Individual Differences and Personality (Third Edition)

607 Pages·2018·7.29 MB·English

by  Michael C. Ashton

Individual Differences and Personality
THIRD EDITION
Michael C. Ashton
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Table of Contents
Cover image
Title page
Copyright
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. Basic Concepts in Psychological Measurement
1.1. Some Simple Statistical Ideas
1.2. Assessing Quality of Measurement: Reliability and Validity
1.3. Methods of Measurement: Self- and Observer Reports, Direct Observations,
Biodata
1.4. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 2. Personality Traits and the Inventories That Measure Them
2.1. The Idea of a Personality Trait
2.2. Personality Traits and Other Psychological Characteristics
2.3. Do Personality Traits Exist?
2.4. Measuring Traits by Self- or Observer Report: Structured Personality
Inventories
2.5. Strategies of Personality Inventory Construction
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2.6. Self- and Observer Reports on Personality Inventory Scales
2.7. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 3. Personality Structure: Classifying Traits
3.1. Which Traits to Measure? Completeness Without Redundancy
3.2. A Gentle Introduction to Factor Analysis
3.3. Factor Analysis of Personality Traits: How to Find a Representative Set of
Traits?
3.4. Lexical Studies in the English Language: The Big Five Personality Factors
3.5. Lexical Studies in Many Languages: The HEXACO Personality Factors
3.6. What It All Means: A Few Dimensions, But Many Personalities
3.7. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 4. Developmental Change and Stability of Personality
4.1. Defining Change and Stability
4.2. Developmental Changes in Mean Levels of Personality Traits
4.3. Stability of Traits Across the Years (and the Life Span)
4.4. Personality in Childhood and Infancy: Measurement and Structure
4.5. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 5. Biological Bases of Personality
5.1. Early Ideas: The Four “Humors” and Personality
5.2. Neurotransmitters
5.3. Brain Structures
5.4. Hormones
5.5. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 6. Genetic and Environmental Influences on Personality
6.1. The Question: Nature Versus Nurture
6.2. Examining the Similarity of Relatives
6.3. Separating Heredity and Environment
6.4. The Answers
6.5. Assumptions Underlying Heritability Studies in General
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6.6. Assumptions Underlying Twin-Based Heritability Studies in Particular
6.7. Effects of the Unique Environment on Personality? Parental Treatment, Peer
Groups, and Birth Order
6.8. Summary and Conclusions
6.9. Appendix: Difficulties in Separating the Effects of Heredity and Environment
Chapter 7. The Evolutionary Function of Personality
7.1. The Idea of Evolution by Natural Selection
7.2. Why Are We Not All the Same? Fluctuating Optimum and Frequency
Dependence
7.3. Adaptive Trade-offs Between High and Low Levels of the HEXACO
Personality Factors
7.4. Cross-Generational and Cross-National Differences in Mean Levels of
Personality Traits
7.5. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 8. Personality Disorders
8.1. The Idea of a Personality Disorder
8.2. The DSM-5 Personality Disorders
8.3. An Alternative System for Personality Disorders
8.4. Origins of Personality Disorders: Developmental Change and Stability,
Biological Bases, Heredity and Environment, and Evolutionary Function
8.5. Treatment of Personality Disorders
8.6. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 9. Personality and Life Outcomes
9.1. Does Personality Matter in Life?
9.2. Relationships and Marriage
9.3. Friendships and Other Peer Relationships
9.4. Health-Related Outcomes
9.5. Academic Performance
9.6. Job Performance
9.7. Law-Abidingness Versus Criminality
9.8. Life Satisfaction
9.9. Summary and Conclusions
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Chapter 10. Mental Ability
10.1. The Domain of Mental Ability
10.2. The Structure of Mental Ability: One Dimension or Many?
10.3. Developmental Change and Stability in Mental Ability
10.4. Biological Correlates of Mental Ability
10.5. Genetic and Environmental Influences on Mental Ability
10.6. Evolutionary Function of Mental Ability
10.7. Mental Ability and Life Outcomes
10.8. Not All g-Loaded Tasks Are the Same
10.9. Alternative Ideas About Mental Ability
10.10. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 11. Vocational Interests
11.1. How Vocational Interests Are Measured
11.2. Score Reports From Vocational Interest Surveys
11.3. Constructing Vocational Interest Scales: Empirical and Rational Strategies
11.4. Major Dimensions of Vocational Interests
11.5. Vocational Interests and Personality
11.6. Vocational Interests and Mental Abilities
11.7. Validity of Vocational Interest Surveys
11.8. Origins of Vocational Interests: Developmental Change and Stability, Genetic
and Environmental Influences, Biological Bases, and Evolution
11.9. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 12. Religion and Politics
12.1. Religion
12.2. Politics
12.3. Origins of Religious Beliefs and Political Attitudes: Biological Bases, Genetic
and Environmental Influences, and Evolutionary Function
12.4. Summary and Conclusions
Chapter 13. Sexuality
13.1. Major Dimensions of Sexuality
13.2. Sexuality and Personality
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13.3. Origins of Variation in Sexuality: Developmental Stability and Change,
Genetic and Environmental Influences, Biological Bases, and Evolution
13.4. Sexual Arousal
13.5. Sexual Commitment (or Restricted Versus Unrestricted Sociosexuality)
13.6. Sexual Orientation
13.7. Summary and Conclusions
Conclusions
References
Index
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Copyright
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Preface
The central aim of personality psychology is to understand differences
between people. With this in mind, my purpose in writing this textbook
was to describe the main questions about the nature of personality
variation, and to explain the answers that have been learned so far.
The organization of this textbook largely follows from this aim, and
differs from that of most other textbooks in this discipline. In the past,
most authors structured their textbooks around the theorists who had
written about personality psychology, with each chapter being devoted to
the work of a different theorist. More recently, some authors have
organized their textbooks in terms of several distinct “domains” or
“approaches” within the discipline of personality psychology. The
structure of this textbook is closer to the latter than to the former, in the
sense of being organized around issues rather than around theorists. But
the present textbook emphasizes the unity of the discipline, by treating the
diverse areas of research in personality psychology as efforts to answer a
series of related questions about the same basic phenomenon—human
personality variation.
This book begins with some basic orientation to the discipline, by
explaining the nomothetic approach to personality and by introducing the
basic principles of personality measurement. The idea of a personality trait
is then described, along with the evidence for the existence (and the
measurability) of those traits. At this point, the stage is set for an
examination of the big questions of personality psychology.
The first issue to be examined is that of personality structure—of
finding the basic dimensions that summarize personality traits. The next
topic is that of the development of personality, in terms of stability and
change in personality trait levels across the life span. Then follows an
examination of the origins of personality variation, in the sense of its
proximal biological causes (i.e., in brain structures and substances) and its
more distal sources (i.e., in genes and environmental features). This leads
to the question of the function of personality variation throughout human
evolution, and of the consequences of personality variation in modern
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