Publications by authors named "Whitney Ringwald"

Psychological functioning is shaped by how people navigate their environment. Accordingly, psychopathology is often caused and maintained by patterns of responding to the environment that do not meet situational demands. In particular, psychopathology is often expressed in an inflexible or intense manner of coping with stressful situations.

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Unlabelled: Interpersonal and emotional functioning are closely linked and reciprocally influence one another. Contemporary integrative interpersonal theory (CIIT) offers a useful framework to conceptualize these patterns and guide interventions in cases where these patterns result in dysfunction. Stress processes offer several dynamic frameworks to guide empirical investigations using methods that allow for fine-grained analyses in the context of daily life.

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Objective: Research challenged the notion that neuroticism correlates with affective variability, suggesting that it may result from statistical artifacts due to the non-normal distribution of negative affect. We aim to advance this line of research by (a) introducing affect balance as a normally distributed measure of affective well-being and (b) examining current affect balance as a moderator of the relationship between neuroticism and affect balance variability.

Method: We meta-analyzed the results of 14 ambulatory assessment datasets (N = 2389 participants, N = 174,423 observations).

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Personality variability is an important individual difference construct that is the focus of major psychological theories and relates to socioemotional functioning. Although cross-situational personality variability has been studied extensively in adult populations, little is known about variability in children's personality. In this study, we aimed to address this gap in knowledge by evaluating whether cross-situational variability is a potentially meaningful individual difference in youth.

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The alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD) traits were designed to maintain continuity with the Section II personality disorder (PD) diagnoses by retaining the same clinical information. Whether the AMPD traits achieve this is not well established. Prior work testing incremental validity of AMPD traits and Section II diagnoses is limited by the fact each model was measured by a different instrument or rater, making it unclear whether discrepancies are due to the constructs or methods.

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The accumulation of day-to-day stressors can impact mental and physical health. How people respond to stressful events is a key mechanism responsible for the effects of stress, and individual differences in stress responses can either perpetuate or prevent negative consequences. Most research on daily stress processes has focused on affective responses to stressors, but stress responses can involve more than just affect (e.

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Quantitative, empirical approaches to establishing the structure of psychopathology hold promise to improve on traditional psychiatric classification systems. The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a framework that summarizes the substantial and growing body of quantitative evidence on the structure of psychopathology. To achieve its aims, HiTOP must incorporate emerging research in a systematic, ongoing fashion.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines personality development from adolescence to early adulthood, focusing on metatraits (like stability and plasticity), the Big Five personality domains, and specific personality facets among Mexican-origin youth with limited socioeconomic resources.
  • Using data from a longitudinal study with 645 participants assessed five times between ages 14 and 23, the research reveals both mean-level changes in personality characteristics and unique patterns of development at various hierarchical levels.
  • Findings indicate increases in exploratory behaviors and maturity traits, consistent rank-order stability in personality traits, and highlight the importance of considering sociocultural diversity in understanding personality development.
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Background: A growing literature documents associations between lower trait empathy and heavier alcohol use and more alcohol problems in adolescent and young adult samples. Prior work linking empathy and alcohol use/problems in these populations has thus far focused on trait rather than state empathy, and researchers often do not differentiate between cognitive and affective empathy. Further, no prior studies have examined associations between daily fluctuations in state empathy and alcohol use.

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We reply to Wright et al.'s (2023) commentary and suggestion that personality trait models would be the preferred way to reconfigure the personality disorders (PDs). Though we agree that personality trait models are powerful descriptive tools, we highlight that they lack definitional or explanatory power, and that is why they have not been able to define or distinguish what PDs are (Hopwood, 2018; Mõttus et al.

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The development of factor analysis is uniquely situated within psychology, and the development of many psychological theories and measures are likewise tethered to the common use of factor analysis. In this article, we review modern methodological controversies and developments of factor analytic techniques through concrete demonstrations that span the exploratory-confirmatory continuum. Also, we provide recommendations for working through common challenges in personality disorders research.

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Humans adapt to a dynamic environment while maintaining psychological equilibrium. Systems theories of personality hold that generalized processes control stability by regulating how strongly a person reacts to various situations. Research shows there are higher-order traits of general personality function (Stability) and dysfunction (general personality pathology; GPP), but whether or not they capture individual differences in reactivity is largely theoretical.

