Bridging the gap between clinical and subclinical aversive personality research: The Dark Factor of Personality as a common core for all socially and/or ethically aversive traits

  • Clinical psychology and mainstream personality research have strong research traditions in socially and/or ethically aversive personality traits (especially in personality psychology’s socalled “dark” trait research). However, despite their common roots, the research programs from these two areas have developed in nearly complete isolation. Previous attempts at integration have lacked consensus between the research areas and have been limited in their theoretical foundations and comprehensiveness in the number of aversive traits investigated. Thus, I propose the Dark Factor of Personality (D) and its underlying theoretical framework as a means to overcome the shortcomings of these previous attempts. To this end, I present three projects, designed to integrate dark traits from personality research with aversive traits from clinical research by viewing them as flavored manifestations of one common aversive core (i.e., D). In Project 1, we challenged the consensus in clinical psychology that aversive traits are simply expressions of low Agreeableness from the five-factor model. Next, in Project 2, we offered an alternative by showing that the aversive traits from clinical psychology can be conceptualized as flavored manifestations of D. Last, in Project 3, we illustrated that D and its framework can serve to unify research across traditions, exemplified by demonstrating that the relationships between 20 aversive traits and (interpersonal) Personality Dysfunctioning can be, by and large, parsimoniously described by D. Overall, the D-framework offers a solution for integrating research on aversive traits across research traditions. Implications within and across research areas as well as limitations of the overall approach are discussed.

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Author:David D. ScholzORCiD
URN:urn:nbn:de:hbz:386-kluedo-84271
DOI:https://doi.org/10.26204/KLUEDO/8427
Referee:Julia Glombiewski, Thorsten Meiser
Advisor:Benjamin E. Hilbig
Document Type:Doctoral Thesis
Cumulative document:Yes
Language of publication:English
Date of Publication (online):2024/10/19
Date of first Publication:2024/10/29
Publishing Institution:Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau
Granting Institution:Rheinland-Pfälzische Technische Universität Kaiserslautern-Landau
Acceptance Date of the Thesis:2024/09/05
Date of the Publication (Server):2024/10/29
Tag:Dark Factor of Personality; antagonism; antisocial personality; antisocial traits; dark core; socially aversive traits
Page Number:v, 52, 15, 46, 33 Seiten
Faculties / Organisational entities:Landau - Fachbereich Psychologie
DDC-Cassification:1 Philosophie und Psychologie / 150 Psychologie
Licence (German):Creative Commons 4.0 - Namensnennung, nicht kommerziell (CC BY-NC 4.0)