Expert answer:Need psychology help with Personality Disorders an
Answer & Explanation:elect one of the personality disorders discussed in Chapter 4 (i.e., odd
or eccentric personality disorders, dramatic personality disorders,
anxious or fearful personality disorders, or antisocial personality
disorder) and locate two to three scholarly articles in the Ashford
Library that discusses a link between that personality disorder and the
development of criminal behavior. In your paper, discuss the diagnostic
characteristics of the personality disorder, the etiology of the
disorder (the causes of the disorder, when it first manifests, etc.),
and how the characteristics of the disorder have been linked to future
criminal behavior. Discuss early warning signs, assessment methods, and
treatments that can be used to manage the disorder. Is it possible to
treat the disorder before criminal tendencies develop?
The paper must be three to four pages in length and formatted according
to APA style. In addition to the textbook, you must use two to three
scholarly resources from the Ashford University Library to support your
claims. Cite your sources within the text of your paper and on the
reference page. For information regarding APA, including samples and
tutorials, visit the Ashford Writing Center, located within the Learning
Resources tab on the left navigation toolbarcrj_308_chapter_04.pdf
crj_308_chapter_04.pdf
Unformatted Attachment Preview
4
© Laughing Stock/Corbis
Personality and Trait Psychology
Learning Objectives
After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:
•
•
•
•
•
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 99
Summarize personality and its role in behavior over the life course.
Identify the various forms of personality disorder and how they are related to crime.
Explain the linkages between personality disorders and crime.
Outline the roles of impulsivity/gratification delay and aggression in crime.
Analyze how risk taking and self-centeredness are associated with problem behaviors.
11/14/12 2:17 PM
CHAPTER 4
Introduction
Introduction
I
n some ways, personality features are difficult to separate from temperamental features.
For instance, extraversion is a construct used to understand both the temperamental
and personality bases of behavior. Moreover, the same construct might have different
names or labels depending on the academic disciplinary background of the researcher or
depending on the age of the subjects whom the researcher studies. Thus, surgency and
extraversion are basically the same, but surgency has a temperament connotation and
extraversion is related to both temperament and personality (but more commonly to the
latter).
Temperament and personality are so interrelated because both constructs attempt to
explain antisocial behavior from an individual-level, person-specific, trait perspective. In
this sense, the developmental course of antisocial behavior from early childhood (e.g.,
difficultness), through childhood (e.g., self-regulation deficits and conduct problems),
adolescence (e.g., delinquency), and adulthood (e.g., crime), ultimately reflects the agegraded unfolding of distinct antisocial traits (see Figure 4.1). The consistency and stability
of antisocial behavior in the lives of serious criminal offenders—from childhood through
adulthood—provides evidence that, while anecdotal, points to the role of personality
traits as drivers of behavior.
Figure 4.1: The unfolding of antisocial traits
Crime
Delinquency
Conduct
Problems
Self-Regulation
Deficits
Difficultness
Personality psychology suggests a developmental process in which negative personality
features and self-regulation deficits culminate in delinquency and crime.
Personality was defined in Chapter 1 as the relatively consistent and stable ways in which
an individual behaves, thinks, and feels. Personality features are importantly related to a
host of life outcomes, and two recent large-scale studies are illustrative. Goodman, Joyce,
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 100
11/14/12 2:18 PM
Section 4.1 What Is Personality?
CHAPTER 4
and Smith (2011) examined the longitudinal consequences of early-life psychological
functioning, drawing on data from the National Child Development Study (a continuing
study of nearly 18,000 children born in England during March 1958). Children with more
negative personality features and generally lower psychological functioning suffered
from these conditions throughout their lives. The implications were wide-ranging, and
they included greater employment problems, less wealth, and reduced social mobility.
Childhood personality/psychological deficits resulted in nearly 30% reduced earnings by
age 50 and a host of other problems, including marital instability, lower agreeableness,
lower conscientiousness, more emotional instability, and reduced self-efficacy.
Although not as unchanging as
fingerprints, personality features
are relatively stable across life,
and negative personality features
in childhood are a harbinger for
behavioral problems in adulthood.
