A Dimensional Model of Personality Disorder

Incorporating DSM Cluster A Characteristics

Tackett, Jennifer L.
Silberschmidt, Amy L.
Krueger, Robert F.
Sponheim, Scott R.

¹Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
²Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
³Department of Psychology, University of Minnesota—Twin Cities
⁴Departments of Psychiatry and Psychology, University of Minnesota—Twin Cities

This work was supported in part by grants awarded to Scott R. Sponheim from the Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Research Service, the Mental Illness and Neuroscience Discovery (MIND) Institute, and the Mental Health Patient Service Line at the Minneapolis Veterans Affairs Medical Center. We gratefully acknowledge Althea Noukki and Bridget Hegeman for the supervision of data collection, and Jessica Barker and Anna Docherty for their assistance with data management and acquisition.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jennifer L. Tackett, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 100 St. George Street, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G3, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]

Received June 18, 2007

Revision received October 22, 2007

Accepted October 30, 2007

Journal of Abnormal Psychology 117(2):p 454-459, May 2008.

The authors articulate an expanded dimensional model of personality pathology to better account for symptoms of DSM-defined Cluster A personality disorders. Two hundred forty participants (98 first-degree relatives of probands with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder, 92 community control participants, and 50 first-degree relatives of probands with bipolar disorder) completed a dimensional personality pathology questionnaire, a measure of schizotypal characteristics, and Chapman measures of psychosis proneness. Scales from all questionnaires were subjected to an exploratory factor analysis with varimax rotation. A 5-factor structure of personality pathology emerged from the analyses, with Peculiarity forming an additional factor to the common 4-factor structure of personality pathology (consisting of Introversion, Emotional Dysregulation, Antagonism, and Compulsivity). These results support a 5-factor dimensional model of personality pathology that better accounts for phenomena encompassed by the Cluster A personality disorders in DSM-IV-TR (4th ed., text revised; ). This study has implications for the consideration of a dimensional model of personality disorder in DSM-V by offering a more comprehensive structural model that builds on previous work in this area.