A Five‐Factor Model Framework for Understanding Childhood Personality Disorder Antecedents

Abstract

The present contribution reviews evidence that supports the relevance of childhood antecedents of personality disorders, and advocates that the validity of a Five-Factor Model framework for describing general trait differences in childhood can be extended towards the field of developmental personality difficulties. In addition, we suggest that several traditional childhood Axis I conditions include a substantial trait component that may be responsible for the recurring finding that childhood Axis I disorders are predictive for adult Axis II disorders. Given the valuable information provided by a trait assessment, we further propose to integrate dimensional personality and personality pathology measures as standard tools in mental health assessments at a young age.

Constructing a short form of the hierarchical personality inventory for children (HiPIC): the HiPIC‐30

“…Using the HiPIC‐30 in cross‐sectional and longitudinal studies may be promising, given the potential of the full HiPIC to predict a range of childhood neurodevelopmental and mental disorders including personality dysfunction (Barger, Campbell, & Simmons, ; De Bolle et al, ; De Pauw, Mervielde, Van Leeuwen, & De Clercq, ; Decuyper, De Clercq, De Bolle, & De Fruyt, ; Decuyper et al, ; Prinzie et al, ). Furthermore, the HiPIC‐30 may assess personality aspects of resilience and positive personality traits that in turn enable children to grow into happy and productive adults (De Clercq & De Fruyt, ; Hampson, ; Shiner, Masten, & Roberts, ; Weiss, Bates, & Luciano, ). Indeed, resilience can be understood as personality constellations that include high scores on at least three personality dimensions, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness, and low scores on neuroticism, which in turn predict important life outcomes (Asendorpf & van Aken, ; Kim‐Cohen, Moffitt, Caspi, & Taylor, ; Robins, John, Caspi, Moffitt, & Stouthamer Loeber, ; Van Leeuwen, De Fruyt, & Mervielde, ).…”

“…In the last 25 years, a consensus has emerged advocating casting children's personality in the mold of the Five Factor Model of personality from school‐age onward (De Clercq & De Fruyt, ; Costa, McCrae, & Martin, ; Shiner, ; Tackett, Krueger, Iacono, & McGue, ; Tackett et al, ). The Five Factor Model postulates five broad independent traits that are both necessary and sufficient to describe human personality.…”

The Hierarchical Structure and Construct Validity of the PID‐5 Trait Measure in Adolescence

“…The ignorance of early personality difficulties has gradually given way to a growing research literature (for an overview, see Tackett, Balsis, Oltmanns, & Krueger, ), with many researchers pursuing the study of personality disorders in younger age groups. Although the past decades were an instructive period in terms of generating empirical evidence on personality disorder precursors from both a biological and a longitudinal perspective (De Clercq & De Fruyt, ; Tackett et al., ), this development is still not officially reflected at the taxonomic level of the DSM . It did stimulate, however, a number of studies on personality pathology in youth that applied the adult criteria for personality disorders in children or adolescents (for a review, see De Clercq, De Fruyt, & Widiger, ).…”

Integrating Normal and Abnormal Personality Structure: The Five‐Factor Model

“…As noted earlier, the existing diagnostic nomenclature is rather weak with respect to an understanding of childhood antecedents. De Clercq and De Fruyt () provide an overview of childhood antecedents of the FFM of personality disorder. One would not expect a measure of normal personality to provide an effective assessment of a personality disorder, yet in most cases of the DSM‐IV‐TR personality disorder constructs this does in fact appear to occur.…”