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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. Towards a more comprehensive account, this study examines how personality develops from adolescence into emerging 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 five times from ages 14–23. 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: (1) 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; (2) comparable levels of rank-order consistency for metatraits, domains and facets; and (3) 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.

Sleep disturbance is associated with elevated suicidal ideation and negative affect. To date, however, no study has investigated the temporal relationship between sleep and suicidality among those diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD). This preregistered (https://osf.io/4vugk) study tested whether nightly sleep (self-reported sleep duration, sleep onset latency, and subjective sleep quality) represents a (within-person) short-term risk factor for affective dysregulation and increases in suicide risk from day-to-day, as well as whether between-person differences in sleep, negative affect, and suicidality were associated. We used a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol in a sample of 153 people diagnosed with BPD, 105 of which had a history of serious suicide attempts, and 52 healthy controls (N = 4076 days). We found a within-person association between worse subjective sleep quality and greater next-day negative affect. At the between-person level, we found positive relationships between sleep latency and suicidal ideation, and a negative association between subjective sleep quality and negative affect. BPD severity did not significantly moderate the strength of any within-person associations, although BPD was positively associated with average levels of suicidal ideation, sleep latency, and negative affect, and negatively related to subjective sleep quality. These findings suggest that the association of sleep with suicidal ideation and BPD exists largely at the between-persons rather than the within-person level. Disturbed sleep, therefore, seems to largely coincide, rather than specifically contribute to, the exacerbation of suicidal crises in BPD. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Previous studies demonstrate a link between irritability and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in youth samples. However, they have mostly assessed irritability in community samples and as a largely dispositional (i.e., trait-like) construct. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent links between irritability and STBs reflect within-person processes of elevated risk in clinically meaningful time periods. The present study used clinical data from 689 adolescents aged 12 to 19 years attending a total of 6128 visits at a specialty Intensive Outpatient Program for depressed and suicidal youth to examine patterns in weekly assessments of irritability and STBs throughout treatment, including associations among trends and fluctuations departing from these trends. Youth completed validated self-report measures of irritability, depression and STBs weekly as part of standard IOP clinical care. Overall, two-thirds of variance in weekly irritable mood was accounted for by stable between-person differences, and the remaining portion to weekly fluctuations. After controlling for depression, during weeks when youth were more irritable they experienced increased STBs. At the same time, youth who were generally more irritable also tended to experience more STBs. Rates of change in irritability and STBs tended to track together at early stages of treatment, but these effects were generally accounted for by depression severity. Our results suggest that although changes in STBs are best accounted for by depression, irritability can be understood as a specific, proximal risk factor for youth STBs that exacerbates youth STBs in clinically informative timeframes above and beyond depression.

Background Symptoms of social anxiety rise rapidly during adolescence, particularly for girls. Pervasive displays of parental negative affect may increase adolescents' fear of negative evaluation (FNE), thereby increasing risk for social anxiety symptoms. Adolescent displays of negative affect may also exacerbate parents' social anxiety symptoms (via FNE of their child or their parenting skills), yet little research has tested transactional pathways of transmission in families. By early adolescence, rates of parent-child conflict rise, and offspring become increasingly independent in their own displays of negative affect, increasing opportunities for hypothesized transactional pathways between parent-adolescent displays of negative affect and social anxiety symptoms. Methods This study included 129 parents and daughters (11-13; no baseline social anxiety disorder), two-thirds of whom were at high risk for social anxiety due to a shy/fearful temperament. We used actor-partner interdependence models (APIM) to test whether displays of negative facial affect, assessed individually for each parent and daughter during a conflict discussion, would predict their partner's social anxiety symptoms two years later. Automated facial affect coding assessed the frequency of negative affect during the discussion. Clinician ratings of social anxiety symptoms were completed at baseline and two-year follow-up. Results Both parents and daughters who displayed more frequent negative facial affect at baseline had partners with higher follow-up social anxiety symptoms, an effect that was maintained after accounting for actors' and partners' baseline symptoms. Conclusions Findings are consistent with intergenerational models positing that parental negative affective behaviors increase risk for adolescent social anxiety symptoms but also suggest that adolescent negative facial affect may exacerbate parental social anxiety symptoms. These bidirectional effects improve understanding of how social anxiety is maintained within a transactional family structure and highlight that displays of negative affect during parent-adolescent interaction may warrant future examination as a potential treatment target for adolescent social anxiety.

