The longitudinal structure of disgust proneness: Testing a latent trait-state model in relation to obsessive-compulsive symptoms

Although disgust proneness (DP) is increasingly recognized as a personality characteristic that confers risk for psychiatric conditions such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the extent to which it reflects a time varying (TV) or state-like factor versus a time-invariant (TI) or trait-like personality characteristic is unclear. In a 6-wave, 5-month longitudinal study, community participants (n = 982) recruited through ResearchMatch completed the Disgust Propensity and Sensitivity Scale Revised (van Overveld, de Jong, Peters, Cavanagh, & Davey, 2006), a measure of three variants of DP including Somatic Disgust Sensitivity, Ruminative Disgust Sensitivity, and Disgust Propensity. A latent variable (trait-state-occasion) model was applied to all of the DP dimensions. The results showed that although estimates of TI factor variance and TV factor variance were both significant for Somatic Disgust, Ruminative Disgust, and Disgust Propensity, the proportion of TI factor variance (range from .68 to .82) for the DP dimensions was substantially and significantly greater than the amount of TV factor variance (range from .18 to .32). Furthermore, while TV factor stability was statistically significant for the DP dimensions, the size of the coefficients were only moderate in magnitude. Subsequent analysis then examined the extent to which TV or TI components of DP were associated with latent OCD symptoms at each of the six time points. The results showed that estimates of the regression weight for the TI DP factor were significant and larger than those for the TV factor which were often nonsignificant. These findings suggest that DP is largely TI, and it is this TI component that is most strongly associated with OCD symptoms.