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The present research investigates the relationship between right wing ideology and maladaptive personality as measured by the Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire (DAPP-BQ) in an adult sample (N=225). Analogous to previous studies, Openness to Experience was significantly related to right wing ideology. Conscientiousness was only modestly related to right wing ideology, but its maladaptive equivalent—Compulsiveness—was significantly related to right wing ideology. A significant relationship was also found for maladaptive Disagreeableness. The other personality traits were only modestly related to political ideology. The implications of the relationship between right-wing ideology and adaptive and maladaptive Openness and Conscientiousness are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Explored the relationship between obesity and psychosocial adjustment in a combined clinical and nonclinical sample of 139 obese children and 150 non-obese children (ages from 9 to 12 years and matched for age, socioeconomic status, and gender) who filled out the Perceived Competence Scale for Children; their parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist. All obese children, independent of their help-seeking status, reported more negative physical self-perceptions than their nonobese peers and they scored lower on general self-worth. According to their parents, the obese children of the clinical sample appeared to have more behavior problems. Findings suggest that psychopathology depends on a clinical obese status, and they provide evidence for a psychosocial at-risk profile for a subgroup of obese children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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.

To test the spectrum hypothesis--postulating that clinical and non-clinical samples are primarily differentiated by mean-level differences--, this study evaluates differences in parent-rated temperament, personality and maladjustment among a low-symptom (N = 81), a high-symptom (N = 94) ASD-group, and a comparison group (N = 500). These classic spectrum hypothesis tests are extended by adding tests for similarity in variances, reliabilities and patterns of covariation between relevant variables. Children with ASD exhibit more extreme means, except for dominance. The low- and high-symptom ASD-groups are primarily differentiated by mean sociability and internal distress. Striking similarities in reliability and pattern of covariation of variables suggest that comparable processes link traits to maladaptation in low- and high-symptom children with ASD and in children with and without autism.

This study describes temperament, personality, and problem behaviors in children with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) aged 6 to 14 years. It targets differences between an ADHD sample (N = 54; 43 boys) and a large community sample (N = 465; 393 boys) in means and variances, psychometric properties, and covariation between traits and internalizing and externalizing problems. Parents rated their children on Buss and Plomin's and Rothbart's temperament models, a child-oriented five-factor personality model and also on problem behavior. Relative to the comparison group, children with ADHD presented with a distinct trait profile exhibiting lower means on Effortful Control, Conscientiousness, Benevolence and Emotional Stability, higher means on Emotionality, Activity, and Negative Affect, but similar levels of Surgency, Shyness, and Extraversion. Striking similarities in variances, reliabilities and, in particular, of the covariation between trait and maladjustment variables corroborate the spectrum hypothesis and suggest that comparable processes regulate problem behavior in children with and without ADHD.

The numerous temperament and personality constructs in childhood impede the systematic integration of findings on how these individual differences relate to developmental psychopathology. This paper reviews the main temperament and personality theories and proposes a theoretical taxonomy representing the common structure of both temperament and personality traditions within one conceptual framework. This integrated lexicon of childhood temperament/personality traits facilitates an overview of the most important research findings on the role of temperament and personality in the development of anxiety, depression, ADHD, proactive and reactive antisocial behavior. Several directions for future research are discussed to further validate and refine these reviewed relationships.

Research on adulthood posits personality and self-esteem as important predictors of psychopathology. In childhood, however, the study of these relationships is complicated by the lack of consensus on how to combine data from multiple informants of child behavior. This study evaluates the relationships among personality symptoms, self-esteem and psychopathology in 60 child psychiatric patients (M (age) = 10.6) using principal component analysis (PCA) to aggregate data from multiple informants and compares this strategy with a single informant approach. When predictor and criterion measures were rated by a single informant, strong and differential relationships between personality symptoms, self-esteem and psychopathology are found. When multiple informant data were combined into composite scores by PCA, correlations decreased but remained significant. Hierarchical regression analyses affirm the robustness of the following pattern: Emotional Instability, Introversion and Global Self-Esteem are associated with internalizing whereas Disagreeableness and Behavioral Conduct primarily relate to externalizing problems.

The lack of empirical research relating temperament models and personality hinders conceptual integration and holds back research linking childhood traits to problem behavior or maladjustment. This study evaluates, within a sample of 443 preschoolers, the relationships between children's maladaptation and traits measured by three temperament models (Thomas and Chess, Buss and Plomin, and Rothbart), and a Five-Factor based personality model. Adequate reliabilities and expected factor structures are demonstrated for most scales. A joint principal component analysis combining 28 temperament and 18 personality scales indicates a six-factor model, distinguishing Sociability, Activity, Conscientiousness, Disagreeableness, Emotionality, and Sensitivity. Regression analyses reveal that although single temperament and personality scales explain from 23% to 37% of problem behavior variance, the six components explain from 41% to 49% and provide a clearer differentiation among CBCL-problem scales. This age-specific taxonomy refines and corroborates conclusions based on narrative reviews and furnishes a more balanced view of trait-maladjustment relationships.

