Negative Cognitions in the Personality Domains of the AMPD

Healthy individuals show a tendency towards positive cognitions that is reversed during depression. This tendency is revealed by the Scrambled Sentences Task (SST), an experimental procedure that was also shown to be associated with vulnerability to suffer from depressive episodes. Here, we used the SST to map the prevalence of negative cognitions across the personality domains of criterion B of the Alternative Model of Personality Disorder (AMPD) of the DSM-5 in healthy individuals. The AMPD was developed to characterize personality in a dimensional approach spanning both healthy and pathological individuals. We expected negative cognitions to be more frequent among individuals with high negative affectivity and detachment scores, as these dimensions are thought to be associated with disorders of affect. This association was stable and significant in three separate experiments and persisted for detachment after adjusting for current depression levels. In the Five-Factor Model of Personality (FFM), in contrast, only openness failed to show any association with negative cognitions. Negative affectivity and detachment differed in the preferential association with negative and positive cognitions, respectively. This finding suggests a possible role of motivational factors related to sensitivity to negative and positive incentives in linking personality dimensions and cognitive tendencies, with an anhedonic dimension of negative cognitions being present alongside current depressive symptoms.