Psychometric characteristic of the Italian version of the Temperament and Character Inventory--revised, personality, psychopathology, and attachment styles.

In this article, we described the psychometric characteristics of the revised version of the Cloninger's personality Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI-R), Italian translation. Two independent samples, which were composed of 355 and 385 nonclinical mother-language Italian subjects, respectively, completed the TCI-R. A further sample of psychiatric outpatients was compared with community samples. We analyzed the internal consistency of each dimension, the test-retest reliability and the factorial structure of the questionnaire. Furthermore, we explored the potential association between personality, psychopathologic indicators (evaluated by the Symptom Checklist-90), behavior dyscontrol measures, and adaptive and maladaptive interpersonal styles. As a whole, the internal consistency of the TCI-R scales was adequate, although some differences in Cronbach alpha values were observed between the 2 samples in some TCI-R subfacets. The factorial structure was consistent with the original hypothesis of Cloninger and test-retest showed a good stability of the scores over the time. Normal data for the Italian population were also calculated. Furthermore, the character dimensions of self-directedness and cooperativeness were related with some psychopathologic domains in our sample and negatively with impulsiveness, anger, and hostility. Novelty seeking was associated with impulsiveness, whereas harm avoidance was associated with anger and hostility. On the contrary, persistence and reward dependence were inversely correlated with such traits. Harm avoidance, reward dependence, self-directedness, and cooperativeness were strongly related with measures of attachment. Finally, significant differences were observed in both temperament and character traits between community subjects and psychiatric outpatients. In the present study, the validity of the Italian translation of the TCI-R is therefore supported. Personality features are also confirmed as risk factors for specific psychopathologic domains, impulsivity, anger, and hostility. Furthermore, we found attachment styles of nonclinical subjects correlated with personality features.