Temporal dynamics of emotional processing: Parsing trial-wise variance of the late positive potential using Generalizability Theory.

The reliability of individual trial event-related potential (ERP) components extracted from electroencephalogram has been consistently questioned since ERP research began. This ambivalence is based on misunderstood assumptions stemming from Cronbach and Classical Test Theory. Contemporary methods allow for the reliability of individual ERP trials to be estimated and for analyses of these trial-level ERP components to be meaningfully parsed. We illustrate the use of Generalizability Theory procedures in estimating the reliability of trial-level ERPs using the late positive potential (LPP), a neural measure of motivated attention toward emotionally evocative stimuli. Individuals (N = 88) completed a passive viewing task while continuous EEG was recorded. Variability in trial-level LPP responses was decomposed into facets corresponding to individual differences, chronological trial within block, stimulus type, their two-way interactions, and specific stimuli. We estimated various reliability coefficients and found that both overall and category-specific person-level LPP estimates have good-to-excellent reliability, while the reliability of within-person differences (i.e., change) between arousal categories was fair for the early LPP. These results were generally consistent across time windows, but were highest early in the LPP time course. We argue that investigating reliability using trial-level data allows researchers to pursue hypotheses focused on neurophysiological dynamics that unfold over the course of an experiment and not risk false inferences (i.e., ecological fallacy) when using person-level aggregates to deduce such processes. Moreover, such analyses provide information that allows researchers to optimize their protocols by potentially reducing the number of individual trials, burden on participants, and cost, while retaining sufficient reliability.

Corrigendum: Using interpersonal dimensions of personality and personality pathology to examine momentary and idiographic patterns of alliance rupture.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.711109.].

Differentiations in Interpersonal Functioning Across Narcissism Dimensions.

Narcissism can be conceived hierarchically at three levels: as a global construct (Level 1), as two dimensions (Level 2; grandiosity and vulnerability), and as a trifurcated model with three underlying dimensions: interpersonal antagonism, narcissistic neuroticism, and agentic extraversion (Level 3). The aim of the study was to examine how narcissism dimensions across the three levels differ in their associations with various forms of interpersonal functioning. The authors assessed multiple domains of interpersonal functioning using data collected from 447 MTurk workers, 606 students, and 365 informants. Each narcissism dimension showed unique interpersonal profiles. The profile of interpersonal antagonism largely resembles grandiose and total narcissism in its interpersonal characteristics, narcissistic neuroticism largely resembles vulnerable narcissism, and agentic extraversion does not differ much from the traditional conceptualization of extraversion in its interpersonal qualities (e.g., high communion). Future studies may benefit from studying narcissism and how it relates to other psychological constructs using the trifurcated model.

The distinction between symptoms and traits in the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP).

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 publications have not fully explicated the distinction between symptoms and traits. We propose working definitions of symptoms and traits and explore challenges, exceptions, and remaining questions. Specifically, we propose that the only systematic difference between symptoms and traits in HiTOP is one of time frame. Maladaptive traits are dispositional constructs that describe persistent tendencies to manifest features of psychopathology, whereas symptoms are features of psychopathology as they are manifest during any specific time period (from moments to days to months). This has the consequence that almost every HiTOP dimension, at any level of the hierarchy, can be assessed as either a trait or a symptom dimension, by adjusting the framing of the assessment. We discuss the implications of these definitions for causal models of the relations between symptoms and traits and for distinctions between psychopathology, normal personality variation, and dysfunction.

An Interpersonal Approach to Social Preference: Examining Patterns and Influences of Liking and Being Bothered by Interpersonal Behaviors of Others.

Personality disorders are rooted in maladaptive interpersonal behaviors. Previously, researchers have assessed interpersonal behaviors using self-ratings of one's own behaviors and third-person ratings of dyadic interactions. Few studies have examined individuals' perceptions of others' interpersonal behaviors. Using a sample of 470 undergraduate students, the authors examined patterns of interpersonal perception as well as influences of these patterns on psychological functioning. Findings showed that people tend to like interpersonal behaviors that are similar to their own and become bothered by behaviors that are the opposite of their own. Such a pattern is particularly characteristic on the warmth dimension and is consistent across different levels of closeness of the relationship. The authors also found small but significant effects of interpersonal perception on personality and general psychological functioning, above and beyond effects of individuals' own interpersonal traits. Such findings highlight the importance of including perceptions of others in investigating interpersonal dynamics when understanding personality disorders.

