Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T21:53:22.279Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Neuroticism as a common dimension in the internalizing disorders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2009

J. W. Griffith ,
R. E. Zinbarg ,
M. G. Craske ,
S. Mineka ,
R. D. Rose ,
A. M. Waters  and
J. M. Sutton
J. W. Griffith*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
R. E. Zinbarg
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
M. G. Craske
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
S. Mineka
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
R. D. Rose
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
A. M. Waters
Affiliation:
School of Applied Psychology, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia
J. M. Sutton
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA
*
*Address for correspondence: Dr J. W. Griffith, Northwestern University, Feinberg School of Medicine, Department of Medical Social Sciences, Chicago, IL, USA. (Email: jameswgriffith@gmail.com)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Background

Several theories have posited a common internalizing factor to help account for the relationship between mood and anxiety disorders. These disorders are often co-morbid and strongly covary. Other theories and data suggest that personality traits may account, at least in part, for co-morbidity between depression and anxiety. The present study examined the relationship between neuroticism and an internalizing dimension common to mood and anxiety disorders.

Method

A sample of ethnically diverse adolescents (n=621) completed self-report and peer-report measures of neuroticism. Participants also completed the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID).

Results

Structural equation modeling showed that a single internalizing factor was common to lifetime diagnosis of mood and anxiety disorders, and this internalizing factor was strongly correlated with neuroticism. Neuroticism had a stronger correlation with an internalizing factor (r=0.98) than with a substance use factor (r=0.29). Therefore, neuroticism showed both convergent and discriminant validity.

Conclusions

These results provide further evidence that neuroticism is a necessary factor in structural theories of mood and anxiety disorders. In this study, the correlation between internalizing psychopathology and neuroticism approached 1.0, suggesting that neuroticism may be the core of internalizing psychopathology. Future studies are needed to examine this possibility in other populations, and to replicate our findings.