ispartof: CRISIS-THE JOURNAL OF CRISIS INTERVENTION AND SUICIDE PREVENTION vol:43 issue:5 pages:355-360 ispartof: location:Canada status: published

BackgroundSuicide rates are high in borderline personality disorder (BPD) where interpersonal problems trigger intense affective dysregulation and impulses to act on suicidal thoughts. To date, however, no study has examined how interpersonal stressors contribute to momentary within-person links among affect and impulsivity with suicidal ideation (SI), and how those links vary over time in people's daily lives.MethodsA total of 153 individuals diagnosed with BPD and 52 healthy controls completed a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol. Of these 153 individuals with BPD, 105 had a history of suicide attempts. Multilevel structural equation modeling was used to examine dynamic links among interpersonal perceptions, affect, state impulsivity, and suicidal intent.ResultsAggregated across interactions, lower perceived warmth in others was associated with SI. This direct relationship, however, did not extend to momentary within-person associations. Instead, interpersonal conflicts were linked to SI indirectly via greater negative affect and lower positive affect. While a robust within-person link between interpersonal perceptions and impulsivity emerged, impulsivity did not account for the relationship between interpersonal perceptions and SI.ConclusionThis intensive longitudinal study illustrates momentary interpersonal signatures of an emerging suicidal crisis. Among people with BPD at high risk for suicide, interpersonal triggers initiate a cascade of affective dysregulation, which in turn gives rise to SI.

There is general agreement that personality pathology has its roots in childhood and adolescence, though little is known about the manifestation of maladaptive personality traits in the daily lives of youth. The DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) provides a set of traits useful for organizing behavioral and experiential patterns central to daily personality functioning. Thus, the goal of the present study was to evaluate interpersonal and affective manifestations indicative of AMPD traits via ambulatory assessments in the daily lives of adolescent girls. Parents and girls (N=129; age: M=12.27, SD=.80) provided baseline assessments of girls’ personality pathology trait constructs (negative affectivity, detachment, antagonism, disinhibition, psychoticism). Additionally, girls completed a 16-day ecological momentary assessment protocol, rating behaviors and experiences characteristic of interpersonal interactions in their daily lives. Overall, daily processes were related to each other in plausible directions, both the within- as well as the between-person level. Adolescent- and parent-reported AMPD traits were positively and strongly related to negative affect in daily interpersonal situations. Furthermore, girls’ trait ratings were associated with boredom, disappointment in others, as well as social reward. Parent-reports complemented this perspective of dissatisfying social interactions, suggesting that especially disinhibition, detachment and antagonism accounted for lower levels of social connectedness, activity, and reward in daily life. Results are discussed in terms of their contribution to our understanding of personality pathology from a developmental perspective.

We would like to express our concern regarding the recently published study in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry by Karl Sallin, Kathinka Evers, Håkan Jarbin, Lars Joelsson, and Predrag Petrovic entitled “ Separation and not residency permit restores function in resignation syndrome: a retrospective cohort study ”.

Over the past 20 years, ambulatory assessment (AA) has become an important part of the methodological repertoire of clinical psychological research. AA allows to repeatedly assess behaviors and subjective experiences in peoples’ everyday lives. The popularity of the method stems from the fact that AA facilitates modeling (dys)functional behavioral patterns consistent with clinical theory as an ensemble of contextualized dynamic within-person processes, such as under what circumstances and how relevant socio-affective responses may become disrupted or how specific symptoms are expressed in daily life. Because data collected via AA closely mirrors peoples’ typical behavioral spectra, data collected via AA are characterized by increased generalizability. In this paper, we illustrate how AA can contribute to more accurate and ecologically valid descriptive models of developmental psychopathology. With this in mind, we describe the utility of AA for empirically tests of clinically established etiological and maintenance models of developmental psychopathology and conclude with a discussion of the potential utility of AA for individualized interventions in the everyday lives of affected children, adolescents, and their families.

