Douglas B Samuel

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Associate) at Purdue University West Lafayette

This review synthesizes a wide literature on the agreement of treating clinicians’ PD diagnoses with each other and their convergence with common research methods. Median interrater reliability between clinicians was moderate when calculated dimensionally (r = .46) or categorically (κ = .40). The agreement between clinicians’ diagnoses and those fr...

Over the past two decades, evidence has suggested that personality disorders (PDs) can be conceptualized as extreme, maladaptive variants of general personality dimensions, rather than discrete categorical entities. Recognizing this literature, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) alternative PD model in...

The Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5) was developed as a measure of the maladaptive personality trait model included within Section III of the DSM-5. Although preliminary findings have suggested the PID-5 has a five-factor structure that overlaps considerably with the Five-Factor Model (FFM) at the higher order level, there has been much less...

Objective: Research has demonstrated poor agreement between clinician-assigned personality disorder (PD) diagnoses and those generated by self-report questionnaires and semistructured diagnostic interviews. No research has compared prospectively the predictive validity of these methods. We investigated the convergence of these 3 diagnostic methods...

The Five-Factor Model Rating Form (FFMRF) is a one-page measure designed to provide an efficient assessment of the higher order domains of the Five Factor Model (FFM) as well as the more specific, lower order facets proposed by McCrae and Costa. Although previous research has suggested that the FFMRF’s assessment of the lower order facets converge...

Brain structure correlates of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) remain poorly understood as limited OCPD assessment has precluded well-powered studies. Here, we tested whether machine learning (ML; elastic net regression, gradient boosting machines, support vector regression with linear and radial kernels) could estimate OCPD scores...

Proliferation and variability of psychological measures are part of the scientific process. While sometimes an indication of questionable research practices, there are also benign reasons for measurement proliferation and the community’s response must take both aspects into account.

Objective: Extant literature has seldom examined the naturalistic role of reaction to threat on downstream emotional distress while also considering buffers, such as perceived social support, to acute negative mental health outcomes. The present study examined how trauma symptoms, in reaction to a global stressor, predicted increased psychological...

We re-oriented the HEXACO personality dimensions to approximate the Big Five, using two measures of the Big Five as targets in a derivation sample and then in cross-validation samples. The HEXACO approximations of Big Five Agreeableness represented blends of HEXACO Agreeableness, Emotionality, and Honesty-Humility. The HEXACO approximations of Big...

Wright et al. (2022) propose to replace personality disorders with a new classification of interpersonal disorders. We suggest that the trait model addresses well the limitations of the personality disorder categorical syndromes and accommodates the dynamics asserted as strengths of the interpersonal model. We identify weaknesses of the interperson...

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM) has been criticized because evidence suggests that it lacks appropriate validity, reliability, and clinical utility, and the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) has been offered as a solution to these criticisms. Our goal in the present study was to compare clinician perc...

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has been criticized through evidence suggesting it lacks appropriate validity, reliability, and clinical utility, and the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) has been offered as a solution to these criticisms. The goal of the present study was to compare clinician percepti...

The alternative model of personality disorder (AMPD) included in Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) reconceptualized personality pathology in terms of pathological traits and impairments in functioning. For example, the construct of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) was rec...

In addition to replicating examinations of gender bias in the diagnosis of all cluster B personality disorders (PDs), this is the first study to examine the extent to which patient sexual orientation biases the diagnosis of antisocial, histrionic, and narcissistic PDs as well as whether or not such sexual orientation bias differs by patient gender....

Abbreviated measures of personality have the promise of providing concise measurements of the broad domains. Nonetheless, few abbreviated instruments assess the lower-order traits within these models. The Five-Factor Model Rating Form (FFMRF) is one brief instrument that assesses 30 lower-order facets. Given a tradeoff of abbreviated measures is re...

This article outlines the Phase 1 efforts of the HiTOP Measure Development group for externalizing constructs, which include disinhibited externalizing, antagonistic externalizing, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, substance use, and externalizing/maladaptive behaviors. We provide background on the constructs included and the process and is...

Research on dimensional models of personality pathology has achieved a good deal of consensus on the 5 broad constructs that span adaptive and maladaptive personality traits. Nonetheless, connections between the 5th domain, typically called openness to experience within general personality measures and psychoticism or schizotypy on maladaptive meas...

Research has repeatedly evidenced the structural validity of the five-factor model (FFM), but questions remain about the use of its dimensions in clinical practice. Samuel and colleagues (2018) found therapists reported their clients had lower levels of personality pathology compared with clients' own self-reports when using the unipolar Personalit...

Research has repeatedly evidenced the structural validity of the Five Factor Model (FFM), but questions remain about the use of its dimensions in clinical practice. Samuel and colleagues (2018) found therapists reported their clients had lower levels of personality pathology compared to clients’ own self-reports when using the unipolar PID-5 scale....

