Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

Personality Disorders555disorders, such as depression, substance abuse, personalitydisorders, and anxiety disorders, includingobsessive–compulsive disorder (Thompson & others,2007). While chemical imbalances may causeeating disorders, researchers are also studyingwhether they can result from them as well (Smolak,2009).Family interaction patterns may also contributeto eating disorders. For example, critical commentsby parents or siblings about a child’s weight, orparental modeling of disordered eating, may increasethe odds that an individual develops an eatingdisorder (Thompson & others, 2007).Although anorexia and bulimia have beendocumented for at least 150 years, contemporaryWestern cultural attitudes toward thinness anddieting probably contribute to the increased incidenceof eating disorders today. This seems to beespecially true with anorexia, which occurs predominantlyin Western or “westernized” countries(Anderson-Fye, 2009; Becker & Fay, 2006;Cafri & others, 2005).Size 0: An Impossible Cultural Ideal? Asaverage citizens have been getting heavier,top fashion models have been gettingthinner. Eating disorders are most prevalentin developed, Western countrieswhere a slender body is the cultural ideal,especially for women and girls. Many psychologistsbelieve that such unrealisticbody expectations contribute to eating disorders(Hawkins & others, 2004; Treasure &others, 2008). After the anorexia-relateddeaths of two famous Brazilian fashionmodels, France, Germany, and Spain proposedbans on ultra-thin models. Despiteperiodic outcries, the emaciated, skin-andboneslook continues to be the fashionindustry norm.Personality DisordersMaladaptive TraitsKey Theme• The personality disorders are characterized by inflexible, maladaptivepatterns of thoughts, emotions, behavior, and interpersonal functioning.Key Questions• How do people with a personality disorder differ from people who arepsychologically well-adjusted?• What are the three categories of personality disorders?• What behaviors and personality characteristics are associated with theparanoid, antisocial, and borderline personality disorders?Like every other person, you have your own unique personality—the consistent andenduring patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize you as an individual.As we described in Chapter 10, your personality can be described as a specificcollection of personality traits. Your personality traits are relatively stable predispositionsto behave or react in certain ways. In other words, your personalitytraits reflect different dimensions of your personality.By definition, personality traits are consistent over time and across situations. Butthat’s not to say that personality traits are etched in stone. Rather, the psychologicallywell-adjusted person possesses a fair degree of flexibility and adaptiveness.Based on our experiences with others, we are able to modify how we display our personalitytraits so that we can think, feel, and behave in ways that are more effective.In contrast, someone with a personality disorder has personality traits that areinflexible and maladaptive across a broad range of situations. Some researchers believethat personality disorders reflect conditions in which “normal” personality traitsare taken to an abnormal extreme (Trull & Widiger, 2008; Fowler & others, 2007).However, the behavior of people with personality disorders goes well beyond that ofpersonality disorderInflexible, maladaptive patterns of thoughts,emotions, behavior, and interpersonal functioningthat are stable over time and acrosssituations, and deviate from the expectationsof the individual’s culture.