Fifty Years of Personality Psychology

317 Pages·1993·32.81 MB·English

by  Robert Hogan, Kenneth H. Craik, Kenneth H. Craik (auth.), Raymond N. Wolfe (eds.)

Fifty Years of
Personality Psychology
PERSPECTIVES ON INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES
CECIL R. REYNOLDS, Thxas A&M University, College Station
ROBERT T. BROWN, University of Nurth Carolina, Wilmington
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Fifty Years of
Personality Psychology
Edited by
Kenneth H. Craik
University of California
Berkeley, California
Robert Hogan
University of Tulsa
Tulsa, Oklahoma
and
Raymond N. Wolfe
State University of New York
Geneseo, New York
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Llbrary of Congress Cataloglng-ln-Publlcatlon Data
Flfty years of personallty psychology / edlted by Kenneth H. Cralk,
Robert Hogan, and Ray.ond N. Holfe.
p. c •. -- (Perspectlves an IndIvIdual dlfferences)
A co.paratlve analysls of the 1937 textbooks Personallty by Gordon
H. Allport and Psychology of personallty by Ross Stagner.
Includes blbllographlcal references and Index.
ISBN 978-1-4899-2313-4 ISBN 978-1-4899-2311-0 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4899-2311-0
1. Personallty--Hlstory. 2. Allport, Gordon H. (Gordon Hl11ard),
1897-1967. Personal1ty. 3. Stagner, Ross, 1909- Psychology of
personal1ty. 1. Cralk, Kenneth H. II. Hogan, Robert, 1937-
III. Holfe, Ray.ond N. IV. Allport, Gardon H. (Gordon Hl11ard),
1897-1967. Personal1ty. V. V. Stagner, Ross, 1909- Psychology of
personal1ty. VI. Serles.
[DNLM: 1. AII port, Gordon H. (Gordon Hl11ard), 1897-1967.
2. Stagner, Ross, 1909- 3. Personal1ty--congresses.
4. Personal1ty Assess.ent--congresses. 5. Psycholog1cal Theory-
-congresses. BF 698 F4691
BF698.F525 1993
155.2'09'04--dc20
DNLM/DLC
for Llbrary of Congress 92-48903
CIP
ISBN 978-1-4899-2313-4
10 1993 Springer Science+Business Media New York
Origina11y published by Plenum Press, New York in 1993
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover lst edition 1993
All rights reserved
N o part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, microfilming, recording, or otherwise, without written
permission from the Publisher
To GoRDON W. ALLPORT AND Ross STAGNER
in celebration of their contributions
to personality psychology
Contributors
Irving E. Alexander, Department of Psychology, Duke University,
Durham, North Carolina 27706
Roy F. Baumeister, Department of Psychology, Case Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio 44106
Peter Borkenau, Department of Psychology, University of Bielefeld,
N-4800 Bielefeld 1, Germany
Bertram J. Cobler, Committee on Human Development, University
of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois 60637
Kenneth H. Craik, Institute of Personality and Social Research, Uni-
versity of California, Berkeley, California 94720
Bella M. DePaulo, Department of Psychology, University of Virginia,
Charlottesville, Virginia 22903
Alan C. Elms, Department of Psychology, University of California,
Davis, California 95616
Robert A. Emmons, Department of Psychology, U Diversity of Cali-
fornia, Davis, California 95616
Garth J. 0. Fletcher, Department of Psychology, University of
Canterbury, Christchurch 1, New Zealand
David C. Funder, Department of Psychology, University of Califor-
nia, Riverside, California 92521
Robert Hogan, Department of Psychology, University of Tulsa, Tulsa,
Oklahoma 74104
vii
viii CONTRIBUTORS
Oliver P. John, Department of Psychology, University of California,
Berkeley, California 94720
Salvatore R. Maddi, School of Social Ecology, University of Cali-
fornia, Irvine, California 92717
Gerald A. Mendelsohn, Institute of Personality and Social Research,
Berkeley, California 94720
Lawrence A. Pervin, Department of Psychology, Rutgers Univer-
sity, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903
Richard W. Robins, Department of Psychology, University of Cali-
fornia, Berkeley, California 94720
M. Brewster Smith, Board of Studies in Psychology, University of
California, Santa Cruz, California 95064
Ross Stagner, Department of Psychology, Wayne State University,
Detroit, Michigan 48202
David G. Winter, Department of Psychology, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
Raymond N. Wolfe, Department of Psychology, State University of
New York, Geneseo, New York, 14454
Lawrence S. Wrightsman, Department of Psychology, University of
Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 66045
Preface
This volume celebrates the textbooks Personality: A Psychological In-
terpretation by Gordon W. Allport and Psychology of Personality by