Several personality traits increase the risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Because many of these traits are correlated, their associations with disease risk could reflect shared variance, rather than unique contributions of each trait. We examined a higher-order personality trait of Stability as related to preclinical atherosclerosis and tested whether any such relationship might be explained by correlated variation in cardiometabolic risk factors.Among 798 community volunteers, lower-order traits of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were modeled as latent variables (from self- and informant ratings) and used to estimate the second-order factor, Stability. Cardiometabolic risk was similarly modeled from indicators of glycemic control, blood pressure, adiposity, and lipids. Carotid artery atherosclerosis was measured as intima-media thickness (IMT) by duplex ultrasonography.A structural equation model incorporating direct and indirect effects showed lower Stability associated with greater IMT, and this relationship was accounted for by the indirect pathway via cardiometabolic risk. Secondary analyses showed that: (1) Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were unrelated to IMT independent of Stability; and (2) Stability predicted variation in IMT when estimated from informant-, but not self-rated, traits.Personality traits may associate with atherosclerotic burden through their shared, rather than unique, variance, as reflected in Stability.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders’ (5th Edition) Alternative Model of Personality Disorders includes a dimensional trait model to describe individual differences in the manifestation of personality pathology. Empirically derived quantitative trait models of psychopathology address many of the structural problems of classical diagnostic schemes (e.g., nonbinary distributions, excessive comorbidity, and diagnostic heterogeneity). However, they are largely based on the structure of individual differences in the manifestation of psychopathology. In contrast, clinical theories of personality disorder, which are the foundation of intervention efforts, are based on the function of maladaptive behavior. This distinction is akin to the difference between morphology and physiology in the broader biological sciences. A structure-function divide in the focus of empirical and clinical work contributes to a lack of integration and difficulties with translation. Here we discuss this tension and argue for the need to bridge this divide and adopt research efforts that integrate structure and function of personality traits. Specifically, we suggest that between-person structure identifies the principal domains of functioning, but to understand dysfunction personality must be conceptualized and studied as an ensemble of contextualized dynamic processes.

Acute risk of death by suicide manifests in heightened suicidal ideation in certain contexts and time periods. These increases are thought to emerge from complex and mutually reinforcing relationships between dispositional vulnerability factors and individually suicidogenic short-term stressors. Together, these processes inform clinical safety planning and our therapeutic tools accommodate a reasonable degree of idiosyncrasy when we individualize interventions. Unraveling these multifaceted factors and processes on a quantitative level, however, requires estimation frameworks capable of representing idiosyncrasies relevant to intervention and psychotherapy. Using, data from a 21-day ambulatory assessment protocol that included six random prompts per day, we developed personalized (i.e., idiographic) models of interacting risk factors and suicidal ideation via Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (GIMME) in a sample of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (N = 95) stratified for a history of high lethality suicide attempts. Our models revealed high levels of heterogeneity in state risk factors related to suicidal ideation, with no features shared among the majority of participants or even among relatively homogenous clusters of participants (i.e., empirically derived subgroups). We discuss steps toward clinical implementation of personalized models, which can eventually capture suicidogenic changes in proximal risk factors and inform safety planning and interventions.

