Beyond the illusion of personality: Part III: A comment on impulse pathology

An enormous amount of papers in the field of personality disorder tend to fall prey to a cognitive bias that I have termed ''the illusion of personality (pathology)'': that is, the tendency to view all individual differences as personality differences (and their deviations from the norm as personality problems). In this brief paper, I illustrate this bias using a recent example: namely, a study that found evidence for ''disinhibition'' and ''distractibility'' being implicated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, yet erroneously concluded that this is evidence for ''personality pathology'' being implicated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. It is important to emphasise that my critique here does not aim to be a judgemental nit-picking of this particular study. Instead, my critique aims to highlight how widespread this bias is in the hopes of making research on personality (pathology) more scientifically accurate and humane.