© iStockphoto/Thinkstock
Criminological epidemiologists recently examined the social welfare burden of personality disorders in the United States, using data from the
National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and
Related Conditions, a nationally representative
sample of more than 43,000 adults (Vaughn et
al., 2010). They found that diagnoses for any personality disorder significantly predicted receipt
of Medicaid, Supplementary Security Income,
and food stamps. Moreover, persons who were
diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder—
the personality disorder that most directly corresponds to a criminal personality—were significantly more likely to receive Medicaid, food
stamps, and Women, Infants and Children (WIC)
assistance. These costs add to already large monetary costs that serious criminal offenders, particularly those with personality disorders, impose
on society. In this sense, personality is not only
central for understanding crime, but also for
understanding human development and its
implications for society. The next section summarizes research that describes the essential points
about personality and the way it develops over
the life course. Special attention is given to perhaps the most famous and widely studied structural model of personality, one that has proven
useful for understanding the ways that personality features are associated with crime.
4.1 What Is Personality?
A
lthough psychologists have defined personality in subtly different ways, for our purposes, personality is the relatively consistent and stable ways in which an individual behaves, thinks, and feels. As opposed to temperament, which can be thought of as
the “trait biology” of an individual, personality is a person’s “trait psychology,” largely
responsible for the stability and consistency of behavioral patterns in that person’s life.
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 101
11/14/12 2:18 PM
Section 4.1 What Is Personality?
CHAPTER 4
For example, when observers suggest that something is “out of character” when describing a person’s behavior, what they mean is that the conduct differs from the usual conduct
the person displays. If one understands the personality of another individual, one has a
general template of behaviors that are consistent and inconsistent with that personality.
Personality Over the Life Course
Recently, McAdams and Olson (2010) summarized personality development over the life
course, with special attention to evidence suggesting personality is mostly stable and susceptible to change. Their summary points include the following:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 102
Personality is a constellation of dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations,
and integrative life stories situated in time and culture.
Early temperamental dimensions gradually develop into the dispositional traits
observed in adulthood through complex, dynamic, and multilevel interactions
between genes and environments over time.
Temporal stability for individual differences in traits increases over the life
course and reaches impressively high levels in middle adulthood. For example,
high conscientiousness and high neuroticism at midlife are significantly correlated with high conscientiousness and high neuroticism in childhood (Matthews,
Deary, & Whiteman, 2009).
Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies show that average scores for conscientiousness and agreeableness increase and neuroticism decreases from adolescence through late middle age.
Motives, goals, and other adaptations emerge as important features of personality development in middle adulthood, and the content, structure, organization,
and pursuit of goals may change according to the needs of daily life.
In late adolescence and early adulthood, people begin to reconstruct their autobiographical past and imagine the future to develop a life story that provides their
life with meaning and purpose. In terms of personality development, the life
stories are layered over goals and motives that are in turn layered over dispositional traits.
As dispositional traits mature from adolescence to middle adulthood, goals and
narratives show increasing concern with commitments to family, civic involvement, and productive activities aimed at promoting the next generation.
From late midlife through old age, personality development plateaus and eventually descends as trait scores show some negative reversals, goals shift to maintenance of the self and coping with loss, and life narratives show an inexorable
decline in the power of self-authorship.
11/14/12 2:18 PM
Section 4.1 What Is Personality?
CHAPTER 4
Models of Personality
There are many conceptual models of personality, ranging from Freud’s ego-superego-id
model of the self, to Carl Jung’s extravert-introvert typological approach, to Hans Eysenck’s
psychoticism-extraversionneuroticism (PEN) model. Some
of these approaches, such as
Freud’s, were designed primarily to understand personality
and its maladaptive patterns in
a general sense, not necessarily
among criminal or clinical subgroups. Others, like Eysenck’s
work or the theory of psychopathy, are more expressly devoted
to understanding psychopathology and antisocial behavior.
Still other conceptual models of
personality, often referred to as
“structural models of personality,” strive to be universal and
thus able to encompass personalO. J. Simpson’s (left) personality is characterized by a
ity and personality disorders.
mixture of positive and negative features, including
charm, extraversion, narcissism, impulsivity, entitlement,
jealousy, and rage. How do the crimes for which Simpson
has been arrested or convicted reflect his personality traits?
