P is for personality: Commentary on Caspi et al. (2026)

Caspi et al. (see record 2026-80066-001) highlight substantive questions over methodological debates when considering covariation of disorders across development. In this commentary, we argue that personality and temperament offer models through which such heterogeneity should be understood. Personality traits index a wide range of biological, psychological, and behavioral individual differences and share common structures with dimensional models of psychopathology. As such, they are particularly useful for identifying both transdiagnostic and domain-specific processes of psychopathology. For decades, editorials in journals such as this have argued that personality should be incorporated into developmental psychopathology to a larger degree. We hope that discussions initiated by the target article being discussed may be a catalyst to do so. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).