Openness to Experience, Intellect, Schizotypal Personality Disorder, and Psychoticism: Resolving the Controversy

Section III of DSM-5 includes an alternative model for personality disorders comprising five higher-order pathological personality traits, four of which resemble domains from the Big Five/Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM). There has, however, been considerable debate regarding the association of FFM Openness-to-Experience/Intellect (OE/I) with DSM-5 Psychoticism and Schizotypal Personality Disorder (STPD). The authors identify several limitations in the literature, including inattention to (a) differences in the conceptualization of OE/I in the questionnaire and lexical traditions and (b) the symptom heterogeneity of STPD. They then address these limitations in two large patient samples. The results suggest that OE/I per se is weakly associated with Psychoticism and STPD symptoms. However, unique variance specific to the different conceptualizations of OE/I demonstrates much stronger associations, often in opposing directions. These results clarify the debate and the seemingly discrepant views that OE/I is unrelated to Psychoticism and contains variance relevant to Psychoticism.