Aidan G C Wright
Biographic Data
| ID | 1661940 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Aidan G C Wright |
| GIVEN NAMES | Aidan G C |
| FAMILY NAME | Wright |
| SIGNATURE | WRIGHT A G C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Pittsburgh |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2369-0601 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 59 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 56 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 59 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Disinhibition and Anankastia as Distinct Domains of Maladaptive Control
Affective variability prospectively predicts higher affective well-being, but only when people feel low
Previous studies have predominantly viewed affective variability as detrimental to well-being, suggesting an unstable emotional state. However, research on early warning signs of affective disorders suggests that affective variability may also be adaptive, particularly when individuals' affective well-being is low. Here, we sought to test that greater affective variability would predict increased affective well-being over time (Hypothesis 1), or …
The Structure of Identity Dysfunction in Self-Report Measures
Identity dysfunction is considered core to psychopathology, contributing to emotional and interpersonal problems across psychiatric diagnoses. Despite its centrality in theories of personality and psychopathology, the empirical research on the structure of identity dysfunction is fragmented by a plethora of self-report measures assessing varied domains of identity dysfunction. This project examines conceptual domains of identity dysfunction in se…
Neuroticism, Internalizing Psychopathology, and Affective Reactions to Thought Content in Daily Life
INTRODUCTION: This study examined affective reactions to thought content (TC) in daily life and the influence of neuroticism and internalizing symptoms. METHODS: Community young adults (N = 119; n = 80 with elevated depression/anxiety) completed assessments of neuroticism, internalizing symptoms, and daily diary measures of TC and positive/negative affect for seven consecutive days (N = 758 observations). Multilevel confirmatory factor analysis (…
Do you feel what I feel? The relation between congruence of perceived affect and self-reported empathy in daily life social situations
Theories of empathy highlight the importance of affective congruence, which is the degree to which we match an interaction partner in negative or positive affect. However, no research to date has used a multipronged assessment approach necessary to investigate whether and how affective congruence typically relates to empathy (i.e., perception of others' affect, self-reported affect, and self-reported empathy during interpersonal interactions). Us…
The resolution of affective reactivity to stressful events
Repeated assessments in everyday life allow for ecologically valid data on dynamic, within-person stress processes. However, typical designs offer little information on the immediate shape of affective responses following daily stressors, including the influence of situational and person-level variables. In a combined clinical and community sample ( N = 248; recruited between 2016 and 2018), we employed a high-density intensive-longitudinal proto…
Mindfulness-based stress reduction and loneliness in older adults: Two randomized controlled trials
Objectives Loneliness is one of the most robust risk factors for morbidity and accelerated mortality among older adults, and effective interventions are needed. However, interventions to reduce loneliness have shown limited success, especially in this population. Indeed, research suggests that simply increasing social contact might not combat loneliness; instead, addressing the cognitive and emotional mechanisms of loneliness might be more effect…
The many faces of narcissism: A question of situation perception
Person-situation dynamics in narcissism are investigated using a longitudinal experimental design. • Certain situation perceptions trigger momentary manifestations of specific narcissisism domains. • The trait structure of narcissism provides insights into whether the same or different situation perceptions lead to the acvation of specific narcissism domain states. • Momentary co-occurrences between situation perceptions and narcissistic states d…
Unraveling the link between neuroticism and well-being in daily life: The role of event occurrence, event appraisals, affective reactivity, and affective recovery
Recent studies suggest a robust link between neuroticism and daily fluctuations in affective well-being. However, the specific affective processes that underlie this association remain unclear. This study examines four affective processes, event frequency/intensity, event appraisal, affective reactivity, and affective recovery, for both positive and negative events. To address these questions, we synthesized findings from five ambulatory assessme…
Is psychological research producing the kind of knowledge clinicians find useful
The science-practice gap is a barrier to evidence-based health care. We sought to examine the match between the kinds of studies done by clinical psychology researchers and the kinds of evidence practicing clinicians find useful. We reviewed the prevalence of research questions on how people differ from one another (between-person) and how people differ from their own averages across time (within-person) in six high-impact clinical psychology jou…
Neuroticism is Associated With Greater Affective Variability at High Levels of Momentary Affective Well‐Being, but With Lower Affective Variability at Low Levels of Momentary Affective Well‐Being
OBJECTIVE: Research challenged the notion that neuroticism correlates with affective variability, suggesting that it may result from statistical artifacts due to the non-normal distribution of negative affect. We aim to advance this line of research by (a) introducing affect balance as a normally distributed measure of affective well-being and (b) examining current affect balance as a moderator of the relationship between neuroticism and affect b…
Weekly links among irritability and suicidal thoughts and behaviors in high‐risk youth
BACKGROUND: Previous studies demonstrate a link between irritability and suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) in youth samples. However, they have mostly assessed irritability in community samples and as a largely dispositional (i.e. trait-like) construct. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent links between irritability and STBs reflect within-person processes of elevated risk in clinically meaningful time periods. METHODS: The present study …
