Ashley Watts

Emory University | EU · Department of Psychology

We advanced several “riskier tests” of the validity of bifactor models of psychopathology, which included that the p-factor and specific psychopathology factors should be reliable and well-represented by their respective indicators, and that modeling the p-factor should increase the model’s external validity. We compared bifactor and correlated fac...

The past several decades have witnessed a proliferation of research on the dark triad (DT), a set of traits comprising Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy. The bulk of DT research has been marked by several core assumptions, most notably that each DT construct is a monolithic entity that is clearly separable from its counterpart DT constr...

Long the stuff of clinical lore, successful psychopathy has recently become the focus of research. Although numerous authors have conjectured that psychopathic traits are sometimes associated with occupational or interpersonal success, rigorous evidence for this assertion has thus far been minimal. We provide a status report on successful-psychopat...

Given that psychopathy is associated with narcissism, lack of insight, and pathological lying, the assumption that the validity of self-report psychopathy measures is compromised by response distortion has been widespread. We examined the statistical effects (moderation, suppression) of response distortion on the validity of self-report psychopathy...

The psychopathy field has long been beset by confusion and contention regarding the boundaries and features of this chimerical condition. We propose that this disagreement stems largely from the historical separation between psychopathy and basic personality psychology. Using findings from a meta-analysis of the correlations between the Psychopathy...

Community detection, which requires the clustering of the vertices of a network graph, is an important component of network science. A variety of mathematical programming models and heuristics have been developed for community detection and they seek to optimize criteria such as the modularity score (Q) or the modularity density function. These met...

In this study, we reduced the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM-5) to its constituent symptoms and reorganized them based on patterns of covariation in individuals’ ( N = 14,762) self-reported experiences of the symptoms to form an empirically derived hierarchical framework of clinical phenomena. Speci...

Many clustering problems are associated with a particular objective criterion that is sought to be optimized. There are often several methods that can be used to tackle the optimization problem, and one or more of them might guarantee a globally optimal solution. However, it is quite possible that, relative to one or more suboptimal solutions, a gl...

More comprehensive modeling of psychopathology in youth is needed to facilitate a developmentally informed expansion of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model. In this study, we examined a symptom-level model of the structure of psychopathology in children and adolescents—most aged 11 to 17 years—bringing together data from larg...

The triarchic model posits that distinct trait constructs of boldness, meanness, and disinhibition underlie psychopathy. The triarchic model traits are conceptualized as biobehavioral dimensions that can be assessed using different sets of indicators from alternative measurement modalities; as such, the triarchic model would hypothesize that these...

Although substance use disorders are widely known to be influenced by myriad etiologic factors, recent research promotes the notion that liability toward addiction broadly construed can be described by a single, unitary dimension that we term “general addiction liability.” Here, we revisit the concept of general addiction liability by placing it at...

Replication provides a confrontation of psychological theory, not only in experimental research, but also in model-based research. Goodness of fit (GOF) of the original model to the replication data is routinely provided as meaningful evidence of replication. We demonstrate, however, that GOF obscures important differences between the original and...

The walktrap algorithm is one of the most popular community-detection methods in psychological research. Several simulation studies have shown that it is often effective at determining the correct number of communities and assigning items to their proper community. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the walktrap algorithm relies on hie...

In this study, we reduced the DSM-5 to its constituent symptoms and reorganized them based on patterns of covariation in individuals’ (n = 14,762) self-reported experiences of the symptoms to form an empirically derived hierarchical framework of clinical phenomena. Specifically, we used the points of agreement among hierarchical principal component...

An inherent limitation of many popular community detection methods, such as the walktrap and spin glass algorithms, is that they do not allow vertices to have membership in more than one community. Clique percolation remedies this limitation by allowing overlapping communities but does not necessarily produce solutions in accordance with the standa...

The p-factor is relatively novel construct that is thought to explain and maybe even cause variation in all forms of psychopathology. Since its “discovery” in 2012, hundreds of studies have been dedicated to the extraction and validation of statistical instantiations of the p-factor, called general factors of psychopathology. In this Perspective, w...

More comprehensive modelling of psychopathology in youth is needed to facilitate a developmentally informed expansion of the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) model. This study examined a symptom-level model of the structure of psychopathology in youth—most aged 11-17 years—bringing together data from large clinical, community, and r...

