Personality disorders classification

American Psychiatric Association

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (currently the DSM-IV) lists ten personality disorders, grouped into three clusters in Axis II. The DSM also contains a category for behavioral patterns that do not match these ten disorders, but nevertheless exhibit characteristics of a personality disorder. This category is labeled Personality disorder not otherwise specified.

Cluster A (odd or eccentric disorders)

• Paranoid personality disorder: characterized by irrational suspicions and mistrust of others.
• Schizoid personality disorder: lack of interest in social relationships, seeing no point in sharing time with others, anhedonia, introspection.
• Schizotypal personality disorder: characterized by odd behavior or thinking.

Cluster B (dramatic, emotional or erratic disorders)

• Antisocial personality disorder: a pervasive disregard for the law and the rights of others.
• Borderline personality disorder: extreme "black and white" thinking, instability in relationships, self-image, identity and behavior often leading to self-harm and impulsivity. Borderline personality disorder is diagnosed in three times as many females as males.
• Histrionic personality disorder: pervasive attention-seeking behavior including inappropriately seductive behavior and shallow or exaggerated emotions.
• Narcissistic personality disorder: a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy.

Cluster C (anxious or fearful disorders)

• Avoidant personality disorder: social inhibition, feelings of inadequacy, extreme sensitivity to negative evaluation and avoidance of social interaction.
• Dependent personality disorder: pervasive psychological dependence on other people.
• Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (not the same as obsessive-compulsive disorder): characterized by rigid conformity to rules, moral codes and excessive orderliness.

Appendix B: Criteria Sets and Axes Provided for Further Study

Appendix B contains the following disorders.

• Depressive personality disorder – is a pervasive pattern of depressive cognitions and behaviors beginning by early adulthood.
• Passive-aggressive (negativistic) personality disorder – is a pattern of negative attitudes and passive resistance in interpersonal situations.

Other

Some types of personality disorder were in previous versions of the diagnostic manuals but have been deleted. This includes two types that were in the DSM-III-R appendix as “Proposed diagnostic categories needing further study” without specific criteria, namely Sadistic personality disorder (a pervasive pattern of cruel, demeaning and aggressive behavior) and Self-defeating personality disorder (masochistic personality disorder) (characterised by behaviour consequently undermining the person's pleasure and goals). The psychologist Theodore Millon and others consider some relegated diagnoses to be equally valid disorders, and may also propose other personality disorders or subtypes, including mixtures of aspects of different categories of the officially accepted diagnoses.

Machiavellianism

Machiavellianism is, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "the employment of cunning and duplicity in statecraft or in general conduct", deriving from the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote Il Principe (The Prince) and other works. "Machiavellian" (and variants) as a word became very popular in the late 16th century in English, though "Machiavellianism" itself is first cited by the OED from 1626. The word has a similar use in modern psychology.

In political thought

In the 16th century, immediately following the publication of the Prince, Machiavellianism was seen as a foreign plague infecting northern European politics, originating in Italy, and having first infected France. It was in this context that the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572 in Paris came to be seen as a product of Machiavellianism, a view greatly influenced by the Huguenot Innocent Gentillet, who published his Discours contre Machievel in 1576, which was printed in ten editions in three languages over the next four years. Gentillet held, quite wrongly according to Sydney Anglo, that Machiavelli's "books [were] held most dear and precious by our Italian and Italionized [sic] courtiers" in France (in the words of his first English translation), and so (in Anglo's paraphrase) "at the root of France's present degradation, which has culminated not only in the St Bartholemew massacre but the glee of its perverted admirers". In fact there is little trace of Machiavelli in French writings before the massacre, and not very much after, until Gentillet's own book, but this concept was seized upon by many contemporaries, and played a crucial part in setting the long-lasting popular concept of Machiavellianism.

The English playwright Christopher Marlowe was an enthusiastic proponent of this view. In The Jew of Malta (1589–90) "Machievel" in person speaks the Prologue, claiming not to be dead, but to have possessed the soul of (the Duke of) Guise, "And, now the Guise is dead, is come from France/ To view this land, and frolic with his friends" (Prologue, lines 3–4) His last play, The Massacre at Paris (1593) takes the massacre, and the following years, as its subject, with the Duke of Guise and Catherine de' Medici both depicted as Machiavellian plotters, bent on evil from the start.

The Anti-Machiavel is an 18th century essay by Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and patron of Voltaire, rebutting The Prince, and Machiavellianism. It was first published in September 1740, a few months after Frederick became king, and is one of many such works.

In psychology

Machiavellianism is also a term that some social and personality psychologists use to describe a person's tendency to deceive and manipulate other people for their personal gain. In the 1960s, Richard Christie and Florence L. Geis developed a test for measuring a person's level of Machiavellianism. This eventually became the MACH-IV test, a twenty-statement personality survey that is now the standard self-assessment tool of Machiavellianism. People scoring above 60 out of 100 on the MACH-IV are considered high Machs; that is, they endorsed statements such as, "Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so," (No. 1) but not ones like, "Most people are basically good and kind" (No. 4). People scoring below 60 out of 100 on the MACH-IV are considered low Machs; they tend to believe, "There is no excuse for lying to someone else," (No. 7) and, "Most people who get ahead in the world lead clean, moral lives" (No. 11). Christie, Geis, and Geis's graduate assistant David Berger went on to perform a series of studies that provided experimental verification for the notion of Machiavellianism.

Machiavellianism is one of the three personality traits referred to as the dark triad, along with narcissism and psychopathy. Some psychologists consider Machiavellianism to be essentially a subclinical form of psychopathy, although recent research suggests that while Machiavellianism and psychopathy overlap, they are distinct personality constructs.

In 2002, the Machiavellianism scale of Christie and Geis was applied by behavioral game theorists Anna Gunnthorsdottir, Kevin McCabe and Vernon L. Smith. in their search for explanations for the spread of observed behavior in experimental games, in particular individual choices which do not correspond to assumptions of material self-interest captured by the standard Nash equilibrium prediction. It was found that in a trust game, those with high MACH-IV scores tended to follow homo economicus' equilibrium strategies while those with low MACH-IV scores tended to deviate from the equilibrium, and instead made choices that reflected widely accepted moral standards and social preferences.

Machiavellianism has been found to be negatively correlated with the Agreeableness (r = -.47) and Conscientiousness (r = -.34) dimensions of the Big Five personality model (NEO-PI-R).

Relationship to Moral Judgments

A study on 17 social and economic issues found Machiavellianism to correlate significantly with traditionally "conservative" positions on capital punishment, free markets, and detention of suspected terrorists without trial. No significant correlations were found between Machiavellianism and traditionally liberal judgments. The same study also found a significant correlation between Machiavellianism and the judgment that it is good or right to tell a lie for the greater good, and between Machiavellianism and utilitarian judgments in the trolley problem cases.