Psychosocial predictors of personality disorder traits in a non-clinical sample

This research investigated the relationship between DSM-III-R Axis II personality disorders measured by the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and a number of psychosocial variables, namely, perceived stress, self-esteem, social desirability, self-efficacy, hopelessness, anger expression, coping, locus of control and optimism. These variables were reduced to six factors through a principal components analysis with a varimax rotation. Stepwise multiple regression analyses were used to ascertain the percentage of variance accounted for by the six psychosocial factors in predicting each of the 11 personality disorders. The data were obtained from 157 introductory psychology students. The results indicate a distinguishing pattern of association between psychosocial factors and specific personality disorders. The factor representing perceived stress and self-esteem explains a relatively large percentage of variance in almost all the personality disorders. Unexpectedly, coping contributes very little to the total variance in any personality disorder.