Final answer:
The correct answer is c. Personality disorders are characterized by maladaptive personality traits that are enduring, pervasive, and inflexible. These traits lead to significant impairment in personal and social functioning and are not easily changed. The correct answer to the question is c) Maladaptive.
Step-by-step explanation:
Personality disorders involve stable, long-standing, and maladaptive personality traits. These traits are enduring patterns of behavior, cognition, and inner experience, that are exhibited across many contexts and are inflexible, often leading to significant distress or impairment in personal, social, and/or occupational situations.
Personality refers to the long-standing traits and patterns that propel individuals to consistently think, feel, and behave in specific ways. Personality disorders are characterized by an enduring pattern of inner experience and behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture, is pervasive and inflexible, has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood, is stable over time, and leads to distress or impairment.
The diagnosis and classification of personality disorders, guided by the American Psychological Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual on Mental Disorders (DSM), indicates that these disordered patterns of behavior are not short-term or easily changeable. Therefore, options volatile, malleable, and fluctuating do not accurately describe the nature of personality traits involved in personality disorders.