Allan D. Clifton

Vassar College · Department of Psychological Science

We describe 2 studies (n=52 and n=82) examining variability in perceptions of personality using a social network methodology. Undergraduate participants completed self-report measures of personality and interpersonal dysfunction and then subsequently reported on their personalities with each of 30 members of their social networks. Results across th...

The present study investigated social network position as a marker of interpersonal functioning in personality disorders. Participants were groups of military recruits (N=809) in 21 training groups. Participants completed self- and informant-versions of the Multisource Assessment of Personality Pathology, acting as both targets and judges in a roun...

When assessing personality disorder traits, not all judges make equally valid judgments of all targets. The present study uses social network analysis to investigate factors associated with reliability and validity in peer assessment. Participants were groups of military recruits (N=809) who acted as both targets and judges in a round-robin design....

Objective: Social network analysis (SNA) characterizes the structure and composition of a person’s social relationships. Network features have been associated with alcohol consumption in observational studies, primarily of university undergraduates. No studies have investigated whether indicators from a person’s social network can accurately identi...

Antiheroes—protagonists who are often depicted as Machiavellian, narcissistic, or psychopathic (Dark Triad traits)—have garnered recent empirical attention. Research has typically focused on the mass appeal of the characters and genre rather than on individual differences that predict such appeal. The present survey study (N = 162) extends this wor...

Background Individuals’ social networks exert a strong influence on alcohol use, but valid assessment of network drinking behavior is typically lengthy and high in participant burden. The aim of this study was to validate the Brief Alcohol Social Density Assessment (BASDA), an efficient measure of perceived alcohol use within a person’s social netw...

Narcissism is an inherently interpersonal trait, which both affects and is affected by those around the narcissistic individual. This chapter describes the use of social network analysis (SNA) to study narcissism. A brief primer for SNA is presented, explaining how data are collected and analyzed from both online and face-to-face social networks. I...

Objective: Disordered eating attitudes and behaviors are prevalent among college women, and peers appear to influence current and future eating pathology. Social network analysis (SNA) is an innovative quantitative method to examine relationships (i.e., ties) among people based on their various attributes. In this study, the social network of one...

Social network analysis (SNA) is a methodology for studying the connections and behavior of individuals within social groups. Despite its relevance to social and personality psychology, SNA has been underutilized in these fields. We first examine the paucity of SNA research in social and personality journals. Next we describe methodological decisio...

Examining differences in social integration, social support, and relationship characteristics in social networks may be critical for understanding the character and costs of the social difficulties experienced of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We conducted an ego-based (self-reported, individual) social network analysis of 142 participants...

The objective of this study was to test the effects of two types of narcissism on popularity in peer networks. Using data from four groups of well-acquainted students (N=122), we investigated differential relations of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism with network centrality indicators of liking and disliking. Grandiose narcissists received a lar...

The objective of this study was to test the effects of two types of narcissism on popularity in peer networks. Using data from four groups of well-acquainted students (N=122), we investigated differential relations of grandiose and vulnerable narcissism with network centrality indicators of liking and disliking. Grandiose narcissists received a lar...

Two dimensions of narcissism exist, grandiose and vulnerable, which are thought to be associated with distinctly different patterns of interpersonal behavior. Social network analysis is a way of quantifying and analyzing interpersonal interactions that may prove useful for characterizing the networks associated with these narcissism dimensions. In...

Objective: Alcohol misuse is substantially influenced by social factors, but systematic assessments of social network drinking are typically lengthy. The goal of the present study was to provide further validation of a brief measure of social network alcohol use, the Brief Alcohol Social Density Assessment (BASDA), in a sample of emerging adults....

OBJECTIVE: To investigate how the contextual expression of personality differs across interpersonal relationships. METHOD: Two related studies were conducted with college samples (Study 1: N=52, 38 female; Study 2: N=111, 72 female). Participants in each study completed a Five Factor measure of personality, and constructed a social network detailin...

