The Person An Introduction to the Science of Personality Psychology

The Person provides psychologists with an organizational scheme for personality psychology. This sets the study of the person into evolutionary and cultural context and divided personality up into three broad areas: dispositional traits, characteristic adaptations, and integrative life stories. The fifth edition has been updated to reflect advances that have occurred in the field of psychology in the past few years. It presents new findings that have been obtained with respect to the correlates of personality traits, the dynamics of motives and goals in human lives, and the meanings and manifestations of life stories. Discussions are included on the new ideas on evolution and morality as well as the role of culture in personality. Psychologists will also find a much stronger and detailed discussion of psychophysiology of extraversion, neuroticism, and the train of sensation-seeking.

Dan P. McAdams, Wilmette, IL, is Professor of Psychology and Professor of Human Development and Social Policy at Northwestern University. He is the 1989 winner of the Henry A. Murray Award in Psychology for the study of personality and human lives. McAdams is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and currently the director of the Foley Center for the Study of Lives at Northwestern, which is funded by a $1.5 million dollar grant from the Foley Family Foundation. The Center is dedicated to the social-scientific study of personality and social development in the adult years, with an emphasis on such prosocial aspects of human functioning as altruism, leadership, and the development of self-understanding in adulthood.