Michael C. Ashton – författare

Individual Differences and Personality, Third Edition provides a comprehensive overview of research on personality. The book begins with the main approaches to the study of personality, basic principles of personality measurement, the concept of personality traits, and the major dimensions of personality variation. Further chapters review personality change and stability, biological causal mechanisms, genetic and environmental influences and evolutionary adaptive function.

Personality disorders are examined as are life outcomes-such as relationships, work, health, and others-that are predicted by personality characteristics. The book additionally examines important individual differences, such as mental abilities, vocational interests, religious beliefs, political attitudes and sexuality.

The third edition is updated with new findings on age-related differences in personality, on sexual orientation and personality, on socially desirable responding in personality assessment, and on the biological and social origins of mental ability differences. Treatments of several topics have been streamlined, including reliability and validity, developmental change, genetic and environmental influences and the structure of mental abilities.

How do we come to be who we are? Why do we differ in our personalities? How do these differences matter in life? Individual Differences and Personality aims to describe how and why personality varies among people. Unlike books that focus on individual theorists, this book focuses on current research and theory on the nature of personality and related individual differences. The book begins by discussing how personality is measured, the concept of a personality trait, and the basic dimensions of personality. This leads to a discussion of the origins of personality, with descriptions of its developmental course, its biological causes, its genetic and environmental influences, and its evolutionary function. The concept of a personality disorder is then described, followed by a discussion of the influence of personality on life outcomes in relationships, work, and health. Finally, the book examines the important differences between individuals in the realms of mental abilities, of beliefs and attitudes, and of behavior.

Individual Differences and Personality, Fourth Edition provides a comprehensive overview of research regarding what personality is and how and why it differs between people. This book begins with a description of the study of personality and then presents basic principles of personality measurement, the concept of personality traits, and the major dimensions of personality variation. Further chapters review personality change and stability, biological causal mechanisms, genetic and environmental influences, and evolutionary adaptive function. Personality disorders are examined as are life outcomes (such as relationships, work, and health) that are predicted by personality characteristics. In addition, the book examines important individual differences beyond personality, such as mental abilities, religious beliefs, political attitudes, and sexuality.

Revisions to the fourth edition include updates to all chapters and substantial new content. For example, the developmental change chapter includes new studies of long-term stability, and the biological bases chapter includes new research about the effects of dopamine-like substances on impulse control. The genetics chapter has been heavily revised to cover recent meta-analyses and large-scale studies of the heritability of personality traits. In the chapter on the evolutionary function of personality, the discussion of sex differences is expanded to include cross-cultural variation. The chapter on personality and life outcomes includes new coverage of rating the personality of one's hypothetical ideal partner. The chapter on mental ability has updates on brain volume and IQ and on motivation and IQ.