Personality functioning as generalized correlated changes in personality traits

Contemporary personality disorder diagnosis parses personality functioning (PF) as a general criterion for diagnosis and personality traits as the style in which the disorder manifests. There is ongoing debate about the distinctness of PF and personality traits, but research on core differences between PF and personality traits has been limited by an over-reliance on cross-sectional data that may be insensitive to these differences. We fit a continuous time model to five factor model (FFM) personality trait facets that parsed general correlated change and change that could be accounted for by FFM domains using ten years of longitudinal data from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality disorders Study (N = 733). We found that the general change factor was very similar to lay and expert conceptions of psychological health and explained more variance in personality disorder symptom reductions over time than trait change factors. These results support the distinction between PF and personality traits, suggest that features of PF can be identified within change processes in personality trait assessments, and highlight the importance of designs that are sensitive to theoretical differences in these concepts.