AN ACT-BASED CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS OF THE OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE, PARANOID, AND HISTRIONIC PERSONALITY-DISORDERS

Buss and Craik (1987) have outlined a conceptual framework and a set o f methods for examining the correspondence between clinician's implici t conceptions of personality disorder (PD) and nonclinicians' implicit conceptions of everyday personality. We used these methods to develop three sets of behavioral descriptors, exemplifying personality dispos itions pertinent to the obsessive-compulsive, paranoid, and histrionic PDs, A sample of clinical psychologists was asked to rate these descr iptors on prototypicality for the PDs and a sample of non-clinicians w as asked to rate these descriptors on prototypicality for the everyday dispositions from which the original sets of descriptors were derived . Behavioral descriptors prototypical of perfectionistic, methodical, and serious were prototypical of obsessive-compulsive PD. Descriptors prototypical of mistrustful, suspicious, and oversensitive were protot ypical of paranoid PD; and descriptors prototypical of self-dramatizin g and vain were prototypical of histrionic PD. This finding shows that these everyday personality dispositions can be used to describe the p ersonality disorders accurately. Other dispositional terms were judged as relevant to the personality disorders, but many of the behavioral descriptors central to these dispositions were not judged as prototypi cal of their respective PDs. For these dispositions, it is more useful and accurate to move below the level of the personality disposition t o the specific behavioral descriptors prototypical of the personality disorder.