Aaron L. Pincus

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• Ph.D.
• Professor at Pennsylvania State University

Advanced empirical research and clinical theory suggest that narcissistic personality states fluctuate over time. However, these fluctuations are poorly understood. To address this, we recruited 88 undergraduates to complete baseline measures and respond to smartphone prompts assessing narcissistic states and emotions in daily life seven times a da...

Theoretical accounts of psychopathology often emphasize social context as etiologically centralto psychological dysfunction, and interpersonal impairments are widely implicated for many legacy diagnostic categories that span domains of psychopathology (e.g., affective, personality, thought disorders). Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory (...

Personality disorders (PDs) are among the most common and severe classes of psychopathol-ogy. From a clinical perspective, it is challenging to help individuals with personality disorders because treatment ruptures, discontinuation, reversals, and failures are relatively common. An additional clinical challenge is that the model used to diagnose pe...

The interpersonal problem circumplex is extensively used in the field as an assessment framework for understanding the interpersonal implications of a range of personality and psychopathology constructs. The vast majority of this large literature has been conducted in Western convenience and clinical samples. We computed interpersonal problem struc...

Objective During the COVID-19 pandemic, people’s behaviors have been considered an important factor in the spread of coronavirus. This situation led us to examine the role of personality in human behavior and its outcomes during the pandemic. This study examined the effect of normative, maladaptive, and dark personality traits on the probability of...

Individuals’ sensitivity to climate hazards is a central component of their vulnerability to climate change. In this paper, we introduce and outline the utility of a new intraindividual variability construct, affective sensitivity to air pollution (ASAP)–defined as the extent to which an individual’s affective states fluctuate in accordance with da...

A major foundation for all clinical competencies is the ability to sensitively attend to and understand the moment-to-moment processes occurring between trainees and their clients. The current article reports on the development and feasibility of a training protocol to help clinical trainees become more attuned to moment-to-moment processes during...

Research shows that increased pursuit of intrinsic goals and decreased pursuit of extrinsic goals are associated with elevated perceived communal behaviors. This preliminary study extends prior research by examining how day-to-day variations in intrinsic (i.e., community feelings) and extrinsic relational goals (i.e., self-image, conformity) link t...

This chapter uses contemporary integrative interpersonal theory (CIIT; Dawood et al., 2018; Pincus, 2005; Hopwood et al., 2021) as an integrative nexus to provide an interpersonal diagnosis of schizotypy. First, we go over the six principles of CIIT and summarize how CIIT conceptualizes the interpersonal situation, function and dysfunction, and oth...

Differing perspectives on the operationalization of schizotypal personality pathology (STPP) have led to numerous multidimensional assessment measures. The current study applied the interpersonal construct validation approach to self-report data from 856 undergraduate students to formally examine the interpersonal content, similarities, and differe...

We reply to Wright et al.’s (2023) commentary and suggestion that personality trait models would be the preferred way to reconfigure the personality disorders (PDs). Though we agree that personality trait models are powerful descriptive tools, we highlight that they lack definitional or explanatory power, and that is why they have not been able to...

The current study aimed to examine the relationship between personality traits and interpersonal states. Eighty undergraduate participants were administered personality trait inventories, then 40 dyads were video recorded doing collaborative tasks. These video recordings were coded for moment-to-moment communion and agency using Continuous Assessme...

Age and gender differences in narcissism have been studied often. However, considering the rich history of narcissism research accompanied by its diverging conceptualizations, little is known about age and gender differences across various narcissism measures. The present study investigated age and gender differences and their interactions across e...

Now in its fourth edition, the acclaimed Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology aims for both depth and breadth, with a focus on adult disorders and special attention given to personality disorders. It provides an unparalleled guide for professionals and students alike. Esteemed editors Robert F. Krueger and Paul H. Blaney selected the most eminent res...

Background: The Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) is a multidimensional measure developed to assess narcissistic grandiosity and narcissistic vulnerability. We aimed to validate the Arabic version of the original Pathological Narcissistic Inventory (PNI) and its brief form (B-PNI) in a community sample of Lebanese adults. Methods: The Englis...