Using Interpersonal Dimensions of Personality and Personality Pathology to Examine Momentary and Idiographic Patterns of Alliance Rupture.

The Alternative Model of Personality Disorders (AMPD) integrates several theoretical models of personality functioning, including interpersonal theory. The interpersonal circumplex dimensions of warmth and dominance can be conceptualized as traits similar to those in AMPD Criterion B, but interpersonal theory also offers dynamic hypotheses about how these variables that change from moment to moment, which help to operationalize some of the processes alluded to in AMPD Criterion A. In the psychotherapy literature, dynamic interpersonal behaviors are thought to be critical for identifying therapeutic alliance ruptures, yet few studies have examined moment-to-moment interpersonal behaviors that are associated with alliance ruptures at an idiographic level. The current study examined the concurrent and cross-lagged relationships between interpersonal behaviors and alliance ruptures within each session in the famous Gloria films ("Three Approaches to Psychotherapy"). Interpersonal behaviors (warmth and dominance) as well as alliance ruptures (i.e., withdrawal and confrontation) were calculated at half minute intervals for each dyad. We identified distinct interpersonal patterns associated with alliance ruptures for each session: Gloria (patient)'s warmth was positively related with withdrawal ruptures concurrently in the session with Carl Rogers; Gloria's dominance and coldness were related with increased confrontation ruptures in the session with Fritz Perls concurrently, while her coldness was also predicted by confrontation ruptures at previous moments; lastly, both Gloria's dominance and Albert Ellis's submissiveness were positively related with withdrawal ruptures. These interpersonal patterns demonstrated the promise of using AMPD dimensions to conceptualize momentary interpersonal processes related to therapy ruptures, as well as the clinical importance of attuning to repetitive, dyad-specific interpersonal cues of ruptures within each session.

A variance decomposition of the Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics.

The Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics (CAID) is an observational coding method that enables continuous tracking of warmth and dominance in both members of a dyad as an interaction unfolds. Research using this tool has revealed dynamic patterns relevant to psychopathology and psychotherapy, suggesting considerable potential for clinical assessment and research. However, CAID data are sensitive to a variety of person and situational factors, and the way that these factors combine to influence CAID data is poorly understood. We examined data from 10 raters using CAID to assess moment-to-moment warmth and dominance in opposite-sex married dyads (N = 137 couples) interacting in four distinct situations. Using Generalizability Theory methods, we decomposed sources of variance in CAID data and estimated multiple forms of between- and within-person reliability. Results revealed how spouses' moment-to-moment behaviors varied as a function of person, sex, dyad, rater, situation, and relevant interactions between these factors. Based on these results, we provided guidelines for interpreting CAID data at different levels of aggregation in clinical research and practice. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

An Interpersonal Approach to Social Preference: Examining Patterns and Influences of Liking and Being Bothered by Interpersonal Behaviors of Others.

Personality disorders are rooted in maladaptive interpersonal behaviors. Previously, researchers have assessed interpersonal behaviors using self-ratings of one's own behaviors and third-person ratings of dyadic interactions. Few studies have examined individuals' perceptions of others' interpersonal behaviors. Using a sample of 470 undergraduate students, the authors examined patterns of interpersonal perception as well as influences of these patterns on psychological functioning. Findings showed that people tend to like interpersonal behaviors that are similar to their own and become bothered by behaviors that are the opposite of their own. Such a pattern is particularly characteristic on the warmth dimension and is consistent across different levels of closeness of the relationship. The authors also found small but significant effects of interpersonal perception on personality and general psychological functioning, above and beyond effects of individuals' own interpersonal traits. Such findings highlight the importance of including perceptions of others in investigating interpersonal dynamics when understanding personality disorders.

Mapping Big Five Personality Traits Within and Across Domains of Interpersonal Functioning.

The Big Five and the interpersonal circumplex are among the most extensively used structural frameworks in personality research. Of the five factors, extraversion and agreeableness are theorized to carry the most interpersonal context, however, all five factors are likely to have important interpersonal implications. In the present study, we evaluated the associations between domains of interpersonal functioning and the Big Five domains and facets using the bootstrapped structural summary method. Results suggested that all Big Five traits showed prototypical and specific interpersonal profiles, with variability observed across lower order facets and domains of interpersonal functioning. Several Big Five traits and facets not overtly related to interpersonal behavior nonetheless showed specific, prototypical associations to interpersonal profiles. Findings suggest that Big Five traits and facets are saturated with interpersonal content and even personality characteristics that are not explicitly interpersonal may still have specific interpersonal implications.

