Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry

Personality, Spirituality, Religiousness, and the Personality Disorders 175Table 13.1: Bibliography of Joint Analyses Using the Dimensions of the FFM.Instrument Construct Measured FindingsAdjective Check List Murray’s needs, Folk constructs All five factors foundBasic Personality Inventory Normal personality domains All five factors foundCalifornia Psychological Inventory Folk constructs, normal personality Agreeableness under-representedEdwards Personal Preference Schedule Murray’s needs All five factors foundEysenck Personality Profiler Biologically based personality constructs No openness foundGuilford-Zimmerman Temperament Survey Trait personality constructs All five factors foundMCMI I & II Axis II constructs All five factors foundMMPI Axis I constructs Openness not well representedMyers-Briggs Type Indicator Jungian personality constructs Neuroticism not foundPersonality Research Form Trait personality constructs All five factors foundSelf-Directed Search 3 Vocational interests Neuroticism not well represented16PF Trait personality constructs All five factors foundAdapted from Piedmont RL. The Revised NEO Personality Inventory: Clinical and Research Applications. New York: PlenumPress; 1998. With kind permission of Springer Science and Business Media.instruments. A large literature has developedshowing that the dimensions of the FFM are quitecomprehensive and represent the essence of whatis traditionally considered “personality.”Research has shown that the FFM dimensionsare linked to one’s genetic makeup, about onehalfthe variance observed in traits is inheritedfrom our parents. Traits also have been shown togeneralize cross culturally, so the same patternsin behaviors, attitudes, and actions we see inWestern culture are also found to occur in othercultural contexts, such as in Asia and Africa.Traits represent human universals for understandingbehavior.(12) Perhaps the most intriguingaspect of research on traits has been thediscovery that one’s trait profile does not changein adulthood. After age 30, all things being equal(for example, no psychotherapy or religious conversions),personality seems to be pretty muchset; our trait dispositions will remain stable overour adult lives. The value of this finding is thatonce someone’s trait standing is known, accuratepredictions about his or her behavior can bemade well into the future. However, until age 30,personality is still in flux and capable of modification.But after 30, an adaptive orientation to theworld emerges that leads us to pursue personalgoals that are the most satisfying to our needs(for example, the achievement-oriented personwill seek out competitive situations, the extravertwill seek out the company of others). Thus,the dimensions of the FFM represent genotypicaspects of the individual, biologically based entitiesthat govern the course of adult strivings.The value of the FFM is twofold. First, the FFMprovides an efficient framework for organizingpersonality-related issues around these fivedimensions. The personological qualities associatedwith these dimensions have been nicelyoutlined for both normal and clinical samples.(11, 13) For example, neuroticism has been linkedwith risk for a psychiatric disorder and burnout;extraversion and agreeableness define interpersonalstyles; openness to experience relates tocuriosity, empathy, and dogmatism; and conscientiousnessis related to achievement outcomesin school, work, and athletic environments. Thus,to obtain a comprehensive assessment of an individual,a clinician would want to make sure thatany measure contains information from all thesedomains.The second value of the FFM is that it providesstraightforward, clear language for describingand discussing personality-related information.The dimensions of the FFM provide a sort oflatitude and longitude for understanding personalityconstructs. By mapping scales from differentmeasures onto these five factors, one can understandsimilarities and differences among theconstructs. Correlations with the FFM dimensionscan be the personological fingerprint for ascale; an indication of those qualities reflected in