The COVID-19 pandemic provided a unique opportunity for quantifying the impact of Five Factor Model personality domains (i.e. neuroticism, extraversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) and COVID-related lifestyle changes on psychological distress. To examine these relationships, we designed and preregistered the present study (https...

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...

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...

Psychophysiological measures have become increasingly accessible to researchers and many have properties that indicate their use as individual difference indicators. For example, the error-related negativity (ERN), an event-related potential (ERP) thought to reflect error-monitoring processes, has been related to individual differences, such as Neu...

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...

The Abridged Big-Five Dimensional Circumplex (AB5C) model stands out due to its ability to locate personality facets within a circumplex structure. However, both current measures of the AB5C model have facets inconsistent with their respective circumplex location. The current study sought to modify specific AB5C-SF scales by selecting new items for...

Relative to broad Big Five domains, personality facets provide incremental value in predicting life outcomes. Valid between-group comparisons of means and correlates of facet scores are contingent upon measurement invariance of personality measures. Research on culture and Big Five personality has been largely limited to cross-national comparisons...

In theory, Registered Reports eliminate publication bias against negative results because publication decisions are made without knowledge of the results; increase clarity between planned (hypothesis testing; confirmatory) and unplanned (hypothesis generating; exploratory) analyses, thereby increasing the diagnosticity of statistical inferences; an...

The error-related negativity (ERN) is one of the most researched event-related potentials in the study of cognitive control, and it is thought to capture preconscious error-monitoring. ERN amplitude is known to be modulated by trait and state differences in affect, yet most ERN studies use 'cold' cognitive tasks that do not directly target affectiv...

Purpose of review The validity of self-ratings of personality pathology often is questioned because personality disorders (PD) historically have been viewed as being characterized by poor insight. However, recent research indicates that PD self-ratings are valid in many ways and have significant clinical utility. Building upon this growing literatu...

Purpose of Review: The validity of self-ratings of personality pathology often are questioned because personality disorders (PD) historically have been viewed as being characterized by poor insight. However, recent research indicates that PD self-ratings are valid in many ways and have significant clinical utility. Building upon this growing litera...

Relative to broad Big Five domains, personality facets provide incremental value in predicting life outcomes. Valid between-group comparisons of means and correlates of facet scores are contingent upon measurement invariance of personality measures. Research on culture and Big Five personality has been largely limited to cross-national comparisons...

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...

Personality traits have been hypothesized to be clinically useful for diagnosis, client conceptualization, treatment planning, as well as for predicting treatment outcomes. Although several studies examined the relation between personality traits and specific therapy outcomes, this literature has not yet been systematically reviewed. Thus, the purp...

Personality traits have been hypothesized to be clinically useful for diagnosis, client conceptualization, treatment planning, as well as for predicting treatment outcomes. Although several studies examined the relation between personality traits and specific therapy outcomes, this literature has not yet been systematically reviewed. Thus, the purp...

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...

Personality pathology—which is characterized by a pervasive, maladaptive, and inflexible pattern of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors—has long been defined as a set of categories that are distinct from each other a “normal” personality. Research over the past three decades has challenged that assumed separation and instead suggested that abnormal p...

What basic personality traits characterize the psychologically healthy individual? The purpose of this article was to address this question by generating an expert-consensus model of the healthy person in the context of the 30 facets (and 5 domains) of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (Costa & McCrae, 1992) system of traits. In a first set of...

Previous studies have indicated a consistent profile of basic personality traits correlated with adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) (e.g., Ranseen, Campbell, & Baer, 1998; Nigg et al., 2002). In particular, research has found that low scores of the Conscientiousness trait and high scores on Neuroticism have been correlated with A...

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...

Short measures of psychological constructs are routinely used to save assessment time and cost. The downside is a trade-off between resource savings and psychometric quality. When evaluating tests, a pragmatic strategy is frequently applied that neglects the assessment objective, which may result in unfair rejection or unmindfully acceptance of sho...

The categorical model of classification in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is sorely problematic. A proposed solution is emerging in the form of a quantitative nosology, an empirically based dimensional organization of psychopathology. More specifically, a team of investigators has proposed the Hierarc...

We adopted an expert-rating approach to generate a consensus Five Factor Model (FFM) profile of the psychologically healthy person. In addition, we collected ratings from scholars with expertise in positive psychology and two samples of undergraduate psychology students to examine the agreement within and between different groups of raters. We then...

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...

The categorical model of classification in the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5; APA, 2013) is sorely problematic. A proposed solution is emerging in the form of a quantitative nosology, an empirically based dimensional organization of psychopathology. More specifically, a team of...

