Family relationships and DSM-5 personality domains in adolescence: A person- and variable-based approach

The present study aimed to examine the role of family relationships (i.e., interparental conflict, mother-adolescent and father-adolescent attachment) on adolescents' dysfunctional personality domains at the person- and variable-based level. Adolescents from five middle schools in mainland China were recruited in this sample (N = 644, Range age = 13–17, 40.7% male). Four family relationship profiles, labeled as disengaged, moderate, cohesive, and conflictual families, were reliably identified utilizing multiple dimensions of interparental conflict and parent-adolescent attachment. These profiles simultaneously showed evidence of spillover and compensatory patterns within family relationships. Meanwhile, multiple regression analyses found that the multiple mediating effects of adolescents' appraisals of interparental conflict and father-adolescent attachment were significant. In addition, there was a significant serial mediating role of mother-adolescent attachment and father-adolescent attachment between the associations of interparental conflict properties and adolescents' dysfunctional personality domains. Our findings underscore that both person-based and variable-based approaches for studying family relational dynamics are useful to illuminate spillover and compensatory patterns of family influence in adolescents' dysfunctional personality development.