents (N = 103) completed the SNAP-Y, and 97 also completed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-Adolescent. The SNAP-Y demonstrated strong psychometric properties, and structural, convergent, discriminant, and external validities. Consistent with the continuity of personality, results paralleled those in adult and college samples using the adult Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality-Second Edition (SNAP-2), from which the SNAP-Y derives and which has established validity in personality-trait assessment across the normal-abnormal continuum. The SNAP-Y thus provides a new, clinically useful instrument to assess personality traits and personality pathology in adolescents.

The hierarchical structure of childhood personality in five countries: continuity from early childhood to early adolescence

Childhood personality is a rapidly growing area of investigation within individual differences research. One understudied topic is the universality of the hierarchical structure of childhood personality. In the present investigation, parents rated the personality characteristics of 3,751 children from 5 countries and 4 age groups. The hierarchical structure of childhood personality was examined for 1-, 2-, 3-, 4-, and 5-factor models across country (Canada, China, Greece, Russia, and the United States) and age group (3-5, 6-8, 9-11, and 12-14 years of age). Many similarities were noted across both country and age. The Five-Factor Model was salient beginning in early childhood (ages 3-5). Deviations across groups and from adult findings are noted, including the prominent role of antagonism in childhood personality and the high covariation between Conscientiousness and intellect. Future directions, including the need for more explicit attempts to merge temperament and personality models, are discussed.

Adolescent substance use groups: antecedent and concurrent personality differences in a longitudinal study

This study attempted to extend Shedler and Block's (1990) influential study, which found that adolescent drug experimenters had the healthiest personality functioning compared to abstainers and frequent users. Using a prospective design, we examined the relationship between antecedent and concurrent personality and age-18 substance use in a community sample of 1,298 twins (96% Caucasian, 49% male). Personality measures at ages 11 and 18 assessed positive emotionality (agentic and communal), negative emotionality, and constraint. Substance use groups-abstainers, experimenters, and problem users-were created at age 18. Age-18 substance use groups differed in age-11 and age-18 constraint such that problem users were lower than experimenters, who were lower than abstainers. Age-18 substance use groups did not differ in age-18 positive emotionality. However, abstainers were significantly lower than experimenters in communal positive emotionality, whereas female abstainers scored higher in agentic positive emotionality than female experimenters, who scored higher than female problem users. Experimenters were significantly lower in negative emotionality than problem users. Our findings are inconsistent with the notion that experimenters had the healthiest personality functioning and instead suggest different strengths and weaknesses for each group. Future studies should examine agentic and communal positive emotionality separately.

Relationship between personality change and the onset and course of alcohol dependence in young adulthood

AIMS

To examine the reciprocal effects between the onset and course of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and normative changes in personality traits of behavioral disinhibition and negative emotionality during the transition between adolescence and young adulthood.

DESIGN

Longitudinal-epidemiological study assessing AUD and personality at ages 17 and 24 years.

SETTING

Participants were recruited from the community and took part in a day-long, in-person assessment.

PARTICIPANTS

Male (n = 1161) and female (n = 1022) twins participating in the Minnesota Twin Family Study.

MEASUREMENTS

The effects of onset (adolescent versus young adult) and course (persistent versus desistent) of AUD on change in personality traits of behavioral disinhibition and negative emotionality from ages 17 to 24 years.

FINDINGS

Onset and course of AUD moderated personality change from ages 17 to 24 years. Adolescent onset AUD was associated with greater decreases in behavioral disinhibition. Those with an adolescent onset and persistent course failed to exhibit normative declines in negative emotionality. Desistence was associated with a 'recovery' towards psychological maturity in young adulthood, while persistence was associated with continued personality dysfunction. Personality traits at age 11 predicted onset and course of AUD, indicating personality differences were not due to active substance abuse.

CONCLUSIONS

Personality differences present prior to initiation of alcohol use increase risk for alcohol use disorder, but the course of alcohol use disorder affects the rate of personality change during emerging adulthood. Examining the reciprocal effects of personality and alcohol use disorder within a developmental context is necessary to improve understanding for theory and intervention.

Parent informants for child personality: agreement, discrepancies, and clinical utility

A long-standing issue in child clinical research is the integration of various informants, but this topic has not been comprehensively applied to the domain of child personality. Mothers and fathers rated their children (N = 346) on personality traits and behavioral problems. Mother-father agreement was highest for Conscientiousness and lowest for Neuroticism and Agreeableness. Each parent's ratings added incremental variance in predicting behavioral problems, and mother-father discrepancy predicted internalizing problems. These results suggest that both parents should be used as informants in child personality assessment and discrepancies might reflect meaningful variance with clinical utility.

