Disentangling the shared and unique aspects of clinical and subclinical socially aversive traits relevant for interpersonal personality dysfunction.

Abstract

Most socially and/or ethically aversive traits from clinical and broad personality research overlap to a large degree. For the latter, however, the association with interpersonal personality dysfunction (IPD) is understudied. Moreover, it is also unclear to what extent the associations of aversive traits with IPD are due to their shared versus unique aspects. We investigate these questions based on a theoretical framework that comprehensively describes the shared variance of all aversive traits. To this end, we concurrently measured 20 aversive traits from clinical and broad personality research together with their common core. Results from five studies (four of them preregistered, total N = 4,847) revealed that all aversive traits are associated with IPD and that most do so (only) due to their common core. Only three traits offered additional aspects beyond the common core relevant for IPD. The results inform debates about whether to include more traits in the Alternative Model for Personality Disorders. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).