Projects
Personality Extremes in Children & Teens
Recent research has used psychometric methods to test the hypothesis that personality disorder traits are maladaptive extreme variants of general personality traits. These studies have shown that "general" and "abnormal" traits actually overlap significantly, though there is some evidence that pathological traits are somewhat more extreme. In this Registered Report, we plan to test the continuity between general and pathological personality in a large sample of children and teens.
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Child Personality Facets and Dimensions of Psychopathology
Big Five personality traits both predict who is likely to develop psychiatric disorders in the future and contribute to our understanding of the etiological bases of psychopathology. However, recent research in adults indicates that facets--or narrower trait descriptors that make up broader traits--may better predict psychopathology due to their increased specificity.
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In this study, we investigate how personality facets are related to a variety of manifestations of child psychopathology. First, we are interested in whether all facets within each Big Five domain are equally related to psychopathology, or if some facets are better predictors than others. Second, we are interested in whether some facet-level traits are unique to specific disorders (e.g., if positive emotionality is unique to depression) or if they are characteristic of higher-order spectra (e.g., internalizing disorders).
Developmental Models of the Personality & Psychopathology Relationship
People with particular kinds of psychopathology tend to have certain personality features in common, but why these relationships exist is less clear. Do certain personality traits serve as vulnerability factors for the development of future disorders? Does the experience of psychopathology alter future personality development? Or are personality and psychopathology part of a shared continuum?
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In this study, we examine multiple of these questions in a longitudinal study of children in the transition to adolescence, leveraging facet-level personality measurement to gain fine-grained insights into why traits and psychopathology are related.
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