Cognitive style differences between histrionic and obsessive personality types

Predicted differences in cognitive style between obsessive and histrionic personality types were tested. Subjects in each group were psychotherapy patients who had been diagnosed using Leary's measure of character structure. Each subject had also been administered the WAIS-R. Six subtests were expected to be useful in discriminating between the groups. A discriminant analysis of all eleven WAIS-R subtests was performed in order to determine which subtests would actually predict group membership, and to what extent. At the end of the analysis, four of the six predicted subtests remained in the model, along with two subtests that had not been expected to be included. The resultant discriminant function was successful at classifying almost 77% of cases correctly, which was significantly greater than chance. In general, the results are seen as supporting the hypothesized cognitive styles of obsessive and histrionic prototypes, as well as the heuristic use of WAIS-R subtest scatter in developing a comparative framework for studying personality.