The dimensional pathological personality trait model proposed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM–5), Section III Criterion B, has shown promising results for its validity and utility in conceptualizing personality pathology. However, as its structural equivalence across sex is yet to be tested, the val...

Advances in technology have provided opportunities to assess physiological correlates and further our understanding of a number of constructs, including personality traits. Event-related potentials (ERPs), scalp-recorded measures of brain activity with millisecond temporal resolution, show properties that make them potential candidates for integrat...

Objective: Treating clinicians provide the majority of mental health diagnoses, yet little is known about the validity of their routine diagnoses, including the agreement with clients' self-reports. This is particularly notable for personality disorders (PDs) as the literature suggests weak agreement between therapists and clients. Existing resear...

Objective: Treating clinicians provide the majority of mental health diagnoses, yet little is known about the validity of their routine diagnoses, including the agreement with clients’ self-reports. This is particularly notable for personality disorders (PDs) as the literature suggests weak agreement between therapists and clients. Existing researc...

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...

Background: It is widely established that personality disorder has as broad negative impact on psychotherapy outcomes. Given the increased emphasis on dimensional traits for personality pathology in the DSM-5 and the proposal for the ICD-11, it is important to understand how traits are linked to treatment outcomes. Building on past research with g...

Although there has been widespread consensus on the use of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of general personality functioning in personality research, there are various, diverse models of the lower order traits of the FFM domains. Given the usefulness of these finer grained traits, it is imperative to integrate facets proposed across a variety of model...

The Five-Factor Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (FFOCI) is an assessment of obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) that is based on the conceptual framework of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality. The FFOCI has 12 subscales that assess those five-factor model facets relevant to the description of OCPD. Research has suggested that th...

Building on support for the five-factor model (FFM) of personality disorder, the Five Factor Schizotypal Inventory (FFSI) was developed to assess maladaptive traits relevant to schizotypal personality disorder. While the development of the FFSI supports a continuity between schizotypal thinking and perception (STAP) and the FFM domain of Openness t...

Impulsivity is a transdiagnostic dimension of crucial importance to understanding psychopathology, as it is highly relevant to a wide array of maladaptive life outcomes including substance use, criminality, and other risky behaviors. There exist a variety of operationalizations of impulsivity across the literature distinct nomological networks. In...

The use of knowledgeable informants is a particularly valuable tool for the diagnosis and assessment of personality disorder (PD). This review details the use of one particular type of informant—practicing clinicians—in PD research. We detail a wide variety of studies that have employed clinicians as an assessment source, including those focused on...

The reliability and validity of traditional taxonomies are limited by arbitrary boundaries between psychopathology and normality, often unclear boundaries between disorders, frequent disorder co-occurrence, heterogeneity within disorders, and diagnostic instability. These taxonomies went beyond evidence available on the structure of psychopathology...

Recent findings highlight the limited agreement between diagnostic ratings provided by practicing clinicians and the self-report and interview methods typically employed in research settings. Such discrepancies between the diagnoses assigned in research and applied settings greatly complicate the translation of empirical findings into practice. Thi...

The error-related negativity (ERN) is a neural measure of error processing that has been implicated as a neurobehavioral trait and has transdiagnostic links with psychopathology. Few studies, however, have contextualized this traitlike component with regard to dimensions of personality that, as intermediate constructs, may aid in contextualizing li...

An existing relationship between attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and personality disorder (PD) has been well documented, yet research has been limited by possible selection and self-report biases as well as PD models of questionable validity. This study examined the relationship of ADHD with adult personality traits and disorders in...

A particularly controversial aspect in the field of personality assessment is the use of self-report measures, versus clinicians' evaluations, for diagnosing personality disorder (PD). No studies have systematically documented the agreement between these sources for the entire array of DSM-5 PDs using comprehensive measures and experienced clinicia...

Objective: Several studies have shown structural and statistical similarities between the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5(th) edition (DSM-5) alternative personality disorder model and the five-factor model (FFM). However, no study to date has evaluated the nomological network similarities between the two models. Method:...

Past research has suggested that personality disorders (PDs) are best conceptualized as a maladaptive extreme variants of the same traits that define general personality. Such a dimensional approach to PD classification has officially been included in the latest version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as an alte...

The fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes an alternative model of personality disorders (PDs) in Section III, consisting in part of a pathological personality trait model. To date, the 220-item Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5; Krueger, Derringer, Markon, Watson, & Skodol, 2012) is the onl...

Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder ( OCPD ) is a mental disorder characterized by rigidity, perfectionism, and a preoccupation with rules, details, and order. It has a lengthy history that traces back to the beginnings of psychology and has appeared in every edition of the DSM . OCPD occurs in approximately 2% of the adult population and is...

