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Personality and Pathology: Stable and Unstable Correlates
Author(s) -
HORVATH PETER,
FOULDS G. A.,
ADAMOWICZ J. K.
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1973.tb00089.x
Subject(s) - psychology , hostility , personality , clinical psychology , personality assessment inventory , psychopathology , personality pathology , big five personality traits , scale (ratio) , personality test , personality disorders , psychometrics , test validity , social psychology , physics , quantum mechanics
Fifty‐three psychiatric patients were tested and retested on a battery of personality scales in order to confirm Foulds' and Presly's differentiation of these measures into those assessing stable and those assessing unstable personality characteristics. These authors arrived at their conclusions by analysing scale score distributions in normal and abnormal populations. In this study the criterion for differentiation consisted of change in scale scores from test to retest. Those scales measuring the unstable personality characteristics were expected to change significantly, whereas those measuring the stable personality characteristics were not. The 21 scales used in this study were taken from the Personal Disturbance Scale of the Symptom‐Sign Inventory, the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire, and the Hostility‐Direction of Hostility Questionnaire. Five of the six predicted changes in tests scores did in fact occur. These findings were discussed with reference to the distinctions between symptoms, states and deviant and normal traits, and their relationship to psychopathology.