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Reduces Proinflammatory Gene Regulation But Not Systemic Inflammation Among Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial
OBJECTIVE: Aging is associated with increased proinflammatory gene expression and systemic inflammation, and psychosocial stress may accelerate these changes. Mindfulness interventions show promise for reducing psychosocial stress and extending healthspan. Inflammatory pathways may play a role. In a sample of lonely older adults, we tested whether mindfulness training reduces proinflammatory gene expression and protein markers of systemic inflamm…
Considering the ‘With Whom’: Differences Between Event- and Signal-Contingent ESM Data of Person-Specific Social Interactions
Experience sampling studies often aim to capture social interactions. A central methodological question in such studies is whether to use event- or signal-contingent sampling. The little existing research on this issue has not taken into account that social interactions occur with unique interaction partners (e.g., Anna or Tom). We analyze one week of social interaction data of 286 students from the University of Pittsburgh (60.8% male, mean age …
Approaches to modeling interpersonal complementarity in intensive longitudinal data
Contemporary integrative interpersonal theory (CIIT) posits that successful social interactions are characterized by complementarity: correspondence in interpersonal warmth and reciprocity in interpersonal dominance. Interactions with high complementarity evoke more positive affect and less negative affect. Modeling complementarity is challenging because it requires capturing the interpersonal behavior of individuals along the two dimensions of w…
Characterizing stress processes by linking big five personality states, traits, and day-to-day stressors
Dynamics of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability in naturalistic and experimental settings
437). Grandiosity decreased and vulnerability increased in response to both naturalistic and experimental status threats. Further, the same people who responded with decreased grandiosity in response to status threat in daily life responded with similar decreases in grandiosity to experimental defeat. Trait narcissistic agency amplified many of the observed links between narcissism and status threat experimentally and naturalistically. Given that…
The personality meta‐trait of stability and carotid artery atherosclerosis
BACKGROUND: Several personality traits increase the risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Because many of these traits are correlated, their associations with disease risk could reflect shared variance, rather than unique contributions of each trait. We examined a higher-order personality trait of Stability as related to preclinical atherosclerosis and tested whether any such relationship might be explained by correlated variation in c…
Patterns of emotion-network dynamics are orthogonal to mood disorder status: An experience sampling investigation
Individuals differ markedly in how they experience the ebb and flow of emotions. In this study, we used daily experience sampling to examine whether these differences reflect the nature and presence of mood disorders or whether they can better be characterized as distinct dynamic emotion profiles that cut-across diagnostic boundaries. We followed 105 individuals in 2019-2020 with diagnoses of major depression, remitted major depression, bipolar d…
The development of personality—From metatraits to facets—Across adolescence and into adulthood in a sample of Mexican-origin youth
The time between adolescence and adulthood is a transformative period of development. During these years, youth are exploring work, relationships, and worldviews while gaining the capacities needed to take on adult roles. These social and psychological processes are reflected in how personality develops across this period. Most youth personality development research has focused on the Big Five domains, ignoring the hierarchical structure of perso…
Age and gender differences in narcissism: A comprehensive study across eight measures and over 250,000 participants
Version IV, Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire-Short Form, Single-Item Narcissism Scale, and brief version of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory). The findings of Study 1 (N = 5,736) revealed heterogeneity in how strongly the measures are correlated. Some instruments loaded clearly on one of the three factors proposed by previous research (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Antagonism), while others cross-loaded across factors and…
The daily association between affect and alcohol use: A meta-analysis of individual participant data
Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Despite two decades of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment research, it remains unclear whether people consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affect in everyday life. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for these daily associatio…
Connecting Theory to Methods in Longitudinal Research
Advances in methods for longitudinal data collection and analysis have prompted a surge of research on psychological processes. However, decisions about how to time assessments are often not explicitly tethered to theories about psychological processes but are instead justified on methodological (e.g., power) or practical (e.g., feasibility) grounds. In many cases, methodological decisions are not explicitly justified at all. The disconnect betwe…
Integrating and distinguishing personality and psychopathology
OBJECTIVE: We asked authors of this Special Issue to answer the following four questions: (1) Is there evidence that personality and psychopathology can be integrated? (2) Is integration important? (3) Can they be distinguished? and (4) How can the difference be measured? METHOD: We review each of the papers and place the special issue in a historical context. RESULTS: Authors uniformly agreed that personality and psychopathology can be integrate…
The distinction between symptoms and traits in the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP)
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP) is an empirically and quantitatively derived dimensional classification system designed to describe the features of psychopathology and, ultimately, to replace categorical nosologies. Among the constructs that HiTOP organizes are “symptom components” and “maladaptive traits,” but past HiTOP publications have not fully explicated the distinction between symptoms and traits. We propose working de…