Keywords

Anxiety disordersco-morbidityneuroticismunipolar mood disorders
Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 40 , Issue 7 , July 2010 , pp. 1125 - 1136
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achenbach, TM, Krukowski, RA, Dumenci, L, Ivanova, MY (2005). Assessment of adult psychopathology: meta-analyses and implications of cross-informant correlations. Psychological Bulletin 131, 361–382.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
APA (2000). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edn, text revision. American Psychiatric Association: Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Bagby, RM, Parker, JDA (2001). Relation of rumination and distraction with neuroticism and extraversion in a sample of patients with major depression. Cognitive Therapy and Research 25, 91–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bentler, PM (1988). Comparative fix indexes in structural models. Psychological Bulletin 107, 238–246.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, TA, Barlow, DH (2002). Classification of mood and anxiety disorders. In Anxiety and its Disorders: The Nature and Treatment of Anxiety and Panic, 2nd edn (ed. Barlow, D. H.), pp. 292–327. Guilford Press: New York.Google Scholar
Brown, TA, Chorpita, BF, Barlow, DH (1998). Structural relationships among dimensions of the DSM-IV anxiety and mood disorders and dimensions of negative affect, positive affect, and autonomic arousal. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 107, 179–192.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Browne, MW, Cudeck, R (1993). Alternative ways of assessing model fit. In Testing Structural Models (ed. Bollen, K. A. and Long, J. S.), pp. 136–162. Sage Publications: Newbury Park, CA.Google Scholar
Caruso, JC, Witkiewitz, K, Belcourt-Dittloff, A, Gottlieb, J (2001). Reliability of scores from the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire: a reliability generalization study. Educational and Psychological Measurement 61, 675–689.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carver, CS, White, TL (1994). Behavioral inhibition, behavioral activation, and affective responses to impending reward and punishment: the BIS/BAS scales. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67, 319–333.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, LA, Watson, D (1991). Tripartite model of anxiety and depression: psychometric evidence and taxonomic implications. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100, 316–336.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Clark, LA, Watson, D, Mineka, S (1994). Temperament, personality, and the mood and anxiety disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103, 103–116.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, P, Cohen, J, Aiken, LS, West, SG (1999). The problem of units and the circumstance for POMP. Multivariate Behavioral Research 34, 315–346.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, J, Cohen, P, West, SG, Aiken, LS (2003). Applied Multiple Regression/Correlation Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences, 3rd edn. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, NJ.Google Scholar
Essau, CA (2003). Comorbidity of anxiety disorders in adolescents. Depression and Anxiety 18, 1–6.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eysenck, HJ (1967). The Biological Basis of Personality. Charles C. Thomas: Springfield, IL.Google Scholar
Eysenck, HJ (1970). The Structure of Human Personality. Methuen and Co: London.Google Scholar
Eysenck, HJ, Eysenck, SBG (1975). Manual of the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (Adult and Junior). Hodder & Stoughton: London.Google Scholar
First, MB, Spitzer, RL, Gibbon, M, Williams, JBW (2002). Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV-TR Axis I Disorders, Research Version, Non-Patient Edition (SCID-I/NP). Biometrics Research, New York State Psychiatric Institute: New York.Google Scholar
Furnham, AF (1997). Knowing and faking one's five-factor personality score. Journal of Personality Assessment 69, 229–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, LR (1992). The development of markers for the Big-Five factor structure. Psychological Assessment 4, 26–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, LR (1999). A broad-bandwidth, public-domain, personality inventory measuring the lower-level facets of several five-factor models. In Personality Psychology in Europe, vol. 7 (ed. Mervielde, I., Deary, I., De Fruyt, F. and Ostendorf, F.), pp. 7–28. Tilburg University Press: Tilburg, The Netherlands.Google Scholar
Gray, JA (1982). A critique of Eysenck's theory of personality. In A Model for Personality (ed. Eysenck, H. J.), pp. 246–276. Springer: New York.Google Scholar
Gross, JJ (2002). Emotional regulation: affective, cognitive, and social consequences. Psychophysiology 39, 281–291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hu, L, Bentler, PM (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indices in covariance structure analysis: conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling 6, 1–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kendler, KS, Gatz, M, Gardner, CO, Pederson, NL (2006). Personality and major depression: a Swedish, population-based twin study. Archives of General Psychiatry 63, 1113–1120.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kessler, RC, Berglund, P, Demler, O, Jin, R, Merikangas, KR, Walters, EE (2005 a). Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry 62, 593–602.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kessler, RC, Chiu, WT, Demler, O, Walters, EE (2005 b). Prevalence, severity, and comorbidity of the 12-month DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Archives of General Psychiatry 62, 617–627.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kessler, RC, McGonagle, KA, Zhao, S, Nelson, CB, Hughes, M, Eshleman, S, Wittchen, H-U, Kendler, KS (1994). Lifetime and 12-month prevalence of DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders in the United States. Archives of General Psychiatry 51, 8–19.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Khan, AA, Jacobson, KC, Gardner, CO, Prescott, CA, Kendler, KS (2005). Personality and comorbidity of common psychiatric disorders. British Journal of Psychiatry 186, 190–196.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kotov, R, Watson, D, Robles, JP, Schmidt, NB (2007). Personality traits and anxiety symptoms: the multilevel trait predictor model. Behaviour Research and Therapy 45, 1485–1503.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krueger, RF (1999). The structure of common mental disorders. Archives of General Psychiatry 56, 921–926.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krueger, RF, Caspi, A, Moffitt, TE, Silva, PA, McGee, R (1996). Personality traits are differentially linked to mental disorders: a multitrait-multidiagnosis study of an adolescent birth cohort. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105, 299–312.