<p dir="ltr">Overcontrol is a coping style common to many psychiatric disorders that involves rigidity, goal persistence, and relying on a strict set of beliefs to manage aversive experiences. Overcontrol is associated with many core deficits, including disorders of internalizing and difficulties with social function. In clinical observation, it has been noted that there are two subgroups of patients with overcontrol, those who are “overly agreeable” and “overly disagreeable”. This work aimed to examine the role of agreeableness in overcontrol, investigating whether there exist important differences in psychiatric or psychosocial functioning at the poles of agreeableness. This study found evidence of this non-linear relationship for certain outcomes. For example, the relationship between internalizing distress and emotion dysregulation was non-linear in nature, meaning particularly low/high agreeableness in combination with overcontrol predicted more depression and dysregulation. Further nuance to these findings were investigated in exploratory analyses. Contrary to expectations, there was no evidence for a curvilinear role of agreeableness in social functioning, however, overcontrol was significantly related to loneliness. Further, there were many associations between agreeableness, overcontrol and interpersonal values, lending credence to clinical observation that people high in overcontrol hold certain values about their interpersonal context which may not be overtly expressed. Taken together, this paper offers support for the Radically Open Dialectical Behavioral Therapy conceptualization of behavior, providing empirical support to the agreeableness subgrouping.</p>

The psychological benefits of self-compassion, a construct associated with adaptively dealing with emotional suffering from life's problems appear to overlap with those of trait resiliency in terms of theoretical underpinnings and outcome research. This study investigated the relationship between self-compassion, personality, and gender in order to shed light on the construct's relevance to an existing framework of resiliency personality research. One hundred and twenty-three college students completed the Big Five Inventory (BFI) and Self-compassion Scale (SCS). A cluster-analysis of the BFI scores yielded three cluster prototypes consistent with overcontrolled, undercontrolled, and resilient personality prototypes identified in previous studies of children and adult community samples. Analyses revealed resilient individuals reported significantly higher overall Self-compassion (M = 3.08, SD = .25) compared to both overcontrolled (M = 2.85, SD = .20, t = -4.32, p <= .00) and undercontrolled types (M = 2.90, SD = .25, t = 3.53, p <= .00). Interestingly, there were no significant differences between overcontrolled and undercontrolled types or between men and women, on overall Self-compassion. A two by three MANOVA of gender and personality prototype on the SCS revealed a significant interaction on overall Self-compassion score (F = 3.92, p <= .02) and the Common Humanity subscale (F = 3.81, p <= .03). Post hoc analyses were conducted to examine the nature of the gender and personality interactions. The theoretical issues raised by these results are discussed and recommendations are made for utilizing self-compassion in treatment and future research.

Personality prototypes have gained more attention as a unit of personality analysis in the past decade. However, relatively few studies have looked at the personality structure of ethnic minorities in general and Black/African Americans specifically using this method of analysis. The current study utilized a large sample (n = 951) of Black/African American undergraduates. The scale scores and relevant work behaviors of the Workplace Personality Inventory (WPI) were analyzed via k-means to develop a prototypic outline of the three personality prototypes (i.e., resilient, undercontrolled, and overcontrolled.) Further, research relating to high achieving Black/African American undergraduates is also sparse. Thus, this study analyzed the cumulative grade point averages (CGPA) of the participants by gender and cluster type. The results show the replicability of the sample into the three personality prototypes as well as the statistical significance of gender and CGPA. The practical implications and limitations of the current study are discussed.