Two Superordinate Personality Factors in Childhood

The study presents the superordinate structure of personality measured by the Inventory of Child Individual Differences (ICID) and its links with behavioural approach system (BAS) and behavioural inhibition system (BIS), problem behaviour and family environment measures in parent reports of 1780 Russian children aged 3–17 years and 573 adolescent self–reports. Two higher–order factors, α comprising Agreeableness, Conscientiousness and Neuroticism (reversed), and β comprising Openness, Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Emotional Stability, were confirmed across gender and age. Structural model linking BAS with α and BIS with β was supported. α was negatively associated with externalising problems and β was negatively related to internalising problems. The links with family cohesion, punishment, westernisation and affluence supported the external validity of the Big Two. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The structure of DSM-IV ADHD, ODD, and CD criteria in adolescent boys: a hierarchical approach

Numerous studies have examined the structure of the childhood externalizing disorder symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD), and Conduct Disorder (CD), both separately as well as simultaneously. The present study expanded on previous findings by implementing a multi-level hierarchical approach to investigating the component structure of ADHD, ODD, and CD criteria in 487 14-year-old boys from the Minnesota Twin Family Study (MTFS). We found support for a hierarchical conceptualization of externalizing behavior criteria in early adolescent boys by specifying how one-, two-, three-, four-, five- and six-factor models of externalizing criteria can be integrated. These results suggest that it may be more beneficial to conceptualize different levels of this hierarchy as relevant to different issues in case conceptualization and research design, from the broad level of an overall externalizing spectrum, to the level of finer-grained subtypes within specific disorders.

Assessing the Five Factors of Personality in Adolescents

This article presents the development of a junior version of the Spanish (Castilian) NEO Personality Inventory–Revised (JS NEO) suitable for adolescents aged 12 to 18 years. The psychometric properties of the new JS NEO were investigated using two samples of 2,733 and 983 adolescents in Spain. The results showed that the adult NEO-PI-R factor structure was replicated with the junior version of the inventory and that the reliabilities of the scales were adequate. The cross-form correlations between the junior and the adult versions of the questionnaires indicated good equivalence indices. Furthermore, a joint factor analysis of the JS NEO and the Big Five Questionnaire–Children (BFQ-C) provided additional evidence for the construct validity of the JS NEO.

Differential stability of temperament and personality from toddlerhood to middle childhood

This prospective, longitudinal investigation examined differential consistency of three core dimensions of individuality from toddlerhood through middle childhood. Data came from 273 families who participated with their child at least once during three developmental periods: toddlerhood (2 years), early childhood (3 to 5 years), and middle childhood (6 to 10 years). Both mothers and fathers reported on attributes of their child using subscales from the Toddler Behavior Assessment Questionnaire, the Child Behavior Questionnaire, and the Iowa Personality Questionnaire. Reports were used as indicators of the latent "Big Three" dimensions of positive emotionality, negative emotionality, and constraint at each of the three developmental periods. Results pointed to consistency in these broad dimensions of temperament and personality from toddlerhood to middle childhood.

Refinements in the hierarchical structure of externalizing psychiatric disorders: Patterns of lifetime liability from mid-adolescence through early adulthood

Research on hierarchical modeling of psychopathology has frequently identified 2 higher order latent factors, internalizing and externalizing. When based on the comorbidity of psychiatric diagnoses, the externalizing domain has usually been modeled as a single latent factor. Multivariate studies of externalizing symptom features, however, suggest multidimensionality. To address this apparent contradiction, confirmatory factor analytic methods and information-theoretic criteria were used to evaluate 4 theoretically plausible measurement models based on lifetime comorbidity patterns of 7 putative externalizing disorders. Diagnostic information was collected at 4 assessment waves from an age-based cohort of 816 persons between the ages of 14 and 33. A 2-factor model that distinguished oppositional behavior disorders (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, oppositional defiant disorder) from social norm violation disorders (conduct disorder, adult antisocial behavior, alcohol use disorder, cannabis use disorder, hard drug use disorder) demonstrated consistently good fit and superior approximating abilities. Analyses of psychosocial outcomes measured at the last assessment wave supported the validity of this 2-factor model. Implications of this research for the theoretical understanding of domain-related disorders and the organization of classification systems are discussed.

A unifying perspective on personality pathology across the life span: developmental considerations for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

Proposed changes in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) include replacing current personality disorder (PD) categories on Axis II with a taxonomy of dimensional maladaptive personality traits. Most of the work on dimensional models of personality pathology, and on personality disorders per se, has been conducted on young and middle-aged adult populations. Numerous questions remain regarding the applicability and limitations of applying various PD models to early and later life. In the present paper, we provide an overview of such dimensional models and review current proposals for conceptualizing PDs in DSM-V. Next, we extensively review existing evidence on the development, measurement, and manifestation of personality pathology in early and later life focusing on those issues deemed most relevant for informing DSM-V. Finally, we present overall conclusions regarding the need to incorporate developmental issues in conceptualizing PDs in DSM-V and highlight the advantages of a dimensional model in unifying PD perspectives across the life span.