The next edition of the APA diagnostic manual will likely retain the existing diagnostic categories (Widiger, 2007). Understanding the extent to which the FFM can account for the DSM-IV-TR personality disorders may then remain an important line of investigation. Research relating the FFM to the DSM-IV-TR personality disorders is useful in assessing the validity of the hypothesis that these personality disorders represent extreme or maladaptive variants of the domains and facets of the FFM and determining whether the useful information included within the diagnostic categories can be recovered by the FFM. Researchers have even gone beyond simply indicating that the FFM correlates with personality disorders to using measures of the FFM as a proxy for assessing specific personality disorders, such as the antisocial or psychopathic (Miller & Lynam, 2003) and the borderline (Trull et al., 2003). However, the results of the current meta-analysis suggest that the findings of this research will not be unambiguous until matters of instrumentation, and even perhaps conceptualization, of the FFM are resolved. For example, the current meta-analysis suggests that comparable success in using the FFM