Background: This preregistered (https://osf.io/g9ajb) study sought to integrate the current literature on trait compulsivity into maintenance models of driven exercise in anorexia nervosa (AN). We tested whether compulsivity increases the likelihood of driven exercise via interpersonal and affect-regulatory pathways. Methods: We used multilevel structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis that trait compulsivity predicts a stronger within-person link between affect-regulatory difficulties or interpersonal sensitivity and driven exercise in female adolescents and adults with AN. We used data from five assessments across inpatient treatment and 6-months follow-up of 207 adult and adolescent patients with AN (1036 datapoints).Results: In line with our hypotheses, patients who generally experienced more affect-regulatory difficulties or stronger interpersonal sensitivity tended to engage in more driven exercise. Moreover, high levels of trait compulsivity amplified the effect of interpersonal sensitivity on driven exercise across time. Contrary to our hypotheses, the link between affect regulation and driven exercise was not moderated by compulsivity. Similar effects on general ED psychopathology were found, but no cross-level moderation of compulsivity.Limitations: Due to sample size, potential age- and subtype-dependent effects were not analyzed. Conclusion: Our results suggest that driven exercise coincides with self-reported experiences of interpersonal sensitivity and that this link varies as a function of compulsivity such that the within-person coupling is stronger among those scoring high on compulsivity. To derive clinically useful functional models of driven exercise, future studies might use intensive longitudinal data to investigate its momentary associations with affect and interpersonal sensitivity in the context of compulsive traits.

Acute risk of death by suicide manifests in heightened suicidal ideation in certain contexts and time periods. These increases are thought to emerge from complex and mutually reinforcing relationships between dispositional vulnerability factors and individually suicidogenic short-term stressors. Together, these processes inform clinical safety planning and our therapeutic tools accommodate a reasonable degree of idiosyncrasy when we individualize interventions. Unraveling these multifaceted factors and processes on a quantitative level, however, requires estimation frameworks capable of representing idiosyncrasies relevant to intervention and psychotherapy. Using, data from a 21-day ambulatory assessment protocol that included six random prompts per day, we developed personalized (i.e., idiographic) models of interacting risk factors and suicidal ideation via Group Iterative Multiple Model Estimation (GIMME) in a sample of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (N=95) stratified for a history of high lethality suicide attempts. Our models revealed high levels of heterogeneity in state risk factors related to suicidal ideation, with no features shared among the majority of participants or even among relatively homogenous clusters of participants (i.e., empirically derived subgroups). We discuss steps toward clinical implementation of personalized models, which can eventually capture suicidogenic changes in proximal risk factors and inform safety planning and interventions.

Background: Several personality traits increase risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Because many of these traits are correlated, their associations with disease risk could reflect shared variance, rather than unique contributions of each trait. We examined a higher-order personality trait of Stability as related to preclinical atherosclerosis and tested whether any such relationship might be explained by correlated variation in cardiometabolic risk factors.Method: Among 798 community volunteers, lower-order traits of Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were modeled as latent variables (from self- and informant ratings) and used to estimate the second-order factor, Stability. Cardiometabolic risk was similarly modeled from indicators of glycemic control, blood pressure, adiposity, and lipids. Carotid artery atherosclerosis was measured as intima-media thickness (IMT) by duplex ultrasonography.Results: A structural equation model incorporating direct and indirect effects showed lower Stability associated with greater IMT, and that this relationship was accounted for by the indirect pathway via cardiometabolic risk. Secondary analyses showed that: 1) Neuroticism, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were unrelated to IMT independent of Stability; and 2) Stability predicted variation in IMT when estimated from informant-, but not self-rated, traits.Conclusion: Personality traits may associate with atherosclerotic burden through their shared, rather than unique, variance, as reflected in Stability.

How do individuals resist suicidal urges in a crisis? Deterrents for suicide can be conceptualized as reasons for living (RFL), but our understanding of their protective effects is predominantly informed by cross-sectional research. We examined the protective effects of RFL on suicidal ideation (SI) in daily life in a high-risk sample. We also tested whether personality traits moderated the strength of the dynamic RFL-SI link. Adults with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis (N=153, n suicide attempters=105) completed a 21-day ambulatory assessment protocol. Daily endorsements of RFL were negatively linked to SI at the within-person but not the between-person level. Whereas suicide attempters endorsed RFL less frequently than non-attempters, the protective effect of RFL was undiminished in this group. Furthermore, RFL’s protective effect was particularly pronounced in those with higher average levels of suicidal ideation. While people high on openness and extraversion endorsed RFL more often, this increase was not protective against SI, indicating that RFL reflect heterogeneous underlying psychological processes, only some of which protect against SI.

The Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) project's success rests on the assumption that constructs and data can be integrated across units of analysis and developmental stages. We adopted a psychoneurometric approach to establish biobehavioral liability models of sensitivity to social threat, a key component of potential threat that is particularly salient to the development of adolescent affective psychopathology. Models were derived from measures across four units of analysis in a community sample (n = 129) of 11- to 13-year-old girls oversampled for shy/fearful temperament. To test the ecological validity of derived factors, they were then related to real-world socioaffective processes in peer interactions over a 16-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol. Our results indicate that measures (i.e., amygdala reactivity to negative social feedback, eye-tracking bias toward social threat, parent- and adolescent-reports of social threat sensitivity) formed unit-specific factors, rather than one unified factor. These findings suggest that these factors were largely unrelated. Amygdala response to social punishment and attention bias toward threatening faces predicted real-world experiences with peers, suggesting that vigilance toward potentially threatening social information could be a mechanism through which vulnerable youth come to experience their peer interactions more negatively. We discuss measurement challenges confronting efforts to quantify developmentally sensitive RDoC constructs across units of analysis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Suicidality is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD), yet little work has accounted for why only a small subset of those that have thoughts of suicide, commit suicide. In this study we compared early stage suicidal crises, where affective disturbance is linked to suicidal ideation at the within-person level (i.e., suicidal surges) across suicide attempters and non-attempters. We used multilevel structural equation modeling to test the hypothesis that a history of attempted suicide predicts a stronger dynamic link of daily affect and impulsivity with suicidal ideation. 141 patients diagnosed with BPD, 97 of which had a history of medically serious suicide attempts, and 52 healthy controls completed a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol (N=3790 days). All models suggested that people generally experiencing more negative and less positive affect and high in impulsivity, also tend to ideate more about suicide on average. Moreover, within-person associations of negative and positive affect with suicidal ideation (i.e., suicidal surges) were greater among attempters in comparison to non-attempters, and healthy controls. This suggests that the diathesis for suicidal behavior is expressed in the dynamic processes linking affect and suicidal ideation. Because these within-person links were amplified in attempters compared to non-attempters, suicidal surges may index specific, potentially lethal, processes that generalize beyond BPD and may have clinical value as predictors of suicidal risk.

Self-regulation, especially the regulation of emotion, is an important component of athletic performance. In our study, we tested the effect of a self-distancing strategy on athletes’ performance in an aggression-inducing experimental task in the laboratory. To this end, we modified an established paradigm of interpersonal provocation [Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP)], which has the potential to complement field studies in order to increase our understanding of effective emotion regulation of athletes in critical situations in competitions. In our experimental setting, we first tested the applicability of the self-distancing perspective and the athletes’ ability to dynamically adapt besides the self-distanced perspective a self-immersed perspective to provocation in the TAP. Secondly, we investigated how this altered perspective modulated regulatory abilities of negative affectivity, anger, and aggression. The experiment consisted of two conditions in which the participant adopted either a self-immersed or a self-distanced perspective. Forty athletes (female: 23; male: 17) from different team (n = 27) and individual sports (n = 13) with a mean age of 23.83 years (SD = 3.41) competed individually in a reaction-time task against a (fictitious) opponent. Results show that athletes are equally able to adopt both perspectives. In addition, within-person analyses indicate that self-distancing decreased aggressive behavior and negative affect compared to the self-immersed perspective. Our results suggest that self-distancing modulates different levels of athletes’ experience (i.e., affect and anger) and behavior. Furthermore, this demonstrates the feasibility of testing self-regulation of emotion in athletes in a laboratory setting and allows for further application in research in sports and exercise psychology.