One of the most influential and
empirically examined structural
models of personality is the Five
© ASSOCIATED PRESS/AP Images
Factor Model of Personality. The
Five Factor Model proposes five
dimensions that underlie personality: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (the acronym “OCEAN” is commonly used to
recall the five dimensions). Beginning in the 1930s with research that examined adjectives
used to describe personality traits, many psychologists contributed to the development
of the Five Factor Model. It became a more formal structural model in the late 1980s and
early 1990s (Costa & McRae, 1985, 1992; Digman, 2002):
1. Neuroticism refers to a chronic level of emotional adjustment and instability. It
includes facets for these traits: anxiety, angry hostility, depression, self-consciousness, impulsiveness, and vulnerability. Persons who are high scoring on neuroticism are prone to psychological distress.
2. Extraversion refers to the quantity and intensity of preferred interpersonal interactions, activity level, need for stimulation, and capacity for joy. High scorers are
known as extraverts, and low scorers are known as introverts (recall Chapter 3).
It includes facets for these traits: warmth, gregariousness, assertiveness, activity, excitement seeking, and positive emotions. Generally, extraversion relates to
getting along with others and an overall exuberance for life. Two components
of extraversion are associated with crime, however. Persons who are low on
warmth (and thus are emotionally cold and detached) and high on sensation
seeking are more likely to commit antisocial behavior.
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 103
11/14/12 2:18 PM
Section 4.2 Personality Disorders
CHAPTER 4
3. Openness to experience involves the appreciation and seeking of experiences.
Open individuals are characterized as curious, imaginative, willing to have novel
experiences, and open to varied emotional experiences. Closed individuals are
characterized as conventional, conservative, dogmatic, rigid, and behaviorally
set in their ways. It includes facet scales for fantasy, aesthetics, feelings, actions,
ideas, and values.
4. Agreeableness refers to the kinds of interactions a person has along a continuum from compassion to antagonism. High scorers on agreeableness are
good natured, trusting, soft-hearted, helping, and altruistic. Low scorers tend
to be cynical, rude, uncooperative, irritable, and manipulative. It includes facets
for these traits: trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and
tender-mindedness.
5. Conscientiousness captures the degree of organization, persistence, control,
and motivation in goal-directed behavior. High scorers are organized, reliable,
hardworking, self-directed, ambitious, and persevering. Low scorers are aimless,
unreliable, lazy, careless, negligent, and hedonistic. It includes facets for these
traits: competence, order, dutifulness, achievement striving, self-discipline, and
deliberation.
One of the fascinating things about personality is that each individual’s personality is
distinct and reflects a unique combination of traits. Some aspects of our personality are
viewed favorably by ourselves and others, whereas other aspects of our personality are
considered more negatively. At times, those negative features of one’s personality rise to
the level of being problematic in a clinical sense. This is known as a personality disorder.
4.2 Personality Disorders
A
ccording to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2000), a personality disorder is an enduring pattern of inner
experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual’s culture. The pattern manifests in two or more areas, including cognition, affectivity,
interpersonal functioning, and impulse control. There are five additional guidelines that
inform the diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder. First, the enduring pattern of
the personality is inflexible and pervasive across a broad range of personal and social
situations. Second, the enduring pattern leads to clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. In other words, the
personality creates problems in the family, at school, at work, among peers, and among
other people in general social interactions. Third, the pattern is stable and of long duration, and its onset can be traced to earlier life stages. Fourth, the enduring pattern is not
better accounted for as a manifestation of consequences of another mental disorder. Fifth,
the enduring pattern is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance, such as
medication, or a general medical condition, such as head trauma.
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 104
11/14/12 2:18 PM
Section 4.2 Personality Disorders
CHAPTER 4
Traditionally, personality disorders and other psychiatric conditions were conceptualized
as discrete categories. But a paradigm shift has occurred in the past decade or so, and
behavioral scientists now view clinical conditions as dimensional instead of categorical.
Thus, instead of diagnosing a person with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD), the new
approach is to show where an individual scores on a distribution of ASPD symptoms.
These changes will become official in May 2013 with the publication of the fifth edition of
the DSM. More information about the forthcoming DSM-V changes is currently available
online (http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Default.aspx).