Refining the maturity principle of personality development by examining facets, close others, and comaturation
Across adulthood, people tend to experience psychologically adaptive personality trait change, a robust finding known as the maturity principle of personality development. We identify three open areas of inquiry regarding personality maturation and address them in a preregistered study, using a sample of U.S. adults ages 30-70 who completed a battery of personality questionnaires and were rated by two close others twice over an 11- to 16-year per…
Fluctuations in grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic states: A momentary perspective
Theories of narcissism emphasize the dynamic processes within and between grandiosity and vulnerability. Research seeking to address this has either not studied grandiosity and vulnerability together or has used dispositional measures to assess what are considered to be momentary states. Emerging models of narcissism suggest grandiosity and vulnerability can further be differentiated into a three-factor structure-Exhibitionistic Grandiosity, Enti…
Evaluating the evidence for the general factor of personality across multiple inventories
A general factor of personality (GFP) has been proposed as the apex of a personality trait hierarchy that explains covariance among the lower-order factors measured by various personality inventories. In this study we evaluated the GFP hypothesis across several personality inventories, unlike most previous research in which the GFP has been derived from individual instruments in isolation. Exploratory analyses did not produce substantial evidence…
Age and gender differences in narcissism: A comprehensive study across eight measures and over 250,000 participants
Version IV, Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire-Short Form, Single-Item Narcissism Scale, and brief version of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory). The findings of Study 1 (N = 5,736) revealed heterogeneity in how strongly the measures are correlated. Some instruments loaded clearly on one of the three factors proposed by previous research (i.e., Neuroticism, Extraversion, Antagonism), while others cross-loaded across factors and…
The daily association between affect and alcohol use: A meta-analysis of individual participant data
Influential psychological theories hypothesize that people consume alcohol in response to the experience of both negative and positive emotions. Despite two decades of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment research, it remains unclear whether people consume more alcohol on days they experience higher negative and positive affect in everyday life. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we synthesized the evidence for these daily associatio…
It’s time to replace the personality disorders with the interpersonal disorders
Personality disorders (PDs) are among the most common and severe classes of psychopathology. From a clinical perspective, it is challenging to help individuals with personality disorders because treatment ruptures, discontinuation, reversals, and failures are relatively common. An additional clinical challenge is that the model used to diagnose personality disorders is demonstrably incorrect. Recent efforts to improve diagnosis of personality dis…
Neuroticism as the intensity, reactivity, and variability in day-to-day affect
Dynamics of narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability in naturalistic and experimental settings
437). Grandiosity decreased and vulnerability increased in response to both naturalistic and experimental status threats. Further, the same people who responded with decreased grandiosity in response to status threat in daily life responded with similar decreases in grandiosity to experimental defeat. Trait narcissistic agency amplified many of the observed links between narcissism and status threat experimentally and naturalistically. Given that…
How mindfulness training promotes positive emotions: Dismantling acceptance skills training in two randomized controlled trials
Mindfulness meditation interventions-which train skills in monitoring present-moment experiences with a lens of acceptance-have shown promise for increasing positive emotions. Using a theory-based approach, we hypothesized that learning acceptance skills in mindfulness interventions helps people notice more positive experiences in daily life, and tested whether removing acceptance training from mindfulness interventions would eliminate interventi…
The interpersonal nexus of persons, situations, and psychopathology
Approaches to modeling interpersonal complementarity in intensive longitudinal data
Contemporary integrative interpersonal theory (CIIT) posits that successful social interactions are characterized by complementarity: correspondence in interpersonal warmth and reciprocity in interpersonal dominance. Interactions with high complementarity evoke more positive affect and less negative affect. Modeling complementarity is challenging because it requires capturing the interpersonal behavior of individuals along the two dimensions of w…
Characterizing stress processes by linking big five personality states, traits, and day-to-day stressors
Comparing hierarchical models of personality pathology
Modeling the complexity of dynamic, momentary interpersonal behavior: Applying the time-varying effect model to test predictions from interpersonal theory
Group brainstorming: When regulatory non fit enhances performance
In a study investigating motivational factors in group brainstorming, we investigated the impact on performance of regulatory fit/nonfit (based on the group’s focus and task strategy). All members of three-person groups were placed in either a promotion focus or a prevention focus and then were all given either an eager strategy or a vigilant strategy for performing a brainstorming task (with an expectancy stop rule). As predicted, groups experie…
Development of personality and the remission and onset of personality pathology
The current study used the Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders data set (Lenzenweger, 1999) to examine the development of personality traits in the context of the remission and onset of personality disorder (PD) symptoms. Despite high levels of stability, past research on the development of basic personality traits has also found a mean trend toward increased maturity and that individuals vary in their trajectories of trait development. R…
Initial construction and validation of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory.
