Complementing HEXACO and Big Five Models with Disintegration: Evidence on Structural and Rank-Order Stability across Adolescence and Adulthood

The Big Five (OCEAN) and HEXACO models provide widely accepted frameworks for understanding personality but fail to capture individual differences in proneness to psychotic-like experiences and behaviors. To address this gap, the Disintegration trait, a broad dimension encompassing nine subfacets, has been proposed. While prior cross-sectional studies confirmed its structural distinctiveness, longitudinal evidence of its stability has been lacking. We report two large-scale longitudinal studies spanning ten months and up to two-years, respectively, examining the structural and rank-order stability of Disintegration within extended personality models. Study 1 examined the HEXACOD model (HEXACO + Disintegration) across three measurement waves in Serbian adolescents (N = 1,000). Study 2 evaluated the DOCEAN model (Big Five + Disintegration) across three waves in a sample representative of the German adult sample (N = 2,629). Across both studies, Exploratory Structural Equation Modeling (ESEM) demonstrated excellent model fit regarding the invariance of both seven-factor (HEXACOD) and six-factor (DOCEAN) models over time. Rank-order stability of Disintegration was found to be high, albeit somewhat lower compared to other traits. Disintegration exhibited stable structural boundaries while manifesting through bounded fluctuations, and was consistently associated with a degree of temporal instability of the broader personality system.