Odd or Eccentric Personality Disorders
A 32-year-old man tells his primary care physician he has been feeling increasingly stressed out
since a job transfer three months ago. He had been working as a computer programmer before being
moved into a quality assurance position, which requires him to spend more of his time interacting
with his coworkers. He tells his physician he doesn’t like working with “so many different people.”
During their conversation, the physician discovers that the man has been living at home with his
mother for the past 4 years. He had been living in his own apartment, but he moved back home
when his father passed away. He has never had a long-term relationship. He went on a few dates in
college, but, he tells the physician, the “rejection got to be too painful.” He spends most of his free
time at home surfing the Internet or going to the library. He doesn’t have any close friends. During
his conversation with the physician, the patient appears calm and detached. He talks about how
stressed out he is, but his emotional range is flat.
The man in the preceding clinical vignette presents with the symptomatology, or set of
symptoms, of schizoid personality disorder. In fact there are ten personality disorders
listed in the DSM-IV-TR, and they fall into three separate clusters. Cluster A personality
disorders are characterized as “odd or eccentric” (see Figure 4.2) and include the following three disorders:
1. Paranoid personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of distrust and suspiciousness of others such that their motives are interpreted as
malevolent
2. Schizoid personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and restricted range of expression of emotions in
interpersonal settings
3. Schizotypal personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of social
and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with and reduced capacity
for close relationships, cognitive or perceptual distortions, and eccentricities in
behavior
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 105
11/14/12 2:18 PM
CHAPTER 4
Section 4.2 Personality Disorders
Figure 4.2: Cluster A personality disorders
Schizoid
PD
Paranoid
PD
Schizotypal
PD
Cluster A
(OddEccentric)
Paranoid, schizoid, and schizotypal personality disorders are characterized by odd, eccentric
behavior and asocial traits that impair social functioning.
Dramatic Personality Disorders
A 44-year-old woman arrested and booked for domestic violence-related charges is being interviewed by jail intake officers. The victim in the case, a man the defendant met online and has known
for only four days, was also arrested for domestic violence. The woman tells deputies that her life
has spiraled out of control in the past year due to a recent divorce, three job changes, and a worsening dependence on prescription painkillers. The defendant pleads with jail staff to be housed in an
isolation cell to avoid interacting with other female prisoners because she “draws a lot of attention
and does not have time to deal with other people at the moment.” Given her emotional instability
and the availability of isolation cells, the staff are complying with her request.
The woman in this clinical vignette lives a dramatic and often chaotic life that is characteristic of Cluster B personality disorders. Cluster B personality disorders are characterized
as “dramatic or emotional” (see Figure 4.3) and include the following:
1. Antisocial personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for and violation of the rights of others
2. Borderline personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image, affect, and marked impulsivity
3. Histrionic personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of excessive emotionality and attention seeking
4. Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity in fantasy and behavior, need for admiration, and lack of empathy
deL80458_04_c04_099-128.indd 106
11/14/12 2:18 PM
CHAPTER 4
Section 4.2 Personality Disorders
Figure 4.3: Cluster B personality disorders
Histrionic
PD
Borderline
PD
Cluster B
(DramaticEmotional)
Antisocial
PD
Narcissitic
PD
Cluster B personality disorders are characterized by dramatic and emotional features that
impair social functioning. Antisocial personality disorder is the one most explicitly associated
with criminal conduct.
Anxious or Fearful Personality Disorders
A 19-year old college freshman meets with his academic advisor due to low grades. After the excitement of the first few weeks of the school year waned, he tells his advisor, he found going to class to
be too stressful because he felt that he did not fit in with the college crowd. He also had trouble with
his roommate, who teased him “for being a shut-in, depressed, and lonely” and requested that he
transfer to a solo room on another f …
Purchase answer to see full
attachment
How it works
- Paste your instructions in the instructions box. You can also attach an instructions file
- Select the writer category, deadline, education level and review the instructions
- Make a payment for the order to be assignment to a writer
- Download the paper after the writer uploads it
Will the writer plagiarize my essay?
You will get a plagiarism-free paper and you can get an originality report upon request.
Is this service safe?
All the personal information is confidential and we have 100% safe payment methods. We also guarantee good grades