To apply social network analysis (SNA) to investigate whether frequency and severity of gambling problems were associated with different network characteristics among friends, family and co-workers is an innovative way to look at relationships among individuals; the current study was the first, to our knowledge, to apply SNA to gambling behaviors....

The role of social factors in pathological gambling has received relatively little systematic research. The goal of the current study was to examine the relationship between a target individual's gambling behavior and the gambling behavior among that individual's parents, siblings and five closest friends. The specific aims were, first, to apply a...

This chapter reviews the empirical literature on the social networks of narcissists. Results suggest that, first, narcissism is associated with a larger number of relationships within one's social network, although the number and quality of these relationships seems to be overstated by the narcissistic individual. Second, narcissists bridge dispara...

In order to better integrate research on personality pathology, interpersonal problems, and social skills, we applied the traditional methods of these three research strands (questionnaires, interviews, and interpersonal role-plays) to the same sample. Participants who attributed higher levels of interpersonal problems to themselves in general were...

The interpersonal dysfunction that characterizes borderline personality disorder (BPD) has generally been studied using broad global measures, leading to a lack of precision. We report on a novel methodology using social network analysis (SNA) to quantify interactions with others in the patient's social world. We assessed the social networks of 22...

Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been described as clinically heterogeneous, with numerous subtypes of the disorder posited. The present study investigated this potential heterogeneity by conducting both confirmatory factor analysis and latent class analysis of consensus ratings of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM...

The current study used a psychiatric sample (N = 69) to examine: (1) the correspondence between self- and other-reports of general personality, as measured by the Five-Factor Model (FFM; Costa & McCrae, 1990), and personality disorder (PD) traits, as measured by a structured interview, (2) the relations between these two sets of ratings (FFM and PD...

This study compares the relationship between personality disorders and interpersonal problems as obtained by self-report and peer-report measures. Participants (N = 393) were administered self- and peer-report versions of the Peer Inventory for Personality Disorder and the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems-64. Canonical analyses demonstrated simi...

Self-reported personality disorder (PD) traits have low to moderate correlations with informant and peer-reports of the same traits. The current study investigates the source of disagreement in correspondence and proposes that in some cases it is due to systematic differences in perceptions of traits by self and others. Military recruits (N=2013) w...

The provision of health care over the Internet is a rapidly evolving and potentially beneficial means of delivering treatment otherwise unsought or unobtainable. Internet interventions are typically behavioral treatments operationalized and transformed for Web delivery with the goal of symptom improvement. The literature on the feasibility and util...

Clozapine and risperidone were the first two "second-generation" antipsychotic drugs approved for schizophrenia. There is currently little information about their comparative efficacy from head-to-head clinical trials. The purpose of this study was to examine the comparative efficacy of clozapine and risperidone for positive and negative symptoms,...

The neurotransmitter serotonin has been implicated in the pathophysiology of psychosis. The serotonin transporter (5-HTT) plays a critical role in regulation of serotonergic function. A recently identified polymorphism in the promoter region of the 5-HTT gene (5-HTTLPR) produces significant differences in 5-HTT expression and function and was found...

Several lines of evidence suggest that the dopamine D3 receptor is involved in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. The D3 receptor gene (DRD3) contains a polymorphism resulting in a serine-glycine substitution in the N-terminus of the receptor. Shaikh and colleagues have reported a significant association between the DRD3 Ser9 allele and the Ser9...

The N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor has been implicated in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia. We administered subanesthetic doses of the NMDA receptor antagonist ketamine in a double-blind, placebo–controlled design to 13 neuroleptic-free schizophrenic patients to investigate if schizophrenics will experience an exacerbation of psychotic sy...

The presence of the 5HT2C receptor allele, Ser23, has recently been reported to predict favorable response to the antipsychotic drug, clozapine. This finding is of interest as Ser23, compared with the more abundant Cys23, alters pharmacological characteristics of the receptor and therefore may provide insights into the mechanism of action of antips...

System requirements: CD-ROM drive; Adobe Acrobat reader. Title from title page. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Virginia, 2005. Includes bibliographical references. Text.