Describing depressive personality analogues and dysthymics on the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) To test Widiger, Trull, Clarkin, Sanderson, and Costa's (1994) description of depressive personalities' profile scores on the NEO-Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1992); and (b) to determine the degree of empirical overlap between depressive personality analogues and dysthymics on the NEO-PI-R. As predicted, depressive personality analogues (DPAs) had significantly higher mean scores on the Anxiety, Depression, and Self-Consciousness NEO-PI-R facets of Neuroticism than did controls, but not on the Tendermindedness facet. On the second question of interest, DPAs and dysthymics significantly differed on the Self-Consciousness and Gregariousness facets and clinically differed on the Neuroticism, Openness, and Agreeableness factors, and on the Angry Hostility, Depression, and Positive Emotions facets. Despite overlap on other factors and facets, it is concluded that DPAs can be meaningfully differentiated from dysthymia on the NEO-PI-R.