BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Psychopathology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1608073
Utility of the Bright and Dark Personality Inventory in Assessing Personality Pathology
Provisionally accepted
- 1School of Psychology, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- 2Mindeep Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Center, Seoul, Republic of Korea
- 3KU Mind Health Institute, Korea University, Seoul, Republic of Korea
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Background: Contemporary approaches to personality pathology increasingly emphasize dimensional models, a shift reflected in recent diagnostic frameworks such as the DSM-5 Alternative Model for Personality Disorders (AMPD) and the ICD-11. Aligned with this perspective, the Bright and Dark Personality Inventory (BDPI), grounded in the five-factor model, was developed to dimensionally assess both general ("General 5") and maladaptive ("Dark 5") personality domains. This study focused on maladaptive personality traits and examined the incremental utility of the BDPI's Dark 5 in identifying personality disorder (PD) tendencies in a nonclinical Korean sample. Methods: A total of 1,017 South Korean adults completed the BDPI, the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 – Short Form (PID-5-SF), and the Self-report Standardized Assessment of Personality Abbreviated Scale (SAPAS-SR). To examine convergent and incremental validity, we conducted Pearson correlations, squared semi-partial correlations, and hierarchical logistic regression analyses. In addition, independent samples t-tests were performed to assess group differences between individuals with and without PD tendencies. Results: The Dark 5 domains showed strong convergence with corresponding PID-5-SF traits, supporting their convergent validity. Negative Affectivity, Detachment, and Attention Difficulty predicted PD tendencies beyond the PID-5-SF, increasing explained variance by 9.7%. Egocentrism and Psychoticism contributed no unique variance, possibly due to suppression. Attention Difficulty, which includes obsessiveness, may partially reflect Anankastia-related traits. Conclusion: The BDPI's Dark 5 may offer complementary value to existing trait-based assessments by capturing additional expressions of maladaptive personality traits. Further research should validate these findings in clinical populations and explore the measurement of Anankastia-relevant constructs.
Keywords: 5-factor model, maladaptive personality trait, personality disorder, personalitypathology, Personality Assessment
Received: 08 Apr 2025; Accepted: 26 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Cho, Han and Choi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Kee-Hong Choi, kchoi1@korea.ac.kr
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