This study examined whether reductions in the severity of personality disorders (PD) mainly reflect changes in personality traits or rather an alleviation of a demoralized state involving nonspecific unpleasant affect. We used 4 years of longitudinal data from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study, in which patients (N = 419) completed the Neuroticism-Extraversion-Openness Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R) three times over 4 years (at baseline and at 6-month and 4-year follow-up assessments). We compared the NEO Demoralization scale with NEO-PI-R domain scales adjusted for demoralization-related items to determine whether changes in demoralization are more pronounced than changes in adjusted personality traits. Results showed that adjusted Neuroticism and Demoralization changed at similar rates and both changed more than other traits. These changes were most pronounced in the first 6 months and tapered thereafter. Rank-order correlations were somewhat lower for Demoralization than adjusted traits. Our findings suggest that decreases in PD symptoms over time have to do with reductions in negative affect and that Demoralization as assessed via a subset of NEO-PI-R items is limited in its ability to distinguish negative affect from trait Neuroticism. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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士气低落对临床样本中人格特质稳定性的影响。


本研究检查了人格障碍 （PD） 严重程度的降低是否主要反映了人格特征的变化，或者更确切地说是缓解了涉及非特异性不愉快情感的士气低落状态。我们使用了来自协作纵向人格障碍研究的 4 年纵向数据，其中患者 （N = 419） 在 4 年内完成了 3 次神经质-外向-开放性人格量表-修订版 （NEO-PI-R） （在基线和 6 个月和 4 年随访评估）。我们将 NEO 士气低落量表与针对士气低落相关项目调整的 NEO-PI-R 域量表进行了比较，以确定士气低落的变化是否比调整后的人格特质的变化更明显。结果显示，调整后的神经质和士气低落的变化率相似，并且都比其他特征变化更大。这些变化在前 6 个月最为明显，此后逐渐减弱。士气低落的等级顺序相关性略低于调整后的特征。我们的研究结果表明，随着时间的推移，PD 症状的减少与负面影响的减少有关，并且通过 NEO-PI-R 项目的子集评估的士气低落在区分负面影响和特质神经质的能力方面是有限的。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。