The five-factor personality structure of dissociative experiences

The relationship between dissociative experiences and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of Personality was investigated in a sample of 858 college undergraduates. The NEO-PI-R [Costa Jr., P.T., & McCrae, R.R. (1992). The revised NEO personality inventory (NEO-PI-R and NEO five-factor inventory (NEO-FFI)) professional manual. Odessa, FL: Psychological Assessment Resources.] was used to examine the factor structure of dissociative experiences as measured by the Dissociative Experiences Scale [Bernstein, E. M., & Putnam, F.W. (1986). DES; Development, reliability, and validity of a dissociation scale. J Nervous Mental Disease, 174, 727–735.] As hypothesized, the Neuroticism domain accounted for the greatest proportion of variance in the DES. Contrary to our hypotheses, neither the Openness to Experience domain nor the facet of Fantasy were significantly related to scores on the DES, after partialling out the variance associated with the other FFM domains. Exploratory factor analysis of the NEO-PI-R facet scores and the DES subscales resulted in a six-factor solution that replicated the FFM and included a dissociative experiences factor that was independent of FFM space