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krueger, RF, Markon, KE (2006). Reinterpreting comorbidity: a model-based approach to understanding and classifying psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 2, 111–133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Krueger, RF, McGue, M, Iacono, WG (2001). The higher-order structure of common DSM mental disorders: internalization, externalization, and their connections to personality. Personality and Individual Differences 30, 1245–1259.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lahey, BB, Rathouz, PJ, Van Hulle, C, Urbano, RC, Krueger, RF, Applegate, B, Garriock, HA, Chapman, DA, Waldman, ID (2008). Testing structural models of DSM-IV symptoms of common forms of child and adolescent psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 36, 187–206.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lewinsohn, PM, Zinbarg, R, Seeley, JR, Lewinsohn, M, Sack, WH (1997). Lifetime comorbidity among anxiety disorders and between anxiety disorders and other mental disorders in adolescents. Journal of Anxiety Disorders 11, 377–394.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lilienfeld, SO (2003). Comorbidity between and within childhood externalizing and internalizing disorders: reflections and directions. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 31, 285–291.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lilienfeld, SO, Waldman, ID, Israel, AC (1994). A critical examination of the term and concept of ‘comorbidity’ in psychopathology research. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 1, 71–83.Google Scholar
Mash, EJ, Dozois, DJ (2003). Child psychopathology: a developmental systems perspective. In Child Psychopathology, 2nd edn (ed. Mash and, E. J.Barkley, R. A.), pp. 3–71. Guilford Press: New York.Google Scholar
Marsh, HW, O'Neill, R (1984). Self-description questionnaire III: The construct validity of multidimensional self-concept ratings by late adolescents. Journal of Educational Measurement 21, 153–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McDonald, RP (1985). Factor Analysis and Related Methods. Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ.Google Scholar
McDonald, RP (1999). Test Theory: A Unified Treatment. Erlbaum: Mahwah, NJ.Google Scholar
McGlinchey, JB, Zimmerman, M (2007). Examining a dimensional representation of depression and anxiety disorders' comorbidity in psychiatric outpatients with item response modeling. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 116, 464–474.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mineka, S, Watson, D, Clark, LA (1998). Comorbidity of anxiety and unipolar mood disorders. Annual Review of Psychology 49, 377–412.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mor, N, Zinbarg, RE, Craske, MG, Mineka, S, Uliaszek, A, Rose, R, Griffith, JW, Waters, AM (2008). Evaluating the invariance of the factor structure of the EPQ-R-N among adolescents. Journal of Research in Personality 1, 66–75.Google Scholar
Muris, P, Rassin, E, Franken, I, Leemreis, W (2007). Psychometric properties of the behavioral inhibition scale in young adults. Journal of Individual Differences 28, 219–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muthén, LK, Muthén, BO (1998–2007). Mplus User's Guide, 5th edn. Muthén & Muthén: Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Nolen-Hoeksema, S (2000). The role of rumination in depressive disorders and mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 109, 504–511.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ross, SR, Millis, SR, Bonebright, TL, Bailey, SE (2002). Confirmatory factor analysis of the Behavioral Inhibition and Activation Scales. Personality and Individual Differences 33, 861–865.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saucier, G (1994). Mini-markers: a brief version of Goldberg's unipolar big-five markers. Journal of Personality Assessment 63, 506–516.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sher, KJ, Grekin, ER, Williams, NA (2005). The development of alcohol use disorders. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology 1, 493–523.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sher, KJ, Trull, TJ (1994). Personality and disinhibitory psychopathology: alcoholism and antisocial personality disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103, 92–102.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spitzer, RL (1994). Psychiatric ‘Co-occurrence’? I'll stick with ‘Comorbidity’. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 1, 88–92.Google Scholar
Steinberg, L, Morris, AS (2001). Adolescent development. Annual Review of Psychology 52, 83–110.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Trull, TJ, Sher, KJ (1994). Relationship between the five-factor model of personality and Axis I disorders in a nonclinical sample. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103, 350–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uliaszek, A, Hauner, K, Zinbarg, RE, Mineka, S, Craske, MG, Griffith, JW, Rose, R (2009). An examination of content overlap and disorder-specific predictions in the associations of neuroticism with anxiety and depression. Journal of Research in Personality 43, 785–794.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
van der Sluis, S, Dolan, CV, Stoel, RD (2005). A note on testing perfect correlations in SEM. Structural Equation Modeling 12, 551–577.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, D (2005). Rethinking the mood and anxiety disorders: a quantitative hierarchical model for DSM-V. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 114, 522–536.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Watson, D, Clark, LA, Harkness, AR (1994). Structures of personality and their relevance to psychopathology. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 103, 18–31.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weinstock, LM, Whisman, MA (2006). Neuroticism as a common feature of the depressive and anxiety disorders: a test of the revised integrative hierarchical model in a national sample. Journal of Abnormal Psychology 115, 68–74.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Widiger, TA, Smith, GT (2008). Personality and psychopathology. In Handbook of Personality, 3rd edn (ed. John, O. P., Robins, R. W. and Pervin, L. A.), pp. 743–769. Guilford Press: New York.Google Scholar
Winship, C, Radbill, L (1994). Sampling weights and regression analyses. Sociological Methods and Research 23, 230–257.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yu, CY (2002). Evaluating Cutoff Criteria of Model Fit Indices for Latent Variable Models with Binary and Continuous Outcomes. Doctoral dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Zinbarg, RE, Revelle, W, Yovel, I, Li, W (2005). Cronbach's α, Revelle's β, and McDonald's ωH: their relationships with each other and two alternative conceptualizations of reliability. Psychometrika 70, 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zinbarg, RE, Yovel, I, Revelle, W, McDonald, RP (2006). Estimating generalizability to a latent variable common to all of a scale's indicators: a comparison of estimators for ωh. Applied Psychological Measurement 30, 121–144.CrossRefGoogle Scholar