This study examines child and adolescent psychopathology from a maladaptive trait perspective, incorporating both parental and child ratings of parenting as a moderator of the personality-psychopathology association. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses were conducted on a combined sample of referred and nonreferred children and adolescents (N=862, parental ratings of parenting and N=396, child ratings of parenting). The results indicated positive main effects of maladaptive traits on externalizing and internalizing problems, and positive main effects of parental negative control on externalizing problems. Significant interactions were found for Disagreeableness and Emotional Instability with parental Negative Control and for Disagreeableness x Positive Parenting in explaining externalizing problems. The discussion focuses on the contribution of these findings to a better understanding of the trait-psychopathology relationship at young age.

Objective: The present research tests the effects of time pressure and noise on open-mindedness to discover new problem-solving strategies., Background: We are primarily interested in transfer of skill from one phase to the next. More specifically, this study investigates whether the presence of stressors makes participants adhere to the sustained use of complex rules., Method: Participants learned to apply a complex rule in the first phase of a category learning task. In the second phase, this rule became dysfunctional and participants had to search for a new categorization rule in order to assign the stimuli to the correct classes. Two experiments were set up to investigate this issue., Results: Participants were found to have difficulty discovering a complex Phase 2 rule in the presence of stressors, whereas the discovery of a simple rule was not hindered by the presence of stressors., Conclusion: In the discussion, it is argued that the present results are compatible with previous research on stressors showing that time pressure and noise induce the application of simple strategies. The innovative finding here is that this simplification also occurs in individuals who are accustomed to using complex solutions., Application: The implications of the present results for emergency response training are elaborated upon.

The present study describes the construction of a taxonomy of trait-related symptoms in childhood, the Dimensional Personality Symptom Item Pool (DIPSI), and examines the replicability of the taxonomy's higher order structure across maternal ratings of referred (N = 205) and nonreferred (N = 242) children and self-ratings of adolescents (N = 453). The DIPSI's 4 higher order factors--that is, Emotional Instability, Disagreeableness, Introversion, and Compulsivity--showed clear correspondence with the dimensions of personality pathology found in adulthood (Dimensional Assessment of Personality Pathology-Basic Questionnaire; W. J. Livesley, 1990; Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality; L. A. Clark, 1993). These 4 factors can be further organized into 2 superfactors, representing Internalizing and Externalizing Traits, demonstrating empirical and conceptual relationships with psychopathology models in childhood and adulthood. The implications for the assessment and conceptualization of early trait pathology are discussed in the context of an integrative developmental perspective on the construction of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-Fifth Edition., ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved.)

This study examines 5 types of personality continuity--structural, mean-level, individual-level, differential, and ipsative--in a representative population (N=498) and a twin and sibling sample (N=548) of children and adolescents. Parents described their children on 2 successive occasions with a 36-month interval using the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (I. Mervielde & F. De Fruyt, 1999). There was evidence for structural continuity in the 2 samples, and personality was shown to be largely differentially stable. A large percentage had a stable trait profile indicative of ipsative stability, and mean-level personality changes were generally small in magnitude. Continuity findings were explained mainly by genetic and nonshared environmental factors., (((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).)

Erikson's concepts of stagnation and generativity were investigated in two studies. Study 1 (N=457) yields two important results. First, it revealed that a model in which stagnation and generativity load on a separate dimension showed a significantly better fit to the data than a one-dimensional model. Second, the stagnation and generativity measures were valid predictors of parental behavior. In Study 2 (N=191), the relationships between stagnation and generativity and the dimensions underlying comprehensive measures of personality were investigated. It was found that stagnation was strongly related to Neuroticism, Extraversion, and Openness to Experience, whereas generativity bore strong relationships with Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and Openness to Experience. In the discussion, stagnation is distinguished from several related variables and a profile of the stagnant individual is constructed and compared with the generative individual. Finally, the interaction between stagnation and generativity in producing specific outcomes is discussed.

