The Dimensionality Of Psychopathology Descriptors

This study identified five stable dimensions that judges utilized in making similarity judgments of a set of 26 psychopathology descriptors from a diverse domain representing traditional psychopathology descriptions such as lay labels, and diagnostic categories from the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM II), as well as stimuli from a new nosology of psychopathology based on behavioral descriptions derived from a technique known as modal profile analysis. These five dimensions were interpreted as: Mental Illness, Social vs. Psychological Deviance, Depression vs. Impulse Control, Anxiety vs. Impulse Control, and Paranoid vs. Impulse Control. Results did not, overall, support the superiority of the DSM II descriptors over labels, nor the beneficial influence of diagnostic qualifiers, but did suggest that specific personality information, as exemplified in the modal profile stimuli, reduces the influence of stigmatizing conceptualizations on psychopathology judgments.