Now in its fourth edition, the acclaimed Oxford Textbook of Psychopathology aims for both depth and breadth, with a focus on adult disorders and special attention given to personality disorders. It provides an unparalleled guide for professionals and students alike. Esteemed editors Robert F. Krueger and Paul H. Blaney selected the most eminent res...

Interpersonal theory organizes social behavior along dominant (vs. submissive) and warm (vs. cold) dimensions. There is a growing interest in assessing these behaviors in naturalistic settings to maximize ecological validity and to study dynamic social processes. Studies that have assessed interpersonal behavior in daily life have primarily relied...

The current study examines the associations between interpersonal complementarity and affective reactions during social interactions in daily life, as well as contextual moderators of these associations. This research aims to understand how satisfaction/frustration of interpersonal motives (operationalized as interpersonal complementarity) impacts...

This study examines the moderating effects of gender, child abuse, and pathological nar-cissism on self-reported stalking, sexual harassment, intimate partner violence, and sexual aggression in undergraduate men and women. Child abuse was positively associated with engaging in all forms of interpersonal violence for both genders. For women, patholo...

Research consistently finds that women who have been sexually victimized are more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior than their nonvictimized counterparts. Some researchers conceptualize this as an affect regulation strategy, whereas others suggest it may be a form of self-injury. However, no study could be located that comprehensively explo...

Interpersonal theory organizes social behavior along dominant (vs. submissive) and warm (vs. cold) dimensions. There is a growing interest in assessing these behaviors in naturalistic settings to maximize ecological validity and to study dynamic social processes. Studies that have assessed interpersonal behavior in daily life have primarily relied...

Objective: Research has consistently illustrated the impact of personality on marital quality. Given the inherent dyadic nature of relationships, recent investigations have integrated spouse-rated personality to account for both spouses' perspectives. Grounded in Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory, we view personality through an interpe...

A review of the literature on Chinese translations of Western self-report personality disorder assessment measures indicates the need to empirically evaluate the validity of assessing Western personality disorder constructs in Chinese language and culture. The current study presents a novel approach to examining this critical question in cross-cul...

This chapter presents an autobiographical account of the career of Aaron L. Pincus, Ph.D, particularly as it relates to his achievements in psychology generally, and personality assessment more specifically. Aaron Pincus received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from University of California—Davis in 1985, his Master’s degree in personality psyc...

This study examined the relationship between pathological narcissism, narcissistic grandiosity, narcissistic vulnerability and the five-factor model of personality. Participants consisted of 290 undergraduate students from four universities in three different cities in Iran, recruited by available sampling, Instruments, including, Pathological Narc...

Personality disorders are among the most common and severe classes of psychopathology. From a clinical perspective, it is challenging to help individuals with personality disorders because treatment ruptures, discontinuation, reversals, and failures are relatively common. An additional clinical challenge is that the model used to diagnose personali...

The Level of Personality Functioning Scale (LPFS) operationalizes Criterion A of the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders. Despite progress in LPFS measurement development and validation, there is a lack of research, and some disagreement, concerning structural, convergent, and incremental validity of LPFS self-report measures. The pre...

Mental health research is at an important crossroads as the field seeks more reliable and valid phenotypes to study. Dimensional approaches to quantifying mental illness operate outside the confines of traditional categorical diagnoses, and they are gaining traction as a way to advance research on the causes and consequences of mental illness. The...

The DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) dimensionally defines personality pathology using severity of dysfunction and maladaptive style. As the empirical literature on the clinical utility of the AMPD grows, there is a need to examine changes in diagnostic profiles and personality expression in treatment over time. Assessing th...

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a quantitative nosological system that addresses shortcomings of traditional mental disorder diagnoses, including arbitrary boundaries between psychopathology and normality, frequent disorder co-occurrence, substantial heterogeneity within disorders, and diagnostic unreliability over time and...

Mental health research is at an important crossroads as the field seeks more reliable and valid phenotypes to study. Dimensional approaches to quantifying mental illness operate outside the confines of traditional categorical diagnoses, and they are gaining traction as a way to advance research on the causes and consequences of mental illness. The...

Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory is an evidence-based model of personality, psychopathology, and intervention. In this paper, we review six assumptions of CIIT that distinguish it from other frameworks and suggest five particularly promising and important areas for future research.

Male (n = 1,104) and female (n = 1,337) college students’ self-report surveys on childhood maltreatment, alcohol expectancies, and narcissistic personality traits are examined to determine their associations with relationship violence. Intimate partner violence was measured using the violence subscales of the revised Conflict Tactics. Because we we...

Newly available data streams from experience sampling studies and social media are providing new opportunities to study individuals' dyadic relations. The "one-with-many" (OWM) model (Kenny et al., 2006; Kenny & Winquist, 2001) was specifically constructed for and is used to examine features of multiple dyadic relationships that one set of focal pe...

Shortcomings of approaches to classifying psychopathology based on expert consensus have given rise to contemporary efforts to classify psychopathology quantitatively. In this paper, we review progress in achieving a quantitative and empirical classification of psychopathology. A substantial empirical literature indicates that psychopathology is ge...

While recent survey findings suggest graduate programs in health service psychology (HSP) are allocating the same or increased time to education and training in psychological assessment over the last two decades, there is a lack of clear guidance for programs to implement practices associated with quality education and training. These Guidelines (f...

and Keywords This chapter reviews structural and process assumptions of the Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal Theory of personality and presents the interpersonal situation as a synthetic and widely applicable framework for integrating the structure and dynamics of persons and situations. It is an interactional-dynamic perspective that is vari...

Criteria A of the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) defines personality pathology in terms of impairments in "self" (identity, self-direction) and "interpersonal" (empathy, intimacy) functioning. Articulated as a set of dynamic regulatory and relational processes that are stratified in the Level of Personality Functioning Sca...

Theoretical accounts of psychopathology often emphasize social context as etiologically central to psychological dysfunction, and interpersonal impairments are widely implicated for many legacy diagnostic categories that span domains of psychopathology (e.g., affective, personality, and thought disorders). Contemporary Integrative Interpersonal The...

Assessment of interpersonal dispositions (e.g., traits, problems) commonly employs self- and informant-report measures that conform to the two-dimensional interpersonal circumplex (IPC) model. Here, we adopted the IPC and interpersonal theory as a framework for mapping the universe of content of interpersonal influence. Although there are existing...

To assess the measurement invariance of the three versions of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) across adolescent and young adult participants, 678 Italian adolescent high school students (M = 16.83 years old, SD = 1.85 years) and 678 adult university students (M = 23.99 years old, SD = 2.60 years) matched on gender, civil status, and geo...

Experience sampling methods are widely used in clinical psychology to study affective dynamics in psychopathology. The present study examined whether affect ratings (valence and arousal) differed as a function of assessment schedule (signal- versus event-contingent) in a clinical sample and considered various approaches to modeling these ratings. A...

This chapter reviews Narcissistic and Histrionic Personality Disorders (NPD, HPD) from three current perspectives. The categorical approach is exemplified in the DSM-5 Section II chapter on personality disorders. The categorical/dimensional hybrid approach is characterized by the DSM-5 Section III Alternative Model for Personality Disorders. Finall...

The two commentaries reflect a long-standing dichotomy between clinically-experienced researchers who believe clinical personality science should reciprocally inform and be informed by the clinical enterprise (Ronningstam and Russell) and academic researchers who are dismissive of clinical complexity, eschew clinical contexts, and promote their pre...

Research is scarce regarding the mechanisms by which pathological narcissism--consisting of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability--is linked with depression. The present study examined whether impaired emotional processing would mediate relations between pathological narcissism domains and depressive symptoms in a sample of 99 psychiatric outp...

This chapter presents the results of a contemporary interpersonal reassessment of Madeline G, conducted more than a decade after her initial assessment (Pincus & Gurtman, 2003). It is a reassessment in that we include the identical self- and informant-report measures used in the original assessment. It is also contemporary in that it extends beyond...