Background: The specific processes through which social support exerts its influence in daily life are not well understood. Arguably, its salutary effects as an environmental variable might be construed as shared effects of personality in daily life. Method: To test this possibility, we investigated the unique and shared effects of extraversion and neuroticism and perceived and received social support on daily stressor exposure related to task demand and social conflicts, corresponding stress experiences, and the within-person association of both with perceived stress (i.e., stress reactivity) across two 2-day periods (N=391). Results: In line with our preregistered hypotheses, both personality and perceived social support predicted daily stressor exposure, and moderated within-person effects of daily stressors on perceived stress. Contrary to our hypotheses, enacted social support had no effect on daily stress processes. When extraversion, neuroticism, and social support were added as joint predictors, neuroticism and extraversion were related to stressor exposure, and moderated the within-person link of stress reactivity, while perceived social support had an incremental beneficial effect on social conflict exposure and stress appraisal. Conclusion: We found that social support does not increment the well-established relationships between neuroticism or extraversion and stress reactivity. In our discussion, we emphasize possible limitations to these findings when studying both constructs simultaneously.

Highlights • Bipolar disorder is characterized by impaired processing of social fairness. • BD patients exhibit increased rejection of moderate unfairness in Ultimatum Game. • BD patients display decreased response to moderate unfairness in anterior insula. • BD patients deactivate posterior and middle insula in response to unfairness. • Trait impulsivity positively correlated with deactivations in posterior insula., Bipolar Disorder (BD) has a debilitating impact on psychosocial functioning and social decision-making. Recent evidence using the Ultimatum Game (UG) has shown increased rejection of moderately unfair offers in BD, suggesting impaired processing of ambiguous social information related to fairness. The present study builds upon this finding to investigate the neural substrates of fairness processing in BD. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning, euthymic BD patients (n = 41) and matched healthy controls (HC; n = 41) accepted or rejected very unfair, moderately unfair, or fair offers in the UG. Acceptance rates of moderately unfair offers were significantly lower in BD patients. This aberrant behavior co-occurred with abnormal brain responses to moderately unfair offers. Compared to HC, BD patients exhibited hypoactivation of right anterior insula in response to moderately unfair offers suggesting impaired integration of affective and contextual information. BD patients also displayed stronger deactivation of posterior and middle insula in response to moderately unfair offers reflecting impaired processing of the contextual aspects of fairness. The level of impulsivity of BD patients positively correlated with the abnormal deactivation of posterior and middle insula. A separate analysis revealed increased activation of dorsal ACC and left ventrolateral PFC in response to rejected compared to accepted offers in BD patients. Taken together, our findings suggest impaired processing of ambiguous social information in euthymic BD patients which is associated with increased rejection of moderately unfair offers. This impairment may reflect a failure to integrate contextual information and may be related to increased trait impulsivity.

Social media sites are overflowing with millions of selfies, because people increasingly share what they do and who they are with the rest of the world. We examined whether self-expressions based on selfies elicit enhanced, consensual and accurate interpersonal perceptions compared to commonly employed laboratory conditions. Perceived narcissism was relatively higher and conscientiousness lower when ratings were based on selfies. This effect did not extend to the accuracy of ratings: Across all conditions, unacquainted observers agreed with each other and their ratings were correlated with a criterion measure of target personality. Except for agreeableness and self-esteem, accuracy correlations were somewhat higher when ratings were based on selfies. Randomization-based exploratory lens-model analyses were conducted to bolster the interpretation of our results.

Insecure attachment and borderline personality disorder (BPD) are defined by similar affective and interpersonal processes. Individuals diagnosed with BPD, however, represent only a subset of those described as insecurely attached, suggesting that attachment may hold broader relevance for socio-affective functioning. Based on a 21-day ecological momentary assessment protocol in a mixed clinical and community sample (N = 207) oversampled for BPD, we evaluate the discriminant validity of each construct as it influences daily interpersonal interactions. We find that insecure attachment is associated with elevated perceptions of interpersonal disaffiliation and maladaptive strategies for affect regulation, whereas enacted interpersonal hostility is more distinctive for BPD. In a series of sensitivity analyses, we further highlight potential caveats to these findings when studying both constructs concurrently. Together, our results suggest that both insecure attachment and BPD contribute to problematic affective and interpersonal processes, but that they do so at different stages of the unfolding social interaction, which has important implications for their maintenance and treatment.

