Personality disorder is common amongst individuals accessing mental health services, with research into its aetiology and impact on services increasing in recent years. This thesis has two parts. The first is a systematic review of the neuropsychological functioning among forensic samples with diagnoses of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Five databases were searched for cross-sectional studies exploring cognitive functioning in psychopathy and ASPD. Twelve studies were reviewed and indicated that individuals with psychopathy and ASPD demonstrate deficits in executive functions, attention, and memory, and that there are some differences in neuropsychological performance between the two disorders. The second part is an empirical study exploring factors that may influence mental health staff attitudes towards individuals with personality disorder. The study found that staff personality traits, emotion regulation style, empathy and job satisfaction were related to attitudes to personality disorder. Empathy and job burnout predicted attitudes, with higher scores on empathy and lower levels of burnout being related to positive attitudes to personality disorder. Implications for the findings of the systematic review and empirical study are discussed. Further research is required in both areas.

M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology) / The objective of this study is to examine the construct validity of the Openness scale in the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI). The SAPI project aims to develop a personality questionnaire that is applicable in the multicultural South African context. A total of 891 students and working adults, of different race groups (White, Black, Indian and Coloured), with a minimum of Grade 12 or equivalent and speaking eleven different languages participated in the study. A cross sectional design was used to collect data using paper and pencil questionnaires administered in English. The Openness scale consisted of 23 items. A hierarchical Schmid-Leiman factor solution was used to investigate if a strong general Openness factor could be retrieved from participants’ responses. Tucker’s phi coefficient was used to determine factor congruence across language groups. The results suggest that more work is needed to improve validity and reliability of the current SAPI Openness scale, as it failed to produce a general Openness factor. Results show that it is difficult to attach meaningful psychological interpretations to scores on the Openness scale can be made.

M.Comm. (Industrial Psychology) / The purpose of the South African Personality Inventory (SAPI) project is to develop a personality measure that can be used within the South African context and that can account for the diversity that exists within the South Africa. This study is intended at validating the Conscientiousness scale of the SAPI as well as considering how well the measure replicated across language groups (Germanic, Nguni and Sotho) in South Africa. The data utilised in this study was collected from working individuals from a number of different organisations in South Africa (N = 890). The Conscientiousness scale consists of 36 items that yielded a five factor structure namely, Dedication, Discipline, Commitment, Orderliness, Organised. It was found that the Conscientiousness scale is a valid and reliable measure of the personality trait Conscientiousness scale. The results indicated that the general factor, Conscientiousness replicated well across the different language groups in South Africa, but the five factor solution did not yield conclusive results. Furthermore, the results of the Differential Test Functioning (DTF) analysis revealed that the scale had a significant effect size and upon further investigation it was shown that two of the items that had significant Differential Item Functioning (DIF) effect sizes could be removed in order to obtain a non-bias measure of Conscientiousness on the SAPI.

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Publication of DSM-III led to increased recognition and diagnosis of personality disorders by assigning them to a separate axis. Self-report inventories have recently been constructed to reflect these changes in psychiatric nosology. This study compared the diagnostic efficiency of three tests: MMPI personality disorder scales (MMPI PD scales), Million Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI), and the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire (PDQ). Subjects were nonpsychotic psychiatric patients (n = 37), and medical control patients (n = 20). Subjects were given a clinical interview to diagnose any and all DSM-III personality disorders, and were then administered the three self-report inventories. Results indicate that the tests were extremely accurate at identifying the presence of any personality disorder, clusters of personality disorders, and specific personality disorders. Using the tests in combination further increased their efficiency. Implications for using cost-effective self-report tests in lieu of labor-intensive structured interviews are discussed.

The purpose of the study is to show that personality adjustments and reading skills have a decided connection in the development of the individual, for with enunciation, pronunciation, and oral interpretation of the printed page come greater confidence, self-expression, and poise.

This study has two major purposes. The first of these is to formulate a theoretical model which 1) provides an ontological and psychological framework for the concept of creativity, and 2) if non-contradictory empirical data are produced, provides a philosophic and psychological guide to effective action relevant to the development of creative skill. The second major purpose is to formulate and test a problem and hypotheses which would provide some empirical evidence of the explanatory adequacy of the model, and outside the scope of theoretical material, to produce data of general interest to any reader regardless of his theoretical orientation.

The purpose of the study was to analyze the personality traits of an individual as measured by a standardized personality test instrument and the vocational interest patterns as measured by a standardized vocational interest test. An attempt was made to determine if these identifiable personality traits were related to the ten reordered vocational clusters by means of a simple analysis of variance technique. In order to achieve this purpose, the following hypothesis was developed for investigation: There would be significant differences among the ten vocational clusters identified by the SVIB (Technical Cluster, Intellectual Cluster, Scientific Cluster, Business Cluster, Social Service Cluster, Creative Cluster, Office-Clerical Cluster, Sales Cluster, Concrete Transactions Cluster, and Physical Cluster) on the personality traits as measured by the 16 PF Questionnaire (Sizothymia- Affectothymia, Intelligence, Emotionality-Ego Strength, Submissiveness-Dominance, Desurgency-Surgency, Superego Strength, Threctia-Parmia, Alaxia-Protension, Praxernia-Autia, Artlessness-Shrewdness, Adequacy-Apprehension, Conservatism- Radicalism, Adherence-Self Sufficiency, Integration of Self Concept, and Ergic Tension).

Individuals from Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire and Glasgow/Greater Glasgow have anecdotally been thought to differ in their expression of emotion with the former group being thought to be less emotionally expressive that the latter. The current thesis carried out three studies to empirically examine this. A systematic review of measures of emotion experience, regulation, expression and alexithymia was carried out to establish their psychometric properties. The results of the review lead to recommendations for which scales to use within future studies of the thesis. The second study used measures of emotion experience (Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule), emotion regulation (Emotion Regulation Questionnaire) and alexithymia (Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20), identified within the review, in samples of adults from Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire and Glasgow/Greater Glasgow. A multiple indicators multiple causes model was used to examine group differences in response to these measures, this method allowed examination of differences on factor means and individual indicator items on the scales. It was found that Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire participants demonstrated a higher factor mean on the Negative Affect (NA) factor of the PANAS; the Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire participants also endorsed an individual item on the ERQ (Item 5) and the TAS-20 (Item 1) more than the Glasgow/Greater Glasgow participants. Finally, a qualitative study was carried out in which participants from each group recalled events related to six emotions. In describing events related to fear, anger and sadness, Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire participants tended to use positive statements that downplayed events related to these emotions, while the Glasgow/Greater Glasgow participants tended to use 'catastrophic' statements when describing events related to the same emotions. This may indicate differing cultural models between these populations.

This thesis began largely as an exploration into right-wing political ideology and its relationship to The Authoritarian Personality proposed by Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Levinson and Sanford (1950). It had initially been envisaged that contemporary examples would manifest themselves within many neo-Fascist or ‘White Pride’ style organisations and as an adage to their supposed historical underpinnings, would therefore be representative of modern day authoritarianism. As previously discovered by Eysenck and Coulter (1974) in their examination of British Fascists and Communists, the authoritarian syndrome is somewhat more complex to explain by way of reference to a number of radical semi-political organisations. Subsequently, the thesis was to take on a deeper and more philosophical direction as various parts of the literature were analysed and critiqued. And indeed to some extent the original proposal was abandoned in favour of a richer and more conceptual approach to our understanding of authoritarianism. This was discovered to be distinctly missing from the majority of the current literature in the field.