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Interpersonal theory organizes social behavior along dominant (vs. submissive) and warm (vs. cold) dimensions.

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Personality pathology is increasingly conceptualized within hierarchical, dimensional trait models. The Comprehensive Assessment of Traits Relevant to Personality Disorders (CAT-PD) is a pathological-trait measure with potential to improve on currently prevailing instruments because it has wider content coverage; however, its domain-level structure, which is of scientific and clinical interest, is not established. In this study, we investigated the structure and construct validity of the CAT-PD's domain level to facilitate wider use of the measure.

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Personality disorders (PDs) are among the most common and severe classes of psychopathology. From a clinical perspective, it is challenging to help individuals with personality disorders because treatment ruptures, discontinuation, reversals, and failures are relatively common. An additional clinical challenge is that the model used to diagnose personality disorders is demonstrably incorrect.

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Factor analytic models of common mental disorders have been hypothesized to be affected by various methodological features, which could undermine the assumption that Internalizing and Externalizing reflect part of the natural structure of psychopathology. In this study, we addressed this issue by testing whether and how methodological features affect the empirical structure of psychopathology using meta-analytic measurement invariance models of Internalizing and Externalizing across multiple sample characteristics. Published studies estimating factor analytic models from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) diagnoses were screened.

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Widiger and Hines raise a number of significant concerns with the alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD). This places the major class of psychiatric difficulties represented by the personality disorders in a precarious position because the model used in previous editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and currently reprinted in Section II is moribund if not dead, and with the AMPD's significant problems, their future is unclear. Although we agree that Widiger and Hines' criticisms have merit, they are not the whole picture.

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Emotional and behavioral variability are unifying characteristics of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Ambulatory assessment (AA) has been used to quantify this variability in terms of the categorical BPD diagnosis, but evidence suggests that BPD instead reflects general personality pathology. This study aimed to clarify the conceptualization of BPD by mapping indices of variability in affect, interpersonal behavior, and perceptions of others onto general and specific dimensions of personality pathology.

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Interpersonal Antagonism is one of the major domains of maladaptive personality. Structural-based investigations of Antagonism have generally been consistent in highlighting the more specific antagonistic traits (e.g.

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Background: Several personality traits increase the risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Because many of these traits are correlated, their associations with disease risk could reflect shared variance, rather than unique contributions of each trait. We examined a higher-order personality trait of Stability as related to preclinical atherosclerosis and tested whether any such relationship might be explained by correlated variation in cardiometabolic risk factors.

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Continuous passive sensing of daily behavior from mobile devices has the potential to identify behavioral patterns associated with different aspects of human characteristics. This paper presents novel analytic approaches to extract and understand these behavioral patterns and their impact on predicting adaptive and maladaptive personality traits. Our machine learning analysis extends previous research by showing that both adaptive and maladaptive traits are associated with passively sensed behavior providing initial evidence for the utility of this type of data to study personality and its pathology.

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Article Synopsis
  • Empathy is thought to help us connect with others, but its role may change depending on the situation and social context.
  • Previous research might not have accurately captured how empathy functions in real-life interactions due to reliance on individual traits or controlled conditions.
  • Using ecological momentary assessment, this study found that people show more empathy during positive interactions with warm individuals, reinforcing the idea that empathy generally serves an affiliative purpose.
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College students are at heightened risk of engaging in unhealthy alcohol use that leads to negative consequences (e.g., motor vehicle accidents, poor academic performance).

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Pain is a complex construct contributing to significant impairment, particularly among physically injured patients seeking treatment in trauma and orthopedic surgery settings in which social workers are an integral component of care. The biopsychosocial theory, fear-avoidance, and cognitive mediation models of pain suggest that psychological factors (for example, depression) affect one's ability to tolerate distress, leading to negative pain appraisals, such as catastrophizing. This study examined whether distress tolerance serves as a mechanism by which depression is associated with pain catastrophizing.

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Background: The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is a classification system that seeks to organize psychopathology using quantitative evidence - yet the current model was established by narrative review. This meta-analysis provides a quantitative synthesis of literature on transdiagnostic dimensions of psychopathology to evaluate the validity of the HiTOP framework.

Methods: Published studies estimating factor-analytic models from ( diagnoses were screened.

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