What is it about?
In psychiatry, the traditional personality disorder categories are slowly being replaced by personality trait models. However, there is uncertainty about the usefulness of these newer trait models in mental healthcare. We compared the usefulness of these approaches by comparing how well the personality trait model and traditional personality disorder categories predict objective, observable, real-world problems in social situations as captured by audio recordings 1 year later.
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Why is it important?
The newer personality trait models have the opportunity to address many of the critical issues with the traditional personality disorder system, like poor reliability and validity; however, uncertainty about the clinical utility of the new model has hampered its adoption. This study is the first of its kind to compare these two approaches in their ability to predict real-world, observable, naturalistic behavior that is clinically relevant, like interpersonal problems in daily life. We employed novel, innovative methods of assessment, including behavior observed from audio recordings of the daily life of individuals over the course of a week captured 1 year after the initial personality assessment. Findings show that the newer trait model offers enhanced prediction of interpersonal problems, supporting its clinical utility over the traditional model.
Perspectives
The field of personality science has long been criticized for failing to show how measures of personality are relevant to actual, observable, real-world behavior. We responded to this criticism by employing an extremely novel and potentially costly method to measure the behavior of individuals via audio recordings of their daily lives. Our results showed that the personality trait models meaningfully predicted naturalistically observed behavior an entire year later. I commend our senior author, and my graduate school mentor, Dr. Leonard J. Simms, as well as our co-authors, behavioral coders, and study participants for taking (what felt like at the time) a big chance on this new method and study design. I also thank the creators of this method, the Electronically Activated Recorder, Matthias Mehl and Megan Robbins, for their massive help in the project.
William Calabrese
Stony Brook University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition, personality disorders and the alternative model: Prediction of naturalistically observed behavior, interpersonal functioning, and psychiatric symptoms, 1 year later., Personality Disorders Theory Research and Treatment, July 2024, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/per0000677.
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