The study of personality requires an unusual feat of mental vision. Those of us who work in this field must focus narrowly on one or more specialized research topics, while simultaneously maintaining a wide-angle view of personality in a broader sense. The day-to-day demands of doing research can make it hard to
preserve the broader focus, especially when immediate research projects are progressing well. The aim of this Handbook is to assist researchers, practitioners and students to regard the larger picture of personality research. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in personality, directed along lines of research that
sometimes converge and sometimes seemto diverge. Ourmotivation in compiling this Handbook was to provide a general overview of the many areas of study that together define this branch of psychological science – that many of us consider to be becoming increasingly relevant and important in psychology more generally. The contributors to this Handbook rose to their task admirably, producing relatively brief summaries of their respective areas of expertise in an accessible style that are intended to inform and stimulate, and at times provoke. We instructed contributors to present their material in a way that they thought most appropriate: our concern was to ensure that chapters were presented in the way that best suited the topics – as a result, some chapters are longer than others, and some topics are divided over several chapters.We offer a collective ‘thank you’ to all contributors not only for producing such high-quality chapters but also for their forbearance in the production process which, as a result of the number of chapters, was slower than anticipated.We can only hope that contributors are pleased by the finished Handbook.
We are very grateful to Cambridge University Press for agreeing to publish this work; especially to Sarah Caro, Commissioning Editor, for her constant encouragement and advice, and then, after Sarah’s departure, to Andrew Peart and Carrie Cheek for their patience and skill in bringing this project to fruition. Gerald
Matthews wishes to thank the University of Cincinnati for allowing a period of sabbatical leave, and the Japan Society for the Promotion for Science for supporting a study visit to the University of Kyushu, which assisted him in his editorial role.
Philip J. Corr Gerald Matthews Download
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