Brain emotional systems: The italian version of the anps-Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales 2.4 (reliability and validity)

Objective: The Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales (ANPS) 2.4 is a self-report questionnaire, based on neurobiological considerations relating to the activity in 6 core emotional systems (FEAR, ANGER, SADNESS, CARE, PLAY, SEEKING). These subcortical brain emotional systems are foundations of personality development in both humans and animals, having a great deal of individual variability related to them. Method:We investigated the psychometric properties of ANPS 2.4 among 843 Adolescents and Adults of both nonclinical and clinical nature. Results: Internal consistency was satisfactory and the factor structures were similar to the original version of ANPS. 703 participants out of the larger sample also completed the Big-Five Inventory (BFI: John et al. 1991, Italian version: Fossati et al. 2011) in order to study the external validity of ANPS. The inter-correlations between Italian version of ANPS and the BFI are largely congruent with the original ANPS findings. ANPS was applied to an extended age range that includes not only adulthood but also adolescence which could increase the heuristic value of the test. Conclusions: ANPS scores and correlations were discussed in order to find out if they could be interpreted for the characterization of emotional endophenotypes involved in the personality and individual differences, including psychiatric disorders.