Relating Externalizing Psychopathology to Personality Across Different Structural Levels and Timescales

Personality dysfunction may be a key driver of externalizing psychopathology, but more research is needed to understand how personality dysfunction relates to externalizing psychopathology. Moreover, psychopathology manifests in daily life, and little work has considered how day-to-day changes in personality dysfunction influence the expression of externalizing behaviors and urges. The present research examined how the alternative model of personality disorders (AMPD) related to broad and narrower aspects of externalizing psychopathology. Measures were collected at baseline (n = 278), and longitudinally through a 14-day diary study. At baseline, and in daily life, most AMPD variables correlated with broad and narrow domains of externalizing psychopathology. When AMPD variables were entered together, as expected, the pathological traits of disinhibition and antagonism were uniquely linked to psychopathology at baseline and in daily life. When entered together, daily exacerbations of externalizing behaviors were related to negative affect and disinhibition, while daily externalizing urges were more consistently related to the level of personality functioning and negative affect. We discuss how these results align with expectations from the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology model, and discuss the potential of linking personality to externalizing psychopathology across timescale and broad/narrower structural levels.