Properties of the Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics Across Sex, Level of Familiarity, and Interpersonal Conflict.

The Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics (CAID) is a method in which trained observers continuously code the dominance and warmth of individuals who interact with one another in dyads. This method has significant promise for assessing dynamic interpersonal processes. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of individual sex, dyadic familiarity, and situational conflict on patterns of interpersonal warmth, dominance, and complementarity as assessed via CAID. We used six samples with 603 dyads, including two samples of unacquainted mixed-sex undergraduates interacting in a collaborative task, two samples of couples interacting in both collaborative and conflict tasks, and two samples of mothers and children interacting in both collaborative and conflict tasks. Complementarity effects were robust across all samples, and individuals tended to be relatively warm and dominant. Results from multilevel models indicated that women were slightly warmer than men, whereas there were no sex differences in dominance. Unfamiliar dyads and dyads interacting in more collaborative tasks were relatively warmer, more submissive, and more complementary on warmth but less complementary on dominance. These findings speak to the utility of the CAID method for assessing interpersonal dynamics and provide norms for researchers who use the method for different types of samples and applications.

Personality Pathology and Spouses' Moment-to-Moment Interpersonal Behaviors.

We assessed the association of personality pathology with romantic couples' observed interpersonal behaviors. Couples engaged in four discussion tasks, after which observers used the Continuous Assessment of Interpersonal Dynamics method to continuously rate each participant's dominance and warmth over the course of each discussion. Using these ratings, we derived indices of average behaviors and changes in behaviors over the course of discussions. Generally, results indicated that the more personality pathology either spouse reported, the colder husbands were on average, and the colder they became toward their wives over time. However, personality disorder symptoms and overall interpersonal problems were largely unassociated with wives' behaviors. Results also indicated that the more dominance-related problems husbands and wives reported, the more dominantly and coldly they behaved, the more submissive or withdrawn their partners were, and the colder wives became over time; and the more warmth problems wives reported, the more dominantly, they behaved.

Criterion A of the AMPD in HiTOP.

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 Alternative Model of Personality Disorder (AMPD) classification, consisting of Criterion A (self-interpersonal deficits) and Criterion B (maladaptive personality traits). A proposed alternative to the DSM-5 more generally is an empirically based dimensional organization of psychopathology identified as the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP; Kotov et al., 2017 ). HiTOP currently includes, at the highest level, a general factor of psychopathology. Further down are the five domains of detachment, antagonistic externalizing, disinhibited externalizing, thought disorder, and internalizing (along with a provisional sixth somatoform dimension) that align with Criterion B. The purpose of this article is to discuss the potential inclusion and placement of the self-interpersonal deficits of the DSM-5 Section III Criterion A within HiTOP.

Measurement invariance of the DSM-5 Section III pathological personality trait model across sex.

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 validity for the model across males and females remains uncertain. In the present article, we examined sex measurement invariance of the DSM-5 trait model in a large undergraduate sample using the Personality Inventory for DSM-5. A series of confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses suggested that, although the exact facet-domain relationships as specified in the DSM-5 were not observed, the facets generally organize into a model with five latent factors similar to those listed in the DSM-5 Section III Criterion B. Further, these five factors were fully measurement invariant across sex at the configural, metric, and scalar levels. Examination of the latent trait mean levels suggests that females tend to have higher scores on latent Negative Affectivity, whereas males tend to have higher scores on latent Antagonism, Detachment, Psychoticism, and Disinhibition. These results indicate that the DSM-5 Section III pathological personality trait model is fully structurally equivalent across sex, a property that is lacking in the traditional categorical model in Section II. This further validates the use of the dimensional DSM-5 trait model for personality disorder assessment and conceptualization in both research and clinical settings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Reliability and Validity Assessment of the Observation of Human-Animal Interaction for Research (OHAIRE) Behavior Coding Tool.

