Lecture 5 Flashcards
Michael from the office (again)
Possible narcissist
Low A
need to be liked, admired and praised
Definition of a personality disorder
Lasting, stable maladaptive pattern of behaviour and inner experience that markedly deviates from a person’s culture and manifested in inappropriate emotions and cognitions, lack of impulse control and chronic deficiencies in interpersonal functioning
MUST BE
recognizable in childhood or adolescence and continues through life
Significant, long term impairment in work and relationships
Clusters
A - odd patterns of thinking - paranoid, schizoid, stereotypical
B - erratic patterns of behaviour - antisocial, borderline, histrionic, narcissistic
C - erratic patterns of emotions - avoidant, dependent, obsessive compulsive
Narcissism traits (3)
What type of tv star?
grandiosity, lack of empathy, need for admiration,
reality tv stars when researched scored highly on this
Issues with categorical diagnoses
Mental health is not like physical health
As an example, narcissism has 9 traits. 5 will make a diagnosis. SO it is possible for 2 “narcissists” to have 1 trait in common.
Different psychiatrists diagnose the same person with different traits
Personality is less amenable to categorization than to spectra
Axis 1
Acute issues
Usually with a time course and a cause
Categorization might be good here eg I feel sad cos X, might be depression
Axis 2
Isn’t a cause
Continuous
Here are the personality disorders
Perhaps not helpful to think of this categorically
McCrea & Costa 2009 - outline and stuff prof agrees with (2)
say research shows that Axis-2 diagnostic categories for personality disorders may be classifiable in terms of the five factors
Prof semi agrees
Schizoid disorders are related to Introversion
Anitisocial disorder to low Agreeableness
McCrea & Costa 2009 - compulsive disorders
Individuals high in C are prone to compulsive disorders
Scores from actual OCD diagnosed people are LOW C
Prof says high C equals trying to get stuff done efficiently
OCD people are inefficient and slow therefore this is wrong
McCrea & Costa 2009 - Histrionic disorders
Are allegedly very high E
But prof says no,
high E people have high Affect when they socialize. You do not get a sense of pathology from them
McCrea & Costa 2009 - Dependent disorder
Is linked by them to high A because they are submissive
Prof says submissiveness is low E
McAdams on traits and personality disorders
Might involve extreme variations on general personality traits
May also include other things such as fears and motivations, thought patterns, developmental histories etc.
Hence they may include dispositional traits (level 1), Personal concerns (level 2) and internalized life stories (level 3)
Five factor model and diagnoses - dimensional personality disorder diagnosis
Evidence
should it be used for diagnosis?
Hopwood (2016) the time has come for dimensional personality disorder diagnosis.
Five Factor Model (FFM) has much data
Cross cultural validity
Childhood antecedents
Temporal stability
predictability of life course
Highly predictive of positive and negative outcomes
Multivariate behavioral genetic evidence (and even molecular evidence foir N)
Neurobiological correlates
SO, given all this evidence, why use a categorical model of diagnosis based on 1920s psychoanalysis?
DSM 5 (2013): what do you assess (2 things)
Assess
(1) Elements of personality functioning
(2) Extremity on pathological personality domains
Alternative DSM model part A
SELF
Identity - clear sense of self. DO they now how others see them. Unique, clear boundaries between the self and others. The stability of self-esteem and accuracy of self-appraisal. Capacity to regulate emotions
Self-direction - Pursuit of coherent and meaningful short term goals.
Rate this from 1-5. 1 is great, 2 ok, 3-5 go onto next part. Probably personality issue.
INTERPERSONAL
Empathy - has it
Intimacy - Appreciation for and depth of relationship with others. Reciprocity is very important here, have they maintained a relationship with them.
Alternative DSM model part B - pathological personality domains
Is a series of 5 assessed with a questionnaire of 210 items
Negatave affectivity - emotional stability (N)
Detachement vs extroversion (E)
Antagonism vs agreeableness (A)
Disinhibitiion vs Conscientiousness (C)
Psychoticism vs lucidity (O)?
Disinhibition
A great description for low C
inability to control yourself
pathological personality domains - making it
Lexical approach
List of negative or pathological terms
Boiled down to 25 distinct dimensions
Factor analysis
Came up with 5, hoped they would match the big 5. 4 did.
Assessing the pathological personality domains
Compared it to the big 5. Versy strong match for C E A & N
None for O and psychoticism vs lucidity
The authors say doing this AND the big 5 gives you more than just the big 5 alone
Description of openness
did the pathological personality domains get at this?
reflects a culture’s interest in creativity, intellect and imagination, contrasting being open-minded unusual, odd, weird, creative, peculiar and unconventional with being close minded, practical, conventional and rigid.
What they were getting at was loose, disordered thinking. not the same thing. Probably why it did not work?
What are the 6 disorders serious personality researchers think there is evidence for?
Antisocial Borderline Avoidant Schizotypical Narcissistic Obsessive Compulsive
Narcism has two things
Grandiosity
Attention seeking
How to diagnose
1) work out if there is an issue in self or interpersonal stuff
Rate this from 1-5. 1 is great, 2 ok, 3-5 go onto next part. Probably personality issue.
Then give the scales
Then look at the trait domains within the scales
Compare to known patterns = diagnostic
A system for the positive? VIA Classification
Yes! Seigleman and peterson
6 overarching virtues and 24 charecter strengths
Making VIA classification
Large sample of religious and philosophical works
Took adjectives used to describe great people
Collected themes
Made system of 6 main virtues and 24 character strengths
When you do the VIA test, what do you get?
Costs 50 dollars
Get 3 key character strengths
Concerns with VIA
Empirical foundation?
When you do a factor analysis on their data sometimes 3, 4 or 5 virtues come out. It is not stable
They did not use natural language, instead religion and philosophy. Not the best idea.
Predictive validity?
If you take the three virtues they give you, you can predict things. You could get all of that from the big 5 though and you would not have to pay
Can the big 5 be used with individuals who display extremely positive traits?
Yes. The big 5 capture everything the VIA model does
If you want to describe someone great to someone, you need really just the big 5 data and anecdotes about them being great (which is level 3 of personality).
You do not need the expensive and complex VIA model because this adds nothing.
Can the big 5 be used with individuals who display extremely negative traits?
Seems likely we will move away from a category based diagnosis model to a dimensional system in psycho pathological diagnosis soon. The newer DSM V alternative diagnosis model is going to be useful, uses the big 5 and has already been shown to be effective.