The construct of narcissism is inconsistently defined across clinical theory, social-personality psychology, and psychiatric diagnosis. Two problems were identified that impede integration of research and clinical findings regarding narcissistic personality pathology: (a) ambiguity regarding the assessment of pathological narcissism vs. normal narcissism and (b) insufficient scope of existing narcissism measures. Four studies are presented docume…
The Pathoplastic Relationship Between Interpersonal Problems and Fear of Failure
This study advances the understanding of fear of failure (FF), a dispositional avoidance‐oriented achievement motive, by employing interpersonal classification techniques to groups of individuals who fear failure in order to examine the pathoplastic relations between FF and interpersonal problems. Shame‐based FF is thought to be related to the self‐regulation strategies of appeasement and aggression, and these strategies are hypothesized to be as…
The interpersonal nexus of persons, situations, and psychopathology
The circumplex structure of interpersonal sensitivities
Previous research on aversive interpersonal behavior has provided limited links between interpersonal sensitivities and comprehensive models of personality and social behavior. Study 1 (N=1,336) of this article demonstrated that interpersonal sensitivities can be mapped onto the interpersonal circumplex and that people generally find others' behavior that is least similar to their own generally most aversive. In Study 2 (N=299), a broader array o…
The Circumplex Structure of Interpersonal Sensitivities: Interpersonal Sensitivities Circumplex
Previous research on aversive interpersonal behavior has provided limited links between interpersonal sensitivities and comprehensive models of personality and social behavior. Study 1 (N = 1,336) of this article demonstrated that interpersonal sensitivities can be mapped onto the interpersonal circumplex and that people generally find others' behavior that is least similar to their own generally most aversive. In Study 2 (N = 299), a broader arr…
Interpersonal Development, Stability, and Change in Early Adulthood: Interpersonal Development
Evaluating the evidence for the general factor of personality across multiple inventories
A general factor of personality (GFP) has been proposed as the apex of a personality trait hierarchy that explains covariance among the lower-order factors measured by various personality inventories. In this study we evaluated the GFP hypothesis across several personality inventories, unlike most previous research in which the GFP has been derived from individual instruments in isolation. Exploratory analyses did not produce substantial evidence…
Development of personality and the remission and onset of personality pathology
The current study used the Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders data set (Lenzenweger, 1999) to examine the development of personality traits in the context of the remission and onset of personality disorder (PD) symptoms. Despite high levels of stability, past research on the development of basic personality traits has also found a mean trend toward increased maturity and that individuals vary in their trajectories of trait development. R…
Interpersonal Development, Stability, and Change in Early Adulthood
The goal of this research was to explore the development of the interpersonal system mapped by the interpersonal circumplex in early adulthood (ages 18–22). This study uses the Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders sample ( N = 250; 53% female). Participants completed the Revised Interpersonal Adjective Scales (Wiggins, Trapnell, & Phillips, 1988) in their freshman, sophomore, and senior years of college. Estimates of structural, rank‐order…
Stability and Change of Social Goals in Adolescence
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of continuity and change in social goals using the interpersonal circumplex ( IPC ) model across adolescence (ages 11–16). Five complementary definitions of stability were examined: structural, rank‐order, absolute, individual, and ipsative. Data were taken from a longitudinal study of early adolescent problem behavior. Social goals were assessed during each wave, with data collection occurring at thre…
Group brainstorming: When regulatory non fit enhances performance
In a study investigating motivational factors in group brainstorming, we investigated the impact on performance of regulatory fit/nonfit (based on the group’s focus and task strategy). All members of three-person groups were placed in either a promotion focus or a prevention focus and then were all given either an eager strategy or a vigilant strategy for performing a brainstorming task (with an expectancy stop rule). As predicted, groups experie…
Personality Correlates of Midlife Cardiometabolic Risk: The Explanatory Role of Higher‐Order Factors of the Five‐Factor Model
Varying associations are reported between Five‐Factor Model (FFM) personality traits and cardiovascular disease risk. Here, we further examine dispositional correlates of cardiometabolic risk within a hierarchical model of personality that proposes higher‐order traits of Stability (shared variance of Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, inverse Neuroticism) and Plasticity (Extraversion, Openness), and we test hypothesized mediation via biological an…
PTSD symptom course during the first year of college
Interventions that focus on the timing and correlates of symptom progression may benefit college students with posttraumatic distress. (PsycINFO Database Record
The relationship of cardiometabolic risk to basal ganglia volume in midlife adults
The Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP): A dimensional alternative to traditional nosologies.