Historically, researchers have proposed higher-order factors to explicate the structure of psychopathology, including Externalizing, Internalizing, Fear, Distress, Thought Disorder, and a general factor. Despite extensive research in this domain, the underlying structure of psychopathology remains unresolved. Here, we examine several issues in adju...

Several dimensional frameworks for characterizing heterogeneity in alcohol use disorder (AUD) have been proposed, including the Addictions Neuroclinical Assessment (ANA). The ANA is a framework for assessing individual variability within AUD across three domains corresponding to the proposed stages of the addiction cycle: reward (binge-intoxication...

Emotion dysregulation is a multi-faceted, transdiagnostic construct, and its assessment is crucial for characterizing its role in the development, maintenance, and treatment of psychiatric problems. We developed the Brief Emotion Dysregulation Scale (BEDS) to capture four components of emotion dysregulation: sensitivity, lability, reactivity, and c...

This is paper that advocates the use of minres for factorization of network matrices with an undetermined main diagonal.

ARTICLE FREE TO ACCESS AT: https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2022.2158842. In this editorial statement, we briefly delineated a series of observations, guidelines, and directions for future research focused on the most common outcome of multi-informant assessments of youth mental health. Discrepancies commonly occur between estimates of youth mental...

Background and aims: Alcohol use disorder is comorbid with numerous other forms of psychopathology, including externalizing disorders (e.g., conduct disorder) and, to a lesser extent, internalizing conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety). Much of the time, overlap among alcohol use disorder and other conditions is explored at the disorder-level, as...

The development of factor analysis is uniquely situated within psychology, and the development of many psychological theories and measures are likewise tethered to the common use of factor analysis. In this article, we review modern methodological controversies and developments of factor analytic techniques through concrete demonstrations that span...

Scott O. Lilienfeld maintained an intense and probing interest in the interface of personality and psychopathology. He was especially intrigued by the personality systems subserving the clinical construct/disorder of psychopathy. Each of us knew Lilienfeld at various junctures in his academic career, and here we celebrate his scientific interest in...

The present paper highlights how alcohol use disorder (AUD) conceptualizations and resulting diagnostic criteria have evolved over time in correspondence with interconnected sociopolitical influences in the United States. We highlight four illustrative examples of how DSM-defined alcoholism, abuse/dependence, and AUD have been influenced by sociopo...

In basic psychological needs theory (BPNT), the separable constructs of need satisfaction and need frustration are theorized as pivotally related to psychopathology and broader aspects of well-being. The Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction and Frustration Scales (BPNSFS; Chen et al., 2015) have rapidly emerged as the dominant self-report measure...

Several dimensional frameworks for classifying heterogeneity in alcohol use disorder (AUD) have been proposed, including the Addictions Neuroclinical Assessment (ANA). The ANA is a framework for assessing individual variability within AUD across three domains that correspond to the proposed stages of the addiction cycle: reward (binge-intoxication...

Several dimensional frameworks for classifying heterogeneity in alcohol use disorder (AUD) have been proposed, including the Addictions Neuroclinical Assessment (ANA). The ANA is a framework for assessing individual variability within AUD across three domains that correspond to the proposed stages of the addiction cycle: reward (binge-intoxication...

Much research has demonstrated that psychopathology can be described in terms of broad dimensions, representing liability for multiple psychiatric disorders. Broad spectra of psychopathology (e.g., internalizing and externalizing) are increasingly used as targets for research investigating the development, etiology, and course of psychopathology be...

The Ising model has received significant attention in network psychometrics during the past decade. A popular estimation procedure is IsingFit, which uses nodewise l1-regularized logistic regression along with the extended Bayesian information criterion to establish the edge weights for the network. In this paper, we report the results of a simulat...

Historically, researchers have proposed higher-order factors to explicate the structure of psychopathology, including Externalizing, Internalizing, Fear, Distress, Thought Disorder, and a general factor. Despite extensive research in this domain, the underlying structure of psychopathology remains unresolved. Herein, we examine several issues in ad...

Feeling powerful and desiring power, the “having” versus “wanting” psychological experiences of power, are often conflated within a single measurement dimension (e.g., ascendance, social influence, dominance, agentic extraversion, assertiveness, social boldness). Across six studies, employing multiple modes of assessment, we examine the differentia...