Firefighters are frequently exposed to highly stressful, potentially traumatic events (PTEs). More than 50%, however, show no significant elevation in trauma-related symptomatology (e.g., depression). In the past, self-compassion has been discussed to promote psychological and behavioral flexibility that is vital to a successful adaptation to PTEs. The goal of this study was to understand whether and how self-compassion may alleviate personal suffering in the face of PTEs. We hypothesized that individuals who encounter their profession-related affective experiences with greater self-compassion, show lower levels of depressive symptoms because self-compassion buffers processes that perpetuate negative affectivity in response to PTEs (i.e., self-critical tendencies). Male firefighters (N = 123) completed self-report questionnaires about the severity of current depressive symptoms; prior traumatic, duty-related events; and the self-compassion scale that assesses two distinct factors: self-criticism and self-compassion. A stepwise regression model was employed to examine differential and interactive contributions of self-criticism and self-compassion to symptoms of depression across the cumulative range of exposure to PTEs. Our results indicate that the positive association between self-criticism and depression is buffered by enhanced levels of self-compassion. This moderation, however, only emerged for firefighters with substantial amounts of PTEs experience in the past. The present work provides insight into protective effects of self-compassion in the face of cumulative PTEs. It suggests that, particularly for severely trauma-exposed firefighters, self-compassion may confer resilience, that is, act as a protective factor from the development of depressive symptoms. Findings are discussed in light of counseling implications. (PsycINFO Database Record

Objective Diagnoses of personality disorders (PD) must rely on judgments of observers-either clinicians or acquaintances-because personality disorders are primarily defined in terms of maladaptive interpersonal behavior. Little is known, however, about how closely acquaintances' judgments of PD traits relate to self-reports of theoretically relevant Big Five traits or directly observed behavioral outcomes in interpersonal situations. The present study examines associations between judgments of the 10 PD traits provided by close acquaintances, self-reports of PD-relevant Big Five personality traits, and observed interpersonal behaviors across three different three-person laboratory interactions (i.e., unstructured chat, cooperative task, competitive game). Method The sample consisted of 256 undergraduate students (130 females; Mage = 19.83, SD = 1.25). Four unacquainted observers independently rated participants' behaviors from video recordings. Results In line with previous work, informant reports of PD traits demonstrate strong convergent validity with relevant self-reported Big Five traits (as identified by Lynam & Widiger, 2001). Directly observed behavior is meaningfully associated with acquaintances' judgments and self-reports of PD-relevant traits, and the associations between these judgments and behavior are strongest for traits associated with histrionic and schizoid PD. Vector correlations between behavioral profiles associated with informant and self-reports show that both assessments have similar behavioral correlates. Associations between PD trait ratings and behavior appeared to differ as a function of gender, with males showing more and stronger correlations. Conclusions Informants' ratings of PD traits are impressively accurate, converging both with self-reports of relevant traits and directly observed interpersonal behavior. Therefore, a comprehensive understanding of PDs and associated traits can be augmented by information from multiple acquaintances who have the opportunity to observe how an individual interacts with others on a daily basis across diverse contexts.

The Eriksen Flanker task is a classic paradigm for investigating interference at the level of response compatibility. Several previous studies analyzed the ability of young children (starting at th...

Multi-informant approaches are thought to be key to clinical assessment. Classical theories of psychological measurements assume that only convergence among different informants’ reports allows for an estimate of the true nature and causes of clinical presentations. However, the integration of multiple accounts is fraught with problems because findings in child and adolescent psychiatry do not conform to the fundamental expectation of convergence. Indeed, reports provided by different sources (self, parents, teachers, peers) share little variance. Moreover, in some cases informant divergence may be meaningfuland not error variance. In this review we give an overview of conceptual and theoretical foundations of valid multiinformantassessment and discuss why our common concepts of validity need revaluation.