Ross Stagner, both first published in 1937. In 1987, several occasions
were held to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of the two
volumes and to acknowledge their role in defining and establishing the
identity of personality psychology as a distinctive field of scientific in-
quiry within the United States.
At any given time, the textbooks of a science offer revealing infor-
mation about its intellectual structure and research program. Even
more so, its ''founding'' textbooks provide a temporal anchor for gain-
ing a historical perspective on the field and a source of insights con-
cerning its subsequent development and current situation.
In spring 1987, at the University of California's Institute of Per-
sonality Assessment and Research (IPAR) (now the Institute of Person-
ality and Social Research) in Berkeley, Ross Stagner was invited to
offer his personal perspective on these two textbooks and the sub-
sequent development of personality psychology. In addition, a special
symposium was devoted to an appreciation of the life and works of
Gordon W. Allport. In a third series of talks, invited speakers offered
commentaries on issues that were central to personality psychology in
1937 and that continue to warrant our attention today. A£, part of its
annual meetings in August 1987, the American Psychological
Association's Division of Personality and Social Psychology held a spe-
cial marathon four-hour symposium that was an expanded version of
!PAR's celebrations.
In this volume, we offer highlights of these occasions as well as
additional contributions developed especially for this publication. The
ix
X PREFACE
book is organized into four sections. First, the introductory chapter
presents a comparative analysis of the 1937 textbooks by Allport and
Stagner and then uses this context to describe the origins and concep-
tualization of our volume and to give a detailed account of its organiza-
tion and contents. The second section of the volume includes three
chapters dealing with the historical and personal background of the two
textbooks. The third section groups three chapters concerning the cur-
rent state of personality psychology and its contemporary textbooks. In
the fourth section, we devote twelve chapters to gaining a present-day
perspective on such abiding issues in personality psychology as the
individual and the single case, motives and the self, judging persons,
and personality assessment and prediction. Finally, the epilogue offers
an optimistic view of the future of our field.
This volume has three aims. First, we see it as a contribution to
our ongoing task of gaining a historical perspective on the development
of personality psychology as a scientific endeavor. Beyond its intellec-
tual importance, such collective remembering holds the promise of
serving valuable social functions for a community of researchers. For
example, narrative accounts of a community's origins can generate
vivid reminders of its members' shared aspirations. Second, we hope
that the volume will bring about more explicit and concerted discussion
of the possible forms and substance of contemporary textbooks in per-
sonality psychology. Many pertinent issues have been raised in rather
fragmented fashion over the years in textbook reviews published in
Contemporary Psychology and elsewhere. This volume constitutes a
beginning forum for reflecting on and joining opposing views on these
matters. The third aim of the volume is to employ a historical vantage
point as one means of gaining a comprehensive overview of our current
research agenda in personality psychology. Has a particular research
topic now perceived as "trendy'' in fact been an enduring concern of
our field from the outset? Have some topics and methods fallen by the
wayside that should not have been abandoned after all? The compara-
tive analysis of textbooks over time can afford us a broad picture of
such continuities and discontinuities in our field's research directions.
Given these purposes, we have been remarkably fortunate in gain-
ing the cooperation of an array of contributors who are authorities in
the fields of their individual assignments. We greatly appreciate their
willingness to take time away from their own research programs to aid
in this effort at historical perspective taking. The logistics of assem-
bling papers delivered at several different gatherings and arranging for
additional new works for the volume have combined with our own geo-
graphical separation to cause some delays in publication. At times we