Antecedents of personality disorder in childhood and adolescence: toward an integrative developmental model

Antecedents of personality disorder in childhood and adolescence have been a neglected area in official taxonomies of mental disorders such as the International Classification of Diseases or the different editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. An evolving research field, however, underscores the importance of antecedents for understanding psychopathology and personality pathology in adulthood. The current article summarizes the history, updates reviews, and incorporates new research findings into an integrative scheme for conceptualizing personality pathology in childhood and adolescence. Implications of this model for assessment, future research, and intervention are discussed

Vocations as a source of identity: reciprocal relations between Big Five personality traits and RIASEC characteristics

Although work is a core part of life, the direction of influence from personality to work has typically been conceived as only unidirectional. The present study aims to contribute to the literature by considering reciprocal relations between personality and occupational characteristics, drawing on current perspectives from personality psychology (i.e., the social investment principle) and using a well-established framework to conceptualize career development (i.e., Holland's RIASEC theory). For this purpose, a longitudinal cohort of college alumni (N = 266) was tracked across a substantial and significant period in their professional career. Big Five personality traits and RIASEC occupational characteristics were assessed at the career start and 15 years later when their careers had unfolded. A combination of observed and latent variable analyses were used to disentangle the longitudinal and reciprocal relations between traits and occupational characteristics. Our results indicate that personality shapes and is shaped by our vocational experiences, suggesting that work can be a source of identity. The implications for theory and research on personality in the industrial and organizational literature are discussed alongside a number of practical implications for organizational and counseling settings

The effect of state core self-evaluations on task performance, organizational citizenship behaviour, and counterproductive work behaviour

Although the personality-performance relationship has been studied extensively, most studies focused on the relationship between between-person differences in the Big Five personality dimensions and between-person differences in job performance. The current paper extends this research in two ways. First, we build on core self-evaluations (CSEs): an alternative, broad personality dimension that has proven to be a good predictor of job performance. Second, we tested concurrent and lagged within-person relationships between CSEs and task performance, organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB), and counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). To this end, we conducted two experience sampling studies; the first one assessing the relationship between state CSEs and levels of momentary task performance and OCB, and a second study in which employees reported on their level of state CSEs and momentary CWB. Results showed that there is substantial within-person variability in CSEs and that these within-person fluctuations relate to within-person variation in task performance, OCB, and CWB towards the organization, and CWB towards the individual. Moreover, CSEs prospectively predicted within-person differences in task performance and CWB towards the organization, whereas the reversed effect did not hold. These findings tentatively suggest that state CSEs predict performance, rather than the other way around

The curvilinear relationship between state neuroticism and momentary task performance

A daily diary and two experience sampling studies were carried out to investigate curvilinearity of the within-person relationship between state neuroticism and task performance, as well as the moderating effects of within-person variation in momentary job demands (i.e., work pressure and task complexity). In one, results showed that under high work pressure, the state neuroticism-task performance relationship was best described by an exponentially decreasing curve, whereas an inverted U-shaped curve was found for tasks low in work pressure, while in another study, a similar trend was visible for task complexity. In the final study, the state neuroticism-momentary task performance relationship was a linear one, and this relationship was moderated by momentary task complexity. Together, results from all three studies showed that it is important to take into account the moderating effects of momentary job demands because within-person variation in job demands affects the way in which state neuroticism relates to momentary levels of task performance. Specifically, we found that experiencing low levels of state neuroticism may be most beneficial in high demanding tasks, whereas more moderate levels of state neuroticism are optimal under low momentary job demands

Understanding obsessive-compulsive personality disorder in adolescence: a dimensional personality perspective

The validity of the Axis II Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) category and its position within the Cluster C personality disorder (PDs) section of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV, APA, 2000) continues to be a source of much debate. The present study examines the associations between general and maladaptive personality traits and OCPD symptoms, prior to and after controlling for co-occurring PD variance, in a general population sample of 274 Flemish adolescents and further explores the incremental validity of two different maladaptive trait measures beyond general traits. The results demonstrate that the number of (general and maladaptive) personality-OCPD associations decreases after controlling for a general personality pathology factor, with the FFM factor Conscientiousness and its maladaptive counterpart Compulsivity as remaining correlates of OCPD. The findings further suggest to complement the general NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992) scales with more maladaptive items to enable a more comprehensive description of personality pathology variance. Implications for understanding and assessing OCPD in the developmental context of adolescence are discussed

Do personality states predict momentary task performance? The moderating role of personality variability

We investigated how state neuroticism and state conscientiousness related to momentary task performance and tested whether these relationships were affected by the extent to which a person varies in his level of state neuroticism/conscientiousness across situations. We hypothesized that state neuroticism relates negatively, while state conscientiousness relates positively to momentary task performance. Moreover, for both personality dimensions, we expected the state personality-momentary task performance relationship to be stronger for employees who behave, feel, and think more consistently across situations. These hypotheses were tested using a 10-day experience sampling study in a large financial institution. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that state neuroticism related negatively and state conscientiousness positively to momentary task performance. Moreover, the relationship between state conscientiousness and momentary task performance was stronger for people lower insituational within-person conscientiousness variability. From a theoretical point of view, our findings suggest that personality states relate to momentary task performance and that this relationship is stronger for people low insituational within-person variability. From a practical point of view, they emphasize the importance of taking into account an employee's state personality levels and the variability herein, in addition to assessing his/her overall trait level of personality