Blissfully Blind or Painfully Aware? Exploring the Beliefs People With Interpersonal Problems Have About Their Reputation
OBJECTIVE: Problematic interpersonal behavior might stem from and be maintained by the beliefs people have about how others see them (i.e., metaperceptions). The current study tested whether people with interpersonal problems formed more or less accurate metaperceptions about their personality (meta-accuracy), whether they thought others saw them in more or less positive ways (positivity), and whether they underestimated or overestimated how much…
Modeling the complexity of dynamic, momentary interpersonal behavior: Applying the time-varying effect model to test predictions from interpersonal theory
Ambulatory Blood Pressure Reactivity as a Moderator in the Association Between Daily Life Psychosocial Stress and Carotid Artery Atherosclerosis
OBJECTIVE: We examined whether associations between daily psychosocial stressor exposures and carotid artery intima-medial thickness (IMT) may be stronger among those showing larger stress-related cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) during the course of daily living. METHODS: A total of 474 healthy working adults (ages 30-54 years) collected ambulatory blood pressure and recorded their daily experiences, using electronic diaries, during two 2-day per…
How mindfulness training promotes positive emotions: Dismantling acceptance skills training in two randomized controlled trials
Mindfulness meditation interventions-which train skills in monitoring present-moment experiences with a lens of acceptance-have shown promise for increasing positive emotions. Using a theory-based approach, we hypothesized that learning acceptance skills in mindfulness interventions helps people notice more positive experiences in daily life, and tested whether removing acceptance training from mindfulness interventions would eliminate interventi…
Grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic states in interpersonal situations
Clinicians have noted that narcissistic individuals fluctuate over time in their levels of grandiosity and vulnerability. However, these fluctuations remain poorly understood. Interpersonal theory asserts that interpersonal situations are central to the expression of personality and psychopathology, and therefore are a key context in which to understand the dynamic processes underlying narcissistic states. The present study is the first to examin…
Comparing hierarchical models of personality pathology
Neuroticism as the intensity, reactivity, and variability in day-to-day affect
Narcissism Today: What We Know and What We Need to Learn
Narcissism is of great interest to behavioral scientists and the lay public. Research across the past 20 years has led to substantial progress in the conceptualization, measurement, and study of narcissism. This article reviews the current state of the field, identifying recent advances and outlining future directions. Advances include hierarchical conceptualizations of narcissism across one-factor (narcissism), two-factor (grandiose vs. vulnerab…
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Buffers Glucocorticoid Resistance Among Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial
OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness interventions have been effective for improving a range of health outcomes; however, pathways underlying these effects remain unclear. Inflammatory processes may play a role, possibly through increased resistance of immune cells to the anti-inflammatory effects of glucocorticoids (i.e., glucocorticoid resistance, or GCR). Here, we conducted an initial examination of whether mindfulness training mitigates GCR among lonely ol…
On Unreplicable Inferences in Psychopathology Symptom Networks and the Importance of Unreliable Parameter Estimates
We recently wrote an article comparing the conclusions that followed from two different approaches to quantifying the reliability and replicability of psychopathology symptom networks. Two commentaries on the article have raised five core criticisms, which are addressed in this response with supporting evidence. 1) We did not over-generalize about the replicability of symptom networks, but rather focused on interpreting the contradictory conclusi…
Psychology (50 works) · Social Psychology (37 works) · Personality (28 works) · Personality Traits and Psychology (28 works) · Clinical Psychology (26 works) · Developmental psychology (25 works) · Mental Health Research Topics (23 works) · Personality Disorders and Psychopathology (21 works) · Interpersonal communication (15 works) · Big Five personality traits (11 works)