Styles, traits and disorders of personality: inter-relationships and differences associated to sex

Abstract

The search for the basic structure of personality is a current topic of interest and in the last years the research has focused in the big five traits or factors model. The possibility to establish a reliable classification of the personality disorders is a permanent concern for the researchers in the field; an example of its current state can be found in the section on personality disorders of the DSM-IV. The present work has tried to found the existing relationships between those two fields, the normal and the pathological personalities and more specifically, the relationships between the big five traits and the styles/disorders of personality in base to the DSM-IV. The sample in this work was composed by 545 university students of diverse careers. The self-report instruments used to assess personality areas were the “Big Five Questionnaire” (BFQ; Caprara, Barbaranelli, & Borgogni, 1995) (for traits), the “Exploratory Questionnaire of Personality” (Cuestionario exploratorio de la personalidad, CEPER; Caballo, 1997) (for styles) and the “Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-II” (MCMI-II; Millon, 1987) (for disorders). The results show that three of the big traits, Extroversion, Emotional Stability and Agreeableness were significantly related to some styles/disorders of personality, particularly the last two traits. On the other hand, men scored significantly higher that women in traits like Extroversion and Emotional Stability and in styles/disorders such as Antisocial, Narcissistic and Sadistic, while women scored higher on the Agreeableness trait and in styles/disorders of personality such as Borderline, Dependent and Depressive. The implications of these results for clinical practice are discussed.