Genetic discovery in psychiatry and clinical psychology is hindered by suboptimal phenotypic definitions. We argue that the hierarchical, dimensional, and data-driven classification system proposed by the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) consortium provides a more effective approach to identifying genes that underlie mental disorder...

This book is an update of Paradigms of Personality Assessment by Jerry Wiggins (2003, Guilford), a landmark volume in the personality assessment literature. The first half of Wiggins (2003) described five major paradigms: psychodynamic (as exemplified by the Rorschach and TAT), narrative (interview data), interpersonal (circumplex instruments), mul...

Development and aging are the product of a process wherein an individuals’ functional components co-act to produce change. System dynamics can be described using a variety of methods. In this paper we illustrate how Boolean network methods may be used to describe the sequences of emotion and behavior states that lead to a stable equilibrium – e.g.,...

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) involves instability in self-concept, emotions, and behavior. However, the dynamic, longitudinal relations among BPD symptoms and between these symptoms and other problematic emotional experiences are poorly understood. It is also unclear whether these dynamics are the same across persons (including across diag...

Life span developmental theories suggest that as individuals age, they accumulate knowledge about how to deploy emotion regulation (ER) strategies effectively and learn how to match their ER strategy use with changes in situational demands. Using an event-contingent experience sampling design wherein 150 adults Age 18 to 89 years reported on 64,213...

The DSM-5 includes two measures to assess dimensions of personality pathology (Personality Inventory for DSM-5; PID-5) and cross-cutting symptoms of psychopathology (DSM-5 Cross-cutting Symptom Measure; CCS). Few studies have evaluated these measures in an ecologically valid context. Participants (N = 248, student sample) completed self-report vers...

The categorical model of personality disorder classification in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. [DSM–5]; American Psychiatric Association, 2013) is highly and fundamentally problematic. Proposed for DSM–5 and provided within Section III (for Emerging Measures and Models) was the...

Integrando Psicoterapia con la Taxonomía Jerárquica de Psicopatología (HiTOP) En este artículo, presentamos la Taxonomía Jerárquica de Psicopatología (HiTOP), una alternativa basada en evidencia al enfoque categórico para la clasificación diagnóstica que tiene una promesa considerable para la investigación y práctica de psicoterapia integrativa. Pr...

Empathy can alter the emotional state of an individual, yet little is known about how empathy impacts emotions in daily life. This study investigated how cognitive and affective empathy experienced during social interactions was associated with pride and shame. Participants (N = 150) between 19-89 years of age (M = 47.64, SD = 18.85) completed thre...

Growing research on personality–relationship dynamics demonstrates that people's personality and their (enjoyment of) social relationships are closely intertwined. Using experience sampling data from 136 adults (aged 18–89 years) who reported on more than 50 000 social interactions, we zoom into everyday real‐world social interactions to examine ho...

For more than a century, research on psychopathology has focused on categorical diagnoses. Although this work has produced major discoveries, growing evidence points to the superiority of a dimensional approach to the science of mental illness. Here we outline one such dimensional system-the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP)-that is...

Interpersonal theory assumes that the most important expressions of personality and psychopathology occur in interpersonal situations between a self and an other, and that personality pathology is best understood in terms of patterned affective, behavioral, and self dysregulations as well as perceptual distortions in these interpersonal situations....

Although evidence from a number of longitudinal studies indicates a marked change in narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) symptoms over time, few studies have examined other psychological systems that may be related to this change. The current study uses data from the Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders to examine how change in NPD sympt...

In this paper we present the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), an evidence-based alternative to the categorical approach to diagnostic classification with considerable promise for integrative psychotherapy research and practice. We first review issues associated with the categorical approach that may have constrained advances in psy...

From a perspective broadly informed by Stress and Coping Theory, this review examined whether theoretically distinct and important dimensions of narcissism (grandiosity and vulnerability) associate with health-related stress-reactivity. Literature searches were conducted and articles were included if they contained a validated baseline assessment o...

