A new approach of personality and psychiatric disorders: a short version of the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales.

Allan Siegel,Jean-Baptiste Pingault,Sylvana Côté,Bruno Falissard,Sylvie Berthoz

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0041489

Abstract

BackgroundThe Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) is an instrument designed to assess endophenotypes related to activity in the core emotional systems that have emerged from affective neuroscience research. It operationalizes six emotional endophenotypes with empirical evidence derived from ethology, neural analyses and pharmacology: PLAYFULNESS/joy, SEEKING/interest, CARING/nurturance, ANGER/rage, FEAR/anxiety, and SADNESS/separation distress. We aimed to provide a short version of this questionnaire (ANPS-S).Methodology/Principal FindingsWe used a sample of 830 young French adults which was randomly split into two subsamples. The first subsample was used to select the items for the short scales. The second subsample and an additional sample of 431 Canadian adults served to evaluate the psychometric properties of the short instrument. The ANPS-S was similar to the long version regarding intercorrelations between the scales and gender differences. The ANPS-S had satisfactory psychometric properties, including factorial structure, unidimensionality of all scales, and internal consistency. The scores from the short version were highly correlated with the scores from the long version.Conclusions/SignificanceThe short ANPS proves to be a promising instrument to assess endophenotypes for psychiatrically relevant science.

Highlights

Endophenotypes in Biological Psychiatry Recent advances in biological psychiatry suggest that several psychiatric disorders share common processes pertaining to emotional regulatory dysfunctions, and that diagnoses informed by intermediate markers of brain dysfunction - and not on the basis of overt phenotypes or syndromic behaviors – may account for these commonalties
The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) was designed as a tool to assess endophenotypes related to activity in the subcortical brain emotional systems that help to generate key components of affective experience in all mammalian species [2,4,8,11]
The aim of this article was to propose a short version of the Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales [2]

Summary

Introduction

Endophenotypes in Biological Psychiatry Recent advances in biological psychiatry suggest that several psychiatric disorders share common processes pertaining to emotional regulatory dysfunctions, and that diagnoses informed by intermediate markers of brain dysfunction - and not on the basis of overt phenotypes or syndromic behaviors – may account for these commonalties. In order to be useful for psychiatrically relevant science, such endophenotypes should be closely linked to brain systems and genetic underpinnings [2,3,4,5] The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) is an instrument designed to assess endophenotypes related to activity in the core emotional systems that have emerged from affective neuroscience research. It operationalizes six emotional endophenotypes with empirical evidence derived from ethology, neural analyses and pharmacology: PLAYFULNESS/joy, SEEKING/interest, CARING/nurturance, ANGER/rage, FEAR/anxiety, and SADNESS/separation distress. We aimed to provide a short version of this questionnaire (ANPS-S)

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