The modularity index (Q) is an important criterion for many community detection heuristics used in network psychometrics and its subareas (e.g., exploratory graph analysis). Some heuristics seek to directly maximize Q, whereas others, such as the walktrap algorithm, only use the modularity index post hoc to determine the number of communities. Rese...

Objective: The causes of substance use disorders (SUDs) are largely unknown and the effectiveness of their treatments is limited. One crucial impediment to research and treatment progress surrounds how SUDs are classified and diagnosed. Given the substantial heterogeneity among individuals diagnosed with a given SUD (e.g., alcohol use disorder [AU...

Relatively little is known about the relations between psychopathic traits and interpersonally-directed versus organizationally-directed workplace behaviors despite the implications of these traits for maladaptive (e.g., bullying, harassing, white-collar crime, slacking) and adaptive (e.g., improving the workplace, supporting others) workplace beha...

On page 1 of his classic text, Millsap (2011) states, “Measurement invariance is built on the notion that a measuring device should function the same way across varied conditions, so long as those varied conditions are irrelevant [emphasis added] to the attribute being measured.” By construction, measurement invariance techniques require not only d...

As evidenced by our exchange with Bader and Moshagen (2022), the degree to which model fit indices can and should be used for the purpose of model selection remains a contentious topic. Here, we make three core points. First, we discuss the common misconception about fit statistics' abilities to identify the "best model," arguing that mechanical ap...

We review the limitations of model fit indices, which limit the validity of inferences that are based on them. In doing so, we encourage psychopathology researchers to think about model selection more broadly, and to approach model fit assessments more cautiously.

Spectral clustering is a well-known method for clustering the vertices of an undirected network. Although its use in network psychometrics has been limited, spectral clustering has a close relationship to the commonly used walktrap algorithm. In this article, we report results from simulation experiments designed to evaluate the ability of spectral...

Most researchers have estimated the edge weights for relative importance networks using a well-established measure of general dominance for multiple regression. This approach has several desirable properties including edge weights that represent R² contributions, in-degree centralities that correspond to R² for each item when using other items as p...

We used multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) modeling to examine general factors of psychopathology in three samples of youths ( Ns = 2,119, 303, and 592) for whom three informants reported on the youth’s psychopathology (e.g., child, parent, teacher). Empirical support for the p-factor diminished in multi-informant models compared with mono-informant mod...

Despite research indicating that exerting dominance and control is characteristic of psychopathy, no research has examined the role that feelings of and desire for power plays in psychopathy-related aggression. Borrowing from various literatures and novel conceptualizations, we investigated the contributions of feeling powerful and/or desiring powe...

This study builds upon research indicating that focusing narrowly on model fit when evaluating factor analytic models can lead to problematic inferences regarding the nature of item sets, as well as how models should be applied to inform measure development and validation. To advance research in this area, we present concrete examples relevant to r...

The development of factor analysis is uniquely situated within psychology, and the development of many psychological theories and measures are likewise tethered to the common use of factor analysis. In this paper, we review modern methodological controversies and developments through concrete demonstrations of how to use factor analytic methods acr...

Background Previous research has established that certain features of personality (e.g., impulsivity), psychopathology (e.g., impulsivity, mood disorder, thought disorder), and contextual factors (e.g., parenting, parental alcohol use) are associated with an increased likelihood of having sipped alcohol in youth, and substance involvement and probl...

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...

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and its bifactor models are popular in empirical investigations of the factor structure of psychological constructs. CFA offers straightforward hypothesis testing but has notable pitfalls, such as the imposition of strict assumptions (i.e., simple structure) that obscure unmodeled complexity. Due to the limitation...

Modern nosologies (e.g., ICD-11, DSM-5) for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and dependence prioritize reliability and clinical presentation over etiology, resulting in a diagnosis that is not always strongly grounded in basic theory and research. Within these nosologies, DSM-5 AUD is treated as a discrete, largely categorical, but graded, phenomenon, wh...

Much research has demonstrated that psychopathology can be described in terms of broad dimensions, representing liability for multiple psychiatric disorders. Broad spectra of psychopathology (e.g., internalizing and externalizing) are increasingly used as targets for research investigating the development, etiology, and course of psychopathology be...