To contribute to the case for a dimensional conceptualization of psychopathology in general and maladaptive personality or personality disorders in particular, the present paper reviews the evidence for a dimensional representation of childhood temperament and personality. The review of temperament and variable-centered as well as person-centered approaches to childhood personality leads us to propose five broadband dimensions that capture individual differences in children and adolescents: extraversion, emotional stability, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness/intellect. Our analysis of the CBCL (Achenbach, 1991) and the DIPSI (currently under development at Ghent University), two dimensional models for childhood psychopathology, suggests two common broadband factors, internalizing and externalizing. The relations between the dimensional representation of childhood temperament/personality and psychopathology are documented with data from general population and clinical samples of children and adolescents. The article concludes with a proposal on how the higher-order dimensions emerging from studies of adaptive and maladaptive individual differences in childhood could be integrated in a common dimensional model.

Parenting x Child Personality interactions in predicting child externalizing and internalizing behavior were investigated in a variable-centered study and a person-centered study. The variable-centered study used data from a 3-year longitudinal study of 600 children 7 to 15 years old at Time 1 and 512 children 10 to 18 years old at Time 2. Parents rated child personality (five factor model), negative control, positive parenting, and child problem behavior, whereas children rated parental behavior. Hierarchical moderated regression analyses showed significant Parenting x Child Personality (benevolence and conscientiousness) interactions, principally for externalizing behavior. The interactions were largely replicable across informants and across time. The person-centered study, which classified participants into 3 types, showed that negative parental control was more related to externalizing behavior for undercontrollers than for resilients. Negative parental control enhanced internalizing behavior for overcontrollers., ((c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)

The present research investigates whether Openness to Experience and Boundaries in the mind are related to conservatism. In the first study, significant relationships between several scales of the Boundaries in the mind questionnaire and indicators of conservative beliefs were obtained in an adult sample (N=78) as well as in a sample of political party activists (N=44). In the second study, these negative relationships between conservatism and thin boundaries were replicated in an adult sample (N=225). Moreover, two dimensions representing Boundaries in the mind were identified, one positively related to Openness to Experience and negatively to conservatism and the second showing high positive correlations with Neuroticism. The exceptionally strong correlations between conservatism and the Boundaries in the mind facet scales Opinions about organizations, Opinions about beauty, truth, Edges, lines, clothing and Opinions about peoples, nations, groups are discussed, as well as the weak relationships between economic conservatism and Openness to Experience.

The authors performed 2 experiments that explored the causal role of need for closure in producing the use of simple structures. In particular, the authors gave the participants a cue that called for a complex or a simple solution on a cognitive complexity task. The authors created the participants' need for closure through the use of time pressure. The results of both experiments revealed that participants only generated complex solutions in the complex cue-no time pressure condition. The discussion is focused on the effects of need for closure in tasks calling for adaptive and spontaneous flexibility.

Three studies were conducted to assess mean level changes in personality traits during adolescence. Versions of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (P. T. Costa, Jr., & R. R. McCrae, 1992a) were used to assess the 5 major personality factors. A 4-year longitudinal study of intellectually gifted students (N = 230) was supplemented by cross-sectional studies of nonselected American (N = 1,959) and Flemish (N = 789) adolescents. Personality factors were reasonably invariant across ages, although rank-order stability of individual differences was low. Neuroticism appeared to increase in girls, and Openness to Experience increased in both boys and girls; mean levels of Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness were stable. Results extend knowledge of the developmental curve of personality traits backward from adulthood and help bridge the gap with child temperament studies.

According to optimal distinctiveness theory, minority political parties and parties of intermediate size provide more central and important bases of social identity. The authors tested that prediction in a sample of voters and a sample of political party members. In both samples, adherents of minority and intermediate parties did not perceive their parties to be more representative of them. The authors found no significant differences between political parties on the collective self-esteem questionnaire administered to the sample of political party members.

The suitability of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) to assess adolescents' personality traits was investigated in an unselected heterogeneous sample of 469 adolescents aged 12 to 17 years. They were further administered the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC) to allow an examination of convergent and discriminant validity. The adult NEO PI-R factor structure proved to be highly replicable in the sample of adolescents, with all facet scales primarily loading on the expected factors, independent of the age group. Domain and facet internal consistency coefficients were comparable to those obtained in adult samples, with less than 12% of the items showing corrected item-facet correlations below absolute value .20. Although, in general, adolescents reported few difficulties with the comprehensibility of the items, they tend to report more problems with the Openness to Ideas (05) and Openness to Values (06) items. Correlations between NEO PI-R and HiPIC scales underscored the convergent and discriminant validity of the NEO facets and HiPIC scales. It was concluded that the NEO PI-R in its present form is useful for assessing adolescents' traits at the primary level, but additional research is necessary to infer the most appropriate facet level structure.