Personality Development Across the Lifespan

by Jule Specht PhD (Editor)

Overview

Personality Development across the Lifespan examines the development of personality characteristics from childhood, adolescence, emerging adulthood, adulthood, and old age. It provides a comprehensive overview of theoretical perspectives, methods, and empirical findings of personality and developmental psychology, also detailing insights on how individuals differ from each other, how they change during life, and how these changes relate to biological and environmental factors, including major life events, social relationships, and health. The book begins with chapters on personality development in different life phases before moving on to theoretical perspectives, the development of specific personality characteristics, and personality development in relation to different contexts, like close others, health, and culture. Final sections cover methods in research on the topic and the future directions of research in personality development. - Introduces and reviews the most important personality characteristics - Examines personality in relation to different contexts and how it is related to important life outcomes - Discusses patterns and sources of personality development

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780128047613
Publisher:	Elsevier Science & Technology Books
Publication date:	03/17/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	602
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Jule Specht is a professor for assessment and personality psychology at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany. She studied psychology at University of Münster from 2005 to 2010 and received her doctorate at the same place in 2011 for her research on "Causes and characteristics of changes in personality: Differences in the Big Five and perceived control across the life course." Afterwards, Jule Specht worked as a postdoc at Leipzig University and was a junior professor at Freie Universität Berlin from 2012 to 2016. Her research focuses on personality development in adulthood and on how major life events and health impact trajectories of change in personality. She is particularly interested in changes that take place in old age, because this is a period in life she figured out to be surprisingly susceptible to changes in personality and that has been studied far less than other periods of life like young adulthood. Despite her research on personality development, Jule Specht aims at interdisciplinarity collaborations, for example in the context of her research fellowship at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and her membership at the German Young Academy. Furthermore, she was a principle investigator of a scientific network on personality development in adulthood granted by the German Research Foundation from 2012 to 2016. Jule Specht is an associate editor for the Journal of Research in Personality and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. She was awarded the Berlin Science Prize for Junior Scientists by the Governing Mayor of Berlin in 2014 and the Best Junior Publication Prize 2013 by the Society of Friends of the German Institute of Economic Research in 2013. To communicate psychological research to the general public, Jule Specht blogs on her personal blog (http://jule-schreibt.de) and for Psychologie Heute, a German popular science magazine (http://blog.psychologie-heute.de/author/jule-specht/).

Table of Contents

Part One: Introduction1. Personality development research: State-of-the-art and future directions Part Two: Personality Development in Different Life Phases2. Personality development in childhood3. Personality development in adolescence4. Personality development in emerging adulthood5. Personality development in adulthood and old age6. On the role of personality in late life Part Three: Theoretical Perspectives on Personality Development7. Five-Factor Theory and personality development8. Theoretical perspectives on the interplay of nature and nurture in personality development9. Set-Point Theory and personality development: Reconciliation of a paradox10. Evolutionary aspects of personality development: Evidence from nonhuman animals11. A critical evaluation of the Neo-Socioanalytic Model of personality Part Four: Important Personality Characteristics and Their Development12. The lifespan development of self-esteem13. The development of subjective well-being14. Getting older, getting better? Toward understanding positive personality development across adulthood15. The development of perceived control16. The development of goals and motivation17. The development of attachment styles18. Identity formation in adolescence and young adulthood19. Development of cognition and intelligence20. And the story evolves: The development of personal narratives and narrative identity Part Five: Personality Development in Context21. Personality development in reaction to major life events22. Personality development in close relationships23. Personality development and health24. Personality development and psychopathology25. Vocational interests as personality traits: Characteristics, development, and significance in educational and organizational environments26. Intercultural similarities and differences in personality development Part Six: Methods in Research on Personality Development27. Personality assessment in daily life: A roadmap for future personality development research28. Analyzing processes in personality development29. Behavior genetics and personality development: A methodological and meta-analytic review30. Analyzing personality change: From average trajectories to within-person dynamics Part Seven: New Areas of Research on Personality Development31. Cohort differences in personality32. Development of implicit personality33. Volitional personality change

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From the Publisher

A comprehensive overview of timely, theoretical perspectives on personality development throughout human lifespan