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Brianna J. Turner, Julie Prud’homme, and Nicole Legg
Macfie, Noose, and Gorrondona (this volume) and Davies and Thompson (this volume) have provided thoughtful commentaries that significantly expand on both the theoretical and empirical considerations regarding sociocultural and environmental influences on personality and personality disorders that we provided in our chapter. In our rejoinder, we wish to highlight three key directions for research and clinical work that emerge from our chapter and the subsequent commentaries.
Understanding the Importance of Early Environments
Both Davies and Thompson’s and Macfie and colleagues’ excellent commentaries highlight the importance of early caregiving environments in organizing personality development. In their review of the social defense system and differential susceptibility theories, Davies and Thompson underscore the utility of adopting a contextual approach to understanding personality. For instance, behavioral responses that are adaptive in one context may be less functional or appropriate in other contexts. Similarly, temperaments or traits that are associated with increased risk in some contexts may produce substantial benefits in others. Thus, researchers and clinicians must be careful to consider both the early developmental contexts in which traits or response styles developed and their function within evolving contexts across development. In a related vein, Macfie and colleagues point to Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to remind readers of the importance of considering dynamic interactions between multiple levels of environmental influence and personality development. Both commentaries thus highlight the importance of bringing a contextually-informed, dynamic perspective to research and clinical care, while also emphasizing the crucial role of early environments in personality psychopathology.
An additional direction that Davies and Thompson and Macfie and colleagues each highlight is the importance of expanding our understanding of the developmental pathways that link early caregiving experiences to prospective personality pathology. Macfie and colleagues review several longitudinal studies that have adopted just such an approach. Davies and Thompson expertly note that an increased focus on mediated moderation models will advance our understanding of how person–environment transactions unfold and connect early caregiver influences to personality pathology. Moreover, as Macfie and colleagues observe, there is also a need to expand our consideration of interactions between family processes and individual cognitive and emotional systems in personality research, as well as in our assessment and treatment of personality disorders. Studies in this area may spur early intervention and prevention efforts by highlighting foundational processes that could be targeted in treatment.
Testing Interactive and Transactional Models
One area we would like to revisit from our chapter is our consideration of biological versus environmental contributions to personality disorders. As Macfie and colleagues note, it is important to avoid a false dichotomy between these contributions given robust evidence of their transactional relationship. Increasingly, research is identifying the bi-directional interactions between biological factors (e.g., genes, biomarkers, predisposing heritable characteristics) and environments (see Macfie et al., this volume). Coupling an interactive (e.g., gene by environment) approach with the dimensional models of personality discussed below may help move the field beyond examining biomarkers that are specific to a single disorder and toward a broader understanding of the dynamic underpinnings of personality pathology.
Expanding the Use of Dimensional Models of Personality Pathology
The movement toward dimensional models of personality pathology is an overarching theme within our chapter, the responding commentaries, and research within the field of personality disorders. We wholeheartedly agree with Davies and Thompson’s suggestion that a move toward dimensional frameworks, such as the Five-Factor Model (Bagby & Widiger, 2018; De Fruyt & De Clercq, 2014), may facilitate more rapid advances in our understanding of the developmental pathways that underlie adaptive and maladaptive expressions of personality traits. Dimensional approaches favor the conceptualization of personality traits as continuously distributed across gradations of intensity, severity, or rigidity. The use of dimensional models has important advantages for moving contextual personality disorder research forward. For instance, dimensional models may facilitate cross-cultural research, as cultural differences in definitions of maladaptiveness can be more explicitly acknowledged and incorporated into research designs (e.g., Chen & Stevenson, 1995; Kim, Rapee, Ja Oh, & Moon, 2008). Furthermore, dimensional models may lend themselves to lifespan and developmental perspectives, which, in turn, can spur important research on the interactions of early environments, sociocultural contexts, and biological contributions to personality pathology. Finally, moving toward a dimensional approach to personality disorders may help align research with existing clinical theories that emphasize early development and reinforcement of maladaptive coping strategies or response styles, internal working models or schema, and interpersonal dynamics in their etiological explanations of personality pathology. Studies grounded in a dimensional perspective may also inform interventions that could be applied and adapted across facets of personality pathology, similar to the transdiagnostic approaches that have been developed for other disorders (e.g., Barlow et al., 2010; Ehrenreich-May & Chu, 2013).
References
Bagby, R. M., & Widiger, T. A. (2018). Five factor model personality disorder scales: An introduction to a special section on assessment of maladaptive variants of the five factor model. Psychological Assessment, 30, 1–9.
Barlow, D. H., Ellard, K. K., Fairholme, C. P., Farchione, T. J., Boisseau, C. L., Allen, L. B., & Ehrenreich-May, J. T. (2010). Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders. New York: Oxford University Press.
Chen, C., & Stevenson, H. W. (1995). Motivation and mathematics achievement: A comparative study of Asian-American, Caucasian-American, and East Asian high school students. Child Development, 66(4), 1215–1234.
De Fruyt, F., & De Clercq, B. (2014). Antecedents of personality disorder in childhood and adolescence: Toward an integrative developmental model. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 10, 449–476.
Ehrenreich-May, J., & Chu, B. C. (2013). Transdiagnostic Treatments for Children and Adolescents: Principles and Practice. New York: Guilford Press.
Kim, J., Rapee, R. M., Ja Oh, K., & Moon, H.-S. (2008). Retrospective report of social withdrawal during adolescence and current maladjustment in young adulthood: Cross-cultural comparisons between Australian and South Korean students. Journal of Adolescence, 31(5), 543–563.