Background: Previous research has established that certain features of personality and psychopathology (e.g., impulsivity, mood disorder, thought disorder) are associated with an increased likelihood of having sipped alcohol in youth, and substance involvement and problems into adolescence and adulthood. What is less clear from the existing literat...

Common outputs of software programs for network estimation include association matrices containing the edge weights between pairs of symptoms and a plot of the symptom network. Although such outputs are useful, it is sometimes difficult to ascertain structural relationships among symptoms from these types of output alone. We propose that matrix per...

Modern nosologies (e.g., ICD-11, DSM-5) for alcohol use disorder (AUD) and dependence prioritize reliability and clinical presentation over etiology, resulting in a diagnosis that is not always strongly grounded in basic theory and research. Within these nosologies, DSM-5 AUD is treated as a discrete, largely categorical, but graded, phenomenon, wh...

Mental disorders are complex, multifaceted phenomena that are associated with profound heterogeneity and comorbidity. Despite the heterogeneity of mental disorders, most are generally considered unitary dimensions. We argue that certain measurement practices, especially using too few indicators per construct, preclude the detection of meaningful mu...

Aims: This manuscript aims to provide a review of historical movements within the United States (U.S.) surrounding alcohol consumption and consequences, including sociopolitical discourse and shifts in alcohol research and treatment priorities. We also examine correspondence between historical movements in the U.S. and processes by which alcohol us...

This study builds upon recent research indicating that focusing narrowly on model fit when evaluating factor analytic models can lead to problematic inferences regarding the nature of item sets, as well as how models should be applied to inform measure development and validation. Specifically, we demonstrate that an overreliance on model fit may le...

Spectral clustering is a well-known method for clustering the vertices of an undirected network. Although its use in network psychometrics has been limited, spectral clustering has a close relationship to the commonly-used walktrap algorithm. In this paper, we report results from four simulation experiments designed to evaluate the ability of spect...

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is the largest single-cohort prospective longitudinal study of neurodevelopment and children's health in the United States. A cohort of n= 11,880 children aged 9-10 years (and their parents/guardians) were recruited across 22 sites and are being followed with in-person visits on an annual basi...

Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and its bifactor models are popular in empirical investigations of the factor structure of psychological constructs. CFA offers straightforward hypothesis testing but has notable pitfalls, such as the imposition of strict assumptions (i.e., simple structure) that obscure unmodeled complexity. Due to the limitation...

We used multitrait-multimethod (MTMM) modeling to examine general factors of psychopathology in three samples of youth (ns = 2119, 303, 592) for whom three informants reported on the youth’s psychopathology (e.g., child, parent, teacher). Empirical support for the p-factor diminished in multi-informant models compared with mono-informant models: th...

Aims To examine the acute effects of alcohol on Working Memory (WM) Updating, including potential variation across the ascending limb (AL) and descending limb (DL) of the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) time course. Design A two‐session experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to one of three beverage conditions (alcohol [males: 0...

The present study compared the primary models used in research on the structure of psychopathology (i.e., correlated factor, higher-order, and bifactor models) in terms of structural validity (model fit and factor reliability), longitudinal measurement invariance, concurrent and prospective predictive validity in relation to important outcomes, and...

Background: The p-factor is thought to cause a positive manifold in psychopathology data, and many researchers presume that it is a substantive mechanism as opposed to a methodological artifact. Limited research suggests that including completely undiagnosed cases (i.e., cases without a single diagnosis) affects the dimensionality of psychological...

We critique Roy et al.'s (2020; this issue) approach to characterizing the item-level factor structure of the three scales of the Triarchic Psychopathy Measure (TriPM), in light of the manner in which the TriPM scales were developed, the purposes they were designed to serve, and the growing body of evidence supporting their construct validity. We f...

The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is an empirically and quantitatively derived dimensional classification system designed to describe the features of psychopathology and, ultimately, to replace categorical nosologies. Among the constructs that HiTOP organizes are "symptom components" and "maladaptive traits," but past HiTOP publi...

Common factors are increasingly used to model the structure of psychopathology ("p"), personality (General Factor of Personality [GFP]), pathological personality (General Factor of Pathological Personality [GFPP]), and intelligence ("g"). Using 4 waves spanning ages 18-29 in a cohort of college students (baseline n = 489), this study used indicator...

The Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study is the largest single-cohort prospective longitudinal study of neurodevelopment and children's health in the United States. A cohort of n = 11,880 children aged 9-10 years (and their parents/guardians) were recruited across 22 sites and are being followed with in-person visits on an annual bas...

This manuscript does not include an abstract.

Psychiatric diagnoses are complex, multifaceted phenomena that are associated with profound heterogeneity and comorbidity. Despite the heterogeneity of psychiatric diagnoses, most are generally considered unitary dimensions. We argue that certain measurement practices, especially using too few indicators per construct, preclude the detection of mea...

Prior research has shown that sipping of alcohol begins to emerge during childhood and is potentially etiologically significant for later substance use problems. Using a large, community sample of 9- and 10-year-olds ( N = 11,872; 53% female), we examined individual differences in precocious alcohol use in the form of alcohol sipping. We focused ex...

Prior research has shown that sipping of alcohol begins to emerge during childhood and is potentially etiologically significant for later substance use problems. Using a large, community sample of 9- and 10-year olds (N = 11,872; 53% female), we examined individual differences in precocious alcohol use in the form of alcohol sipping. We focused exp...

The study of psychopathic traits in youth is in its nascent stages and the nature and the structure of these traits is still poorly understood. In one of the most comprehensive analyses to date of the construct validity of the widely used Antisocial Processing Screening Device (APSD), we used two independent samples of youth, one community (N = 220...

Background Understanding the comorbidity of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and other psychiatric diagnoses has been a long‐standing interest of researchers and mental health professionals. Comorbidity is often examined via the diagnostic co‐occurrence of discrete, categorical diagnoses, which is incongruent with increasingly supported dimensional appro...

The current study examines the measurement properties and validity of a novel, abbreviated youth version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale that was developed to maintain measurement consistency with the existing adult short form. Specifically, we examined this scale's (a) factor structure; (b) measurement and structural invariance across four...

Although the causes and correlates of sexual objectification almost certainly comprise a heterogeneous array of individual difference variables, little is known about sexual objectification perpetration's nomological network. We hypothesized that the broad personality construct of psychopathy would afford a fruitful framework for understanding and...

The current study examines the measurement properties and validity of a novel, abbreviated youth version of the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale that was developed to maintain measurement consistency with the existing adult short form. Specifically, we examined this scale’s (1) factor structure; (2) measurement and structural invariance across four...

In our article (Lilienfeld et al., 2019), we hypothesized that psychopathy and some other personality disorders are emergent interpersonal syndromes (EISs): interpersonally malignant configurations of distinct personality subdimensions. We respond to three commentaries by distinguished scholars who raise provocative challenges to our arguments and...

Personality disorders have long been bedeviled by a host of conceptual and methodological quandaries. Starting from the assumption that personality disorders are inherently interpersonal conditions that reflect folk concepts of social impairment, the authors contend that a subset of personality disorders, rather than traditional syndromes, are emer...

We consider the topic of arrogance from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint. To stimulate further research, we suggest three types of arrogance (individual, comparative, and antagonistic) and six components contributing to them, each logically related to the next. The components progress from imperfect knowledge and abilities to an unrealistic assessmen...

Research suggests that the Boldness and Disinhibition traits of psychopathy are negatively and positively related to internalizing, respectively. Although the associations between psychopathy and internalizing are relatively well-demonstrated, few studies have examined the specificity of these associations with psychopathy as opposed to general per...

Fearless dominance (FD) generally manifests null to small relations with externalizing problems, leading some researchers to propose alternative paths by which FD features may relate to these problems. The current study provides a test of two possibilities, namely that FD (a) interacts statistically with self-centered impulsivity (SCI) such that FD...

We advanced several “riskier tests” of the validity of bifactor models of psychopathology, which included that the general and specific psychopathology factors should be reliable and well represented by their respective indicators and that including a general factor should improve on the correlated factor model’s external validity. We compared bifa...

In a large sample of youth (N = 942, 51% female), we found support for a 3 correlated factors model of psychopathology that comprised Distress, Fears, and Externalizing factors. Distress was positively associated with Neuroticism, Fears was not associated with Big Five dimensions, and Externalizing was negatively associated with Agreeableness and C...