The good, the bad, and the ugly in disruptive behavior problems

Today I present a single study, one I found very helpful. Muris, Bakker, Peulen, van Mulekom & Meesters (2023) published The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: A comprehensive study of temperament and personality correlates of self-reported disruptive behavior problems in male and female adolescents” in Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.  Here are some highly edited excerpts:

The aim of the present study was to provide a comprehensive picture of temperament and personality traits as correlates of self-reported disruptive behavior problems in male and female adolescents. Two-hundred-and-sixty-three non-clinical adolescents aged 12–18 years completed a survey containing standardized scales to measure the HEXACO personality traits, impulsivity, effortful control, Dark Triad traits [narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism], and symptoms of oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD).

Disruptive behavior disorders such as oppositional-defiant disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD) are among the more prevalent psychiatric problems in children and adolescents. A review by Maughan and colleagues has indicated that the prevalence rates in the general population range between 1.0% and 13.3% for ODD and between 0.6% and 13.2% for CD, with considerable variation being noted due to the gender (i.e., males more often display these disorders than females) and age (i.e., ODD mostly has an onset during the early and middle childhood years, while the prevalence of CD shows a clear increase during adolescence), and the used research method (self-report vs. other informant). Both ODD and CD are considered as disruptive behavior problems as the actions displayed by the young person typically cause trouble for the (social) environment and interfere with the usual course of circumstances. In ODD, the child or adolescent exhibits a consistent pattern of angry and irritable mood, argumentative and defiant behavior, and vindictiveness, whereas in CD the behavior is more of an antisocial nature in the sense that the basic rights of others or main societal norms or rules are violated (e.g., by aggressive acts, destruction of property, deceitfulness or theft).

The results first of all showed that the correlations between temperament and personality traits and symptoms of ODD and CD were largely as anticipated. That is, young people who display higher levels of disruptive behavior problems are characterized by lower levels of sincerity, fairness, modesty, and faithfulness (i.e., honesty-humility), lower levels of kindness, mildness, cooperativeness, and sympathy (agreeablesness), lower levels of organization, discipline, thoroughness, and precision (conscientiousness), and lower levels of regulative abilities of attention control, attention shifting, and inhibitory control (effortful control). Further, in keeping with previous studies, it was found that adolescents with higher levels of disruptive behavior problems can be typified by a stronger tendency to act impulsively and higher levels of malevolent personality features covered by the Dark Triad. Second, symptoms of ODD and CD were positively intercorrelated, which confirms that the prototypical antagonism and aggressive/delinquent acts that are reflected by these problems represent related types of disruptive behavior. 

However, there are also some marked distinctions between ODD and CD. For example, the behaviors associated with ODD are of a less severe nature in terms of violations of morality and other people’s integrity than those observed in CD. Furthermore, it has been demonstrated that problems of emotional dysregulation are more prominent in ODD than in CD. In line with these notions, the results showed that agreeableness and effortful control were important predictor variables of ODD, whereas the model predicting symptoms of CD symptoms was mainly dominated by lack of honesty-humility and the Dark Triad members of Machiavellianism and psychopathy.

Third, exploration of gender differences in the temperament and personality correlates of disruptive behavior problems revealed that— in both males and females—symptoms of ODD were mainly predicted by agreeableness and psychopathy. Contributions of other variables varied between both genders but their percentages of explained variance were relatively small. More clear differences were noted in the regression analysis predicting symptoms of CD, and this was in particular the case when the ugly traits were added to the model. In males, agreeableness emerged as the most important predictor of CD symptoms, followed by Machiavellianism, and conscientiousness, whereas in females this type of disruptive behavior problems was predominantly predicted by psychopathy, after which Machiavellianism and effortful control entered into the model. Further, it was also notable that in females various temperament and personality traits explained much more variance in CD symptoms than in males (i.e., 57% vs. 37%). These findings can be explained by the fact that males and females differ in terms of temperament and personality traits (25, 26, 58), phenomenological expressions of disruptive behavior (59, 60), as well as their willingness to report openly on immoral and antisocial tendencies and actions (61, 62). However it may be, the results are well in line with a previous study by Dinic and Wertag (63) who explored gender differences in HEXACO and Dark Triad correlates of aggression, and also found that this type of disruptive behavior was associated with different personality profiles in males and females.

The present study also yielded a number of additional findings that deserve some brief comment. First, emotionality, which in the literature has been considered as a “bad” trait—mainly because of its positive relationship with psychopathology of an internalizing nature, generally showed small, but statistically significant, negative correlations with both types of disruptive behavior problems (only in males, the correlation with ODD problems was not significant). This suggests that this trait is at least to some extent shielding young persons against ODD and CD problems, which is in line with the notion that unemotional characters are associated with the most persistent and deviant behaviors, simply because they lack anxiety and guilt and are insensitive to the negative consequences that their antagonistic and antisocial actions may have for others. Admittedly, in the regression models, emotionality never emerged as a unique predictor of disruptive behavior problems, but it seems most plausible that low emotionality was covered by the dark trait of psychopathy, of which deficient emotional responses is a defining feature. In line with this explanation, the present study indeed found a quite substantial negative correlation between emotionality and psychopathy. Second, although there are scholars who have found that extraversion is positively associated with disruptive behavior problems, the results of the present study indicated that this basic personality trait was negatively correlated with symptoms of ODD and CD, which confirmed its status of being a good trait within the context of psychopathology. Even in the regression models, extraversion was included as a negative predictor, accounting for a small but significant proportion of the variance. This indicates that this personality trait incorporates some unique positive features that are difficult to reconcile with disruptive behavior problems which are not covered by other temperament/ personality traits. Third, as expected the Dark Triad member of narcissism correlated positively with symptoms of ODD and CD. However, in males, once controlling for other personality and temperament traits, narcissism made a small but significant negative contribution to symptoms of ODD. Previous studies have indicated that—besides dark features—narcissism also harbors positive characteristics (e.g., mental toughness, high self-esteem) that may explain the negative association with symptoms of ODD once the evil elements are filtered out.

These findings indicate that various theoretical frameworks on temperament and personality are relevant for understanding the etiology of disruptive behavior problems, implying that further studies on this topic should take good as well as bad and ugly traits into account. Further, greater consideration should be given to gender differences in the specific traits underlying ODD and CD in the adolescent years, and the implications that this has for the assessment of such problems in research as well as in clinical practice.

They concede a number of limitations including the recruitment online and collection of self-report data; it’s also unclear how representative the sample is and whether parents, teachers, or other informants would provide similar data. Nonetheless, I think there are many fascinating findings here.