General Factors of Psychopathology, Personality, and Personality Disorder: Across Domain Comparisons

Three separate and distinct literatures exist investigating general factors of psychopathology (p factor), personality (general factor of personality, GFP), and personality disorder (g-PD). Surprisingly, there has been little to no investigation regarding the convergence of these three distinct general factors. In the present investigation, two studies were conducted examining the convergence of the p factor, GFP, and g-PD. In Study 1, a combined model extracting all three factors from self-report data simultaneously found high convergence. The findings for the g-PD and GFP were replicated in Study 2 using multimethod data, wherein the GFP and the g-PD were extracted from a community sample of 1,630 older adults and correlated with an index of maladaptivity. The present findings support the position that general factors of psychopathology, personality disorder, and personality are likely to entail a common individual differences continuum, which may impact on how these general factors are to be understood.