Using Dispositions to Understand Otherwise Intractable Causal Pathways to Psychological Problems During Childhood and Adolescence

ABSTRACT

Studies of the genetic and environmental factors that make children more or less likely to develop distressing and impairing psychological problems, and studies of the psychobiological pathways through which these causal factors operate, have the goal of improving our understanding of the basic nature of psychological problems to develop better methods of prevention and treatment. For this reason, we have long had our eye on the prize of discovering the causes and psychobiological mechanisms underlying each dimension of psychological problems. There are compelling reasons, however, to seek a different and more achievable prize to understand psychological problems. Dimensions of psychological problems are both far too heterogeneous and too highly correlated to line up with distinct causal pathways. In contrast, a small number of orthogonal cognitive and socioemotional dispositional dimensions are correlated with psychological problems in revealing cross-cutting patterns. Each of these dispositions shares its independent causal pathways with psychological problems and help us understand the complex shared and heterogeneous nature of their causal processes. I outline a strategy for understanding the causes and mechanisms of psychological problems using studies of independently measured dispositions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Data

Supplemental material for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2023.2292050

Notes

¹ I use the term psychological problems as a denotative synonym for psychopathology to avoid the stigmatizing connotations that it reflects pathology – a sick mind (Lahey, 2021). Disposition is a synonym for temperament or personality traits, but without the theoretical baggage regarding age of onset, heritability, and other issues often attached to those terms (Mischel, 2004).

² The 10 unit-weighted dimensions of psychological problems used in the present regression analyses were chosen to illustrate the hypothesized variations of patterns of associations of the three CADS dimensions with psychological problems at a fine-grain level. That is, a structural equation model with a confirmatory factor analytic measurement model of these 10 dimensions was not conducted. Because the 10 dimensions are correlated, other published findings have shown that either a correlated factors model with only three broad factors (externalizing, internalizing, and attention-deficit hyperactivity problems) or a bifactor model with a general factor and the same three specific factors would have provided better model fits. Associations of the CADS with these less fine-grain broad dimensions of psychological problems have been reported by Class et al. (2019).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health [R01 MH59111].