Constructs versus measures in personality and other domains: What distinguishes normal and clinical?

Abstract

Psychopathology has long been recognized as dysfunction of normal psychological systems (Cloninger, 1987; Eysenck, 1947). Indeed, examination of psychological disorders is one of the avenues through which the structure of normal personality was discovered (Gibby & Zickar, 2008). Melson-Silimon and colleagues (2018) describe a collision course between the objective of accurate personnel assessment and the need for organizations to provide access for persons with mental health disabilities. Their alarm is misplaced. Frameworks for distinguishing normal and clinical assessments are already well-established, and the need to use different instruments or scoring methods for workplace versus clinical assessment is not unique to the personality domain. In this commentary, we highlight the critical distinction between constructs and their normal versus clinical measurement (cf. Dilchert et al., 2014) and demonstrate that normal and clinical personality measures have distinct psychometric properties, even while measuring the same underlying personality constructs. We also show that Melson-Silimon et al.'s concerns about similarity of normal and clinical constructs and their measurement applies to a wide variety of psychological constructs that are routinely assessed in organizational applications. We end by urging caution in interpreting normal and clinical personality measures and offer evidence-based guidance for personality assessment practice. Personality Clinical Constructs = Normal Constructs; Clinical Measures ≠ Normal Measures Melson-Silimon et al. (2018) cite recent work from clinical psychology showing that personality disorders reflect maladaptive extreme low (for Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, or Emotional Stability) or high (Openness) levels of the Big Five personality traits (Markon et al., 2005). They suggest that this research exposes organizations using