The Observation of Human-Animal Interaction for Research (OHAIRE) is a coding tool developed to capture the behavior of children when interacting with social partners and animals in naturalistic settings. The OHAIRE behavioral categories of focus are emotional displays, social communication behaviors toward adults and peers, behaviors directed toward animals or experimental control objects, and interfering behaviors. To date, the OHAIRE has been used by 14 coders to code 2,732 min of video across four studies with a total of 201 participants ages 5 to 18 years (M = 10.1, SD = 2.5). Studies involved animal-assisted intervention with three species (i.e., dogs, horses, and guinea pigs) and three populations (i.e., autism spectrum disorder, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, and typically developing children) in a school, a therapeutic horseback riding program, a group therapy program, and the hospital setting. We explored the psychometric properties of the OHAIRE through analyses of its inter-rater reliability, intra-rater reliability, convergent and divergent validity, and internal structure, using data from these four human-animal interaction studies. The average inter-rater reliability was excellent (kappa = 0.81), with good reliability in most of the behavioral categories coded. Intra-rater reliability was consistently excellent (0.87 ≤ kappa ≤0.96). Internal structure analyses with Cronbach's alpha supported the exploratory use of subscales to measure social communication behaviors toward peers (α = 0.638) and adults (α = 0.605), and interactions experimental control objects (α = 0.589), and the use of a subscale to measure interactions with animals (α = 0.773). Correlation analyses with multiple questionnaires showed a convergence between positive emotional display and social behaviors as assessed by the OHAIRE and social skills as assessed by the Social Skills Rating System (SSRS) and the Social Communication Questionnaires (SCQ). Little concordance was found between the OHAIRE and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS) or the Aberrant Behavior Checklist-Community (ABC). The OHAIRE shows promise for wider use in the field of Human-Animal Interaction, with a need for generalization across more settings and ages.

Modeling the complexity of dynamic, momentary interpersonal behavior: Applying the time-varying effect model to test predictions from interpersonal theory.

This paper demonstrates a recently-popularized quantitative method, the time-varying effect model (TVEM), in describing dynamic, momentary interpersonal processes implicated by Interpersonal Theory. We investigated moment-to-moment complementarity in affiliation and control behaviors (i.e., correspondence in affiliation and reciprocity in control between married dyad members) in a five-minute interaction (N=135), and how complementarity changed over time. Overall, results supported complementarity in affiliation and control. Moreover, effects were time-varying: Complementarity in affiliation increased over time and complementary in control changed over time in a cyclical manner. Dyadic adjustment moderated the strength in complementarity in control during specific timeframes. We discuss implications of these results and future directions. The findings support the utility of TVEM for studying dynamic and time-dependent interpersonal processes.

Implementing Dynamic Assessments in Psychotherapy.

In this article, we organize multimethod, multitimescale data around the interpersonal situation, a conceptual framework that can be used to integrate personality, psychopathology, and psychotherapy constructs in order to guide the assessment of clinical dynamics. We first describe the key variables of the interpersonal situation model and articulate methods for assessing those variables as they manifest (a) across different levels of personality, (b) across situations, and (c) within situations. We next use a case to demonstrate how to assess aspects of the interpersonal situation in a manner that enhances case conceptualization and facilitates the evaluation of clinical hypotheses. We also use this case to highlight challenges and decisions involved in implementing dynamic assessment in psychotherapy. We conclude by outlining areas in need of further exploration toward a more sophisticated approach to clinical practice that involves the routine assessment of dynamic processes.

Internalizing and externalizing personality subtypes predict differences in functioning and outcomes among veterans in residential substance use disorder treatment.

There is a long history of using personality to subtype patients in treatment for substance use disorders (SUD). However, no one has validated a typology of SUD patients using a structural model of normal-range personality, particularly indicating whether subtypes differ on treatment processes and outcomes. We developed a personality-based typology among 196 military veterans enrolled in residential SUD treatment at a Veterans Affairs medical center. Patients were assessed at treatment entry, 1 month into treatment, and at discharge from treatment. Personality was assessed using the Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire-Brief Form at treatment entry. Latent profile analyses identified a 3-group solution consisting of low pathology, internalizing, and externalizing groups. The internalizing group scored lowest on measures of functioning at treatment entry, whereas the externalizing group scored more poorly on treatment processes and outcomes over the course of their residential stay (e.g., more stressful relationships with other residents, lower program alliance). These findings support a clinically meaningful typology of SUD patients based on a 3-factor model of personality and can serve as a guide for future efforts aimed at developing targeted interventions that can address the individual differences of patients in this population. (PsycINFO Database Record