Thomas A. Widiger (b. 1952) is an influential figure in the diagnosis and classification of psychopathology, having served as the Research Coordinator for DSM-IV. His specific expertise in the diagnosis of personality disorders led to his inclusion as a member of the DSM-III-R Advisory Committee and DSM-IV Personality Disorders Work Group, and co-c...

One-hundred sixty-nine psychiatric outpatients and 171undergraduate students were assessed with the Personality Disorder Interview-IV (PDI-IV; Widiger, Mangine, Corbitt, Ellis, & Thomas, 1995) and the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Axis II disorders (SCID-II; First, Gibbon, Spitzer, Williams, & Benjamin, 1997) for borderline personality d...

The Five Factor Obsessive Compulsive Inventory (FFOCI) was developed in part to facilitate a shift from the categorical classification of personality disorder to a dimensional trait model, more specifically, the five-factor model (FFM). Questions though have been raised as to whether obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) can be understoo...

The Five-Factor Model Rating Form (FFMRF) provides a brief, one-page assessment of the Five-Factor Model. An important and unique aspect of the FFMRF is that it is the only brief measure that includes scales for the 30 facets proposed by Costa and McCrae. The current study builds on existing validity support for the FFMRF by evaluating its factoria...

Methods for diagnosing personality disorders (PDs) within clinical settings typically diverge from those used in treatment research. Treatment groups in research studies are routinely diagnosed using semistructured interviews or self-report questionnaires, yet these methods show poor agreement with clinical diagnoses recorded in medical charts or a...

The Elemental Psychopathy Assessment (EPA) is a 178-item self-report measure designed to assess the basic elements of psychopathy from a Five-Factor Model perspective: Anger, Arrogance, Callousness, Coldness, Disobliged, Distrust, Dominance, Impersistence, Invulnerable, Manipulation, Opposition, Rashness, Self-Assurance, Self-Centered, Self-Content...

Although the current diagnostic manual conceptualizes personality disorders (PDs) as categorical entities, an alternative perspective is that PDs represent maladaptive extreme versions of the same traits that describe normal personality. Existing evidence indicates that normal personality traits, such as those assessed by the five-factor model (FFM...

The DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed.) Section III will include an alternative hybrid system for the diagnosis of personality disorder (PD). This alternative system defines PD types partly through specific combinations of maladaptive traits, rather than by using a set of polythetic diagnostic criteria. The curren...

This study compares the 10-year retest stability of normal traits, pathological traits, and personality disorder dimensions in a clinical sample. Ten-year rank-order stability estimates for the Revised NEO Personality Inventory, Schedule for Nonadaptive and Adaptive Personality, and Diagnostic Interview for DSM-IV Personality Disorders were evaluat...

This study provides convergent, discriminant, and incremental validity data for the Five-Factor Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory (FFOCI), a newly developed measure of traits relevant to obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) from the perspective of the Five-factor model (FFM). Twelve scales were constructed as maladaptive variants of specif...

The DSM-5 proposal indicates that personality disorders (PDs) be defined as collections of maladaptive traits but does not provide a specific diagnostic method. However, researchers have previously suggested that PD constructs can be assessed by comparing individuals’ trait profiles with those prototypic of PDs and evidence from the five-factor mod...

Although reasonably strong support has been obtained for the Five Factor Model's (FFM) ability to account for the existing personality disorder (PD) constructs, the support for obsessive-compulsive PD (OCPD) and dependent PD (DPD) have been relatively less consistent. Specifically, the expected correlation between OCPD and the FFM trait of conscien...

Early maladaptive schemas are stable, negative beliefs about oneself, others, or the environment that are formed early in life and subsequently organize an individual’s experiences and behaviors. We evaluated the factor structure and validity of the self-report Early Maladaptive Schema Questionnaire—Research version (EMSQ-R) that assesses 15 malada...

It is evident that the conceptualization, diagnosis, and classification of personality disorder is shifting toward a dimensional model and, more specifically, the Five-Factor Model (FFM) in particular. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the FFM of personality disorder. It will begin with a description of this dimensional model...

Although therapeutic community (TC) treatment is a promising intervention for substance use disorders, a primary obstacle to successful treatment is premature attrition. Because of their prevalence within substance use treatment facilities, personality disorder (PD) diagnoses have been examined as predictors of treatment completion. Prior research...

The Five Factor Model of Personality (FFM) has been proposed as a potential alternative to the current DSM-IV-TR model, which conceptualizes personality disorders (PDs) as categorical constructs. While an extensive literature has pointed out the flaws of the diagnostic categories, they are quite familiar to clinicians and there may still be instanc...

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-5 Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group proposed the elimination of diagnostic criterion sets in favor of a prototype matching system that defines personality disorders using narrative descriptions. Although some research supports this general approach, no empirical studies...