Personality vulnerability, psychiatric diagnoses, and symptoms: Cluster analyses of the sociotropy-autonomy subscales

To determine whether psychiatric outpatients represented distinct personality types with respect to sociotropy and autonomy, the Sociotropy and Autonomy scale (SAS; Beck, Epstein, Harrison, & Emery, 1983) was administered to 2,067 psychiatric outpatients with predominantly DSM-III-R mood or anxiety disorders. Both agglomerative-hierarchical and nonhierarchical cluster analyses performed on the six subscales of the SAS revealed four personality types-Independence, Dependence, Individualistic Achievement and Low Scoring Controls. Loglinear analyses failed to reveal significant differences between clusters in specific Axis I diagnoses, though a significantly higher proportion of the sociotropic Dependent type had a Dependent or Avoidant personality disorder The autonomous Independent and sociotropic Dependent clusters also had higher levels of self-reported and clinically rated depression and anxiety than did the Individualistic Achievement and Low scoring groups. The implications of these results for understanding the relationship between personality and psychopathology are discussed.