Personality and Development in Childhood: A Person-Centered Approach

This Monograph addresses three questions: 1) How can we best describe childhood personality? 2) How is personality related to the child's successes and failures? 3) What sort of factors are related to personality development?

• Uses a longitudinal analyses of thousands of children from across the United States to define the three personality types that best describe personality: resilient, over-controlled, and under-controlled.
• Studies the relationship between personality type and children's successes and failures
• Explores how the stresses characteristic of poverty affect children's personality development

Daniel Hart (Ed.D., Harvard University, 1982) is professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey. His research and applied work focuses on personality and moral development in urban youth. With Robert Atkins, Hart directs a nonprofit organization that fosters youth development (the Camden STARR [Sports Teaching Adolescents Responsibility and Resilience] Program) and the Healthy Futures for Camden Youth initiative, which seeks to increase access to healthcare among urban youth.

Robert Atkins (M.S., Rutgers University, 1999) is a doctoral cadidate in the Department of Public Health and an assistant professor in the Department of Nursing at Temple University. His research interests include the intersection of poverty and urban development with healthy development in youth. In collaboration with Daniel Hart he cofounded and runs the Camden STARR Program (Sports Teaching Adolescents Responsibility and Resilience) a nonprofit, youth development program that strives to improve the life chances of youth in Camden, New Jersey.

Suzanne G. Fegley (Ph.D., Temple University, 1997) is the research manager of the Center for Health Achievement, Neighborhood Growth, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently exploring healthy youth development in the context of low income, urban minority schools and neighborhoods. Other research interests include identity, self, personality, socioemotional and social-cognitive development in children and adolescents.

Richard W. Robins (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1995) is an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on the nature and development of personality and self-esteem, particularly during adolescence. He is currently an Associate Editor of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Jessica L. Tracy (BA, 1996, Amherst College) is a doctoral student at the University of California, Davis. Her research focuses on self-esteem development and the personality processes that underlie the experience and expression of self-conscious emotions such as pride and shame.