Socioemotional processes engaged in daily life may afford and/or constrain individuals’ emotion regulation in ways that affect psychological health. Recent findings from experience sampling studies suggest that persistence of negative emotions (emotion inertia), the strength of relations among an individual’s negative emotions (density of the emoti...

Socioemotional processes engaged in daily life may afford or constrain individuals’ emotion regulation in ways that affect psychological health and the aging process. In particular, multiple theories of aging suggest that the dynamic interplay between social contact and emotional experience contributes to healthy aging. Using multiple bursts of int...

Shortcomings of approaches to classifying psychopathology based on expert consensus have given rise to contemporary efforts to classify psychopathology quantitatively. In this paper, we review progress in achieving a quantitative and empirical classification of psychopathology. A substantial empirical literature indicates that psychopathology is ge...

Criterion A of the alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD) involves the assessment of impairments in self and self in relation to other functioning and can be assessed using the Level of Personality Functioning Scale (LPFS). This study uses responses to a self-report version of the LPFS (AMPD–CAS) from 248 college students to examine the...

The categorical model of personality disorder classification in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed. [DSM–5]; American Psychiatric Association, 2013 American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psyc...

Chinese international students (CISs) are the biggest international student group in the United States. Among the challenges CISs face, the current study focused on examining the role of interpersonal problems on their acculturative stress. The Inventory of Interpersonal Problems–Short Circumplex (IIP-SC) was used to measure CISs’ interpersonal pro...

The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) is a behavioral measure that is commonly used to assess risk taking propensity. The primary goal of the present study was to introduce a mobile version of the BART (mBART) that can be included within ambulatory assessment protocols to assess risk taking in daily life. Study 1 compared common BART indices (i.e.,...

Few studies have examined associations between pathological narcissism and self-harm, but those that do indicate that narcissistic vulnerability (not narcissistic grandiosity) relates to self-harm. The current study extends this literature by investigating how facets of pathological narcissism assessed by the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (Pinc...

Deficits in identity as well as negative affect have been shown to predict self-injurious and suicidal behaviors in individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD). However, less is known about the interactive effects of these two predictors. We examined the moderating effect of a particular component of identity, self-concept, on the relati...

This paper links Criterion A of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-5th Edition Alternative Model for Personality Disorders with the contemporary interpersonal model of personality pathology. Advances in interpersonal theory and assessment are outlined to demonstrate that Criterion A's self (identity, self-direction) and inter...

Experience sampling, diary, ecological momentary assessment, ambulatory monitoring, and related methods are part of a research tradition aimed at capturing the ongoing stream of individuals’ behavior in real-world situations. By design, these approaches prioritize ecological validity. This article examines how the purported ecological validity thes...

Background: General and situational control beliefs have been examined separately as buffers of the effects of daily stressors on affective well-being. However, general (trait) control beliefs reflect perceived ability to adapt, change, and influence overall life circumstances, whereas situational (daily) control beliefs reflect perceived ability t...

Introduction: Research suggests that a blunted response to nondrug rewards, especially under conditions associated with strong cigarette cravings, is associated with reduced abstinence motivation in daily smokers. One limitation of previous studies is that they have largely focused on monetary rewards as broad representative of nondrug rewards. It...

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM–5) Section III Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD; APA, 2013) represents an innovative system for simultaneous psychiatric classification and psychological assessment of personality disorders (PD). The AMPD combines major paradigms of personality assessment...

Objectives: Life-span theories of aging suggest improvements and decrements in individuals' ability to regulate affect. Dynamic process models, with intensive longitudinal data, provide new opportunities to articulate specific theories about individual differences in intraindividual dynamics. This paper illustrates a method for operationalizing af...

This study extended previous theory and cross-sectional research on narcissism– depression associations by taking a prospective longitudinal approach to examining how pathological narcissism relates to the severity, within-person variability, within-person instability, and change in depressive symptoms among a sample of 235 undergraduate students a...

Recent discussions surrounding the Dark Triad (narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism) have centered on areas of distinctiveness and overlap. Given that interpersonal dysfunction is a core feature of Dark Triad traits, the current study uses self-report data from 562 undergraduate students to examine the interpersonal characteristics associa...