Open Peer Commentary

Durbin and Hicks offered a provocative critique of current research linking personality traits with psychopathology. We had a generally positive response to their article despite reservations about classifying an entire field as stagnant. We describe our reservations and suggest that their developmental approach represents an important opportunity to create synergy across a number of sub-disciplines within psychology. We then underscore their point about the importance of process when attempting to understand the dynamic connections between personality traits and psychopathology. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology Durbin and Hicks (D&H) critiqued research linking personality traits with psychopathology. We agree that a developmental perspective emphasizing timing, context, and process will help advance the field. We also endorse their recommendation for more longitudinal studies. In this comment, we elaborate on a small concern and extend their point about the importance of process. We conceptualize traits as more malleable over the course of development than is the case in canonical FFT, and we suspect that sustained changes in behaviour (under some conditions) may actually produce changes in traits. However, these theoretical deviations from FFT are not relevant for our suggestions here. Stagnation versus synergy Whereas D&H were critical of progress in this literature, we are more optimistic. The fact that personality trait researchers can (mostly) agree upon a limited set of basic domains is an important accomplishment that has curbed the jingle/jangle fallacies that plague many areas of research. Moreover, these efforts provide a framework for integrating research about temperament with research about traits. For example, there is now increasing recognition that effortful control and conscientiousness are strongly related (e.g. Eisenberg, Duckworth, Spinrad, & Valiente, 2014) and that these attributes are linked to externalizing problems (e.g. Dougherty et al., 2011). In short, research on the cross-sectional connections between traits and psychopathology has provided a strong foundation for the future. Characterizing this area of research as stagnant might be too harsh given that some quarters are still resistant to dimensional approaches to psychopathology and because research on structure can continue to play an important role in the field. At a very basic level, overly critical language might risk alienating natural allies in ongoing debates about the nature and taxonomy of psychopathology. As mentioned by D&H, we think pragmatic issues can explain the slow pace of progress in this area. It takes a considerable amount of time and resources to study developmental processes. There are also challenging issues of measurement in terms of content, methods, and informants that come into play when designing the studies needed to address the agenda proposed by D&H. What might appear as stagnation could simply reflect resource constraints. In light of these issues, we suggest reframing their argument about stagnation to one that pushes the virtues of synergy. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology There is much to be gained by thinking about personality traits as developmental constructs that relate to psychopathology across the lifespan. In line with this perspective, we think it could be useful to consider psychopathology as a ‘characteristic adaptation’ as the term is understood in Five-Factor Theory (FFT; McCrae & Costa, 2008, p. 163). Characteristic adaptations reflect the typical outcomes of transactions involving traits and environmental factors at particular points in development. Dynamic processes are therefore critical to understanding how psychopathology is manifested in everyday life. Complexity in models of personality–psychopathology associations Thinking about psychopathology as a characteristic adaptation encourages researchers to develop theoretically informed process models. Indeed, we suspect the models of the association between personality–psychopathology described by D&H are likely to be relevant for different forms of psychopathology. Some traits may increase the risk for psychopathology, whereas some forms of psychopathology may change traits. Pathoplastic relations that can help clarify diagnostic heterogeneity and inform treatments may exist. Some of these relations can be displayed within the same form of psychopathology, such as when affective traits are associated with the severity of psychopathology (i.e. some traits seem to reflect spectra or diatheses), whereas more interpersonal traits are associated with clinically relevant variability (i.e. some traits are pathoplastic) among people with the same diagnosis (e.g. Thomas et al., 2014). Thus, relatively specific process models are needed to understand the precise connections between personality traits and different forms of psychopathology. Accordingly, we extend the D&H arguments by suggesting the need to consider processes that exist at multiple levels of temporal resolution. A few emerging dynamic ‘micro-process’