A potential advantage of the FFM, relative to the DSM, is that it was developed to provide a reasonably comprehensive description of general and universal personality structure (Costa & McCrae, 1992). Thus, to the extent that personality disorders are extreme or maladaptive variants of a universal personality structure it may also provide a reasonably comprehensive description of maladaptive personality functioning (Saulsman & Page, 2003; Trull, 2005). Alexithymia, for instance, is a maladaptive personality trait that has been of significant scientific and clinical interest (Taylor & Bagby, 2004) yet finds no representation within the current diagnostic manual. It is, however, well represented in the FFM as low openness to feelings (Luminet, Bagby, Wagner, Taylor, & Parker, 1999). Similarly, pathological bias (e.g., racism) has received some support within the clinical and research literature as a variant of personality disorder (Alarcon et al., 2002; Bell, 2004, 2006). There is currently no representation of prejudice within the DSM-IV-TR but, if one did want to conceptualize prejudice as a maladaptive personality trait, it is again readily represented within the FFM in large part as closed-mindedness
