Perspectives on Personality (7th Edition)

Informative, yet engaging — viewpoints of personality psychologists today

Written in an informal, conversational style, Carver and Scheier engage students by helping them understand how various perspectives of the field of personality can apply to their own lives.

This book describes a range of viewpoints that are used by personality psychologists today. Each perspective on personality is presented in a pair of chapters, introduced by a prologue that provides an overview of that perspective’s orienting assumptions and core themes. By starting with these orienting assumptions, you’ll be placed right inside the thought processes of the theorists, as you go on to read the chapters themselves. Each chapter concludes with a discussion of current problems within that theoretical viewpoint and the authors’ analysis about its future prospects.  The result is a book that is engaging and enjoyable as well as informative.

Learning Goals

Upon completing this book, readers should be able to:

• Identify the ideas that form each theoretical viewpoint
• Understand the importance of research and why the role of research stresses the fact that personality psychology is a living, dynamic process of ongoing scientific exploration
• See how each perspective reflects fundamental assumptions about human nature and how behavior problems can arise and be treated from each perspective
• Understand how the different viewpoints relate to each other and the usefulness of blending theoretical viewpoints, treating theories as complementary, rather than competing

Charles S. Carver and Michael F. Scheier met in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, where they both earned Ph.D. degrees in personality psychology. After graduation, they took jobs at the University of Miami and Carnegie Mellon University, respectively, where they have remained throughout their careers. They’ve collaborated for over three and a half decades in work that spans personality, social, motivational, clinical, and health psychology. In 1998, they received awards for Outstanding Scientific Contribution (Senior Level) from the Division of Health Psychology of the American Psychological Association. In 2007, they received the Donald T. Campbell Award for Distinguished Contributions to Social Psychology from APA’s Division of Personality and Social Psychology. Mike was the 2003—2004 President of APA’s Division of Health Psychology and currently serves as Department Head at CMU. Along with seven editions of Perspectives on Personality, the authors have published two books on self-regulation (the more recent titled On the Self-Regulation of Behavior, in 1998) and over 310 articles and chapters. Mike is an avid outdoorsman, hunter, and fisherman. Chuck keeps intending to take up painting but getting distracted by things that need fixing.