This textbook was developed to educate students about personality psychology in a fully contemporary manner, by exposing them to a step-by-step, comprehensive introduction to personality.
Many psychologists view the discipline of personality psychology as undergoing a renaissance (e.g., Cervone & Mischel, 2002; Swann & Seyle, 2005). The field's renewal is most obvious in the burgeoning contemporary research relevant to personality. At the same time, I believe, the field's ultimate renewal is held back by the design of many of the discipline's widely-used textbooks -- as excellent as those textbooks are in many other respects.
Most centrally, it seems to me, many textbooks today employ an organization that proceeds through a series of theoretical perspectives on personality such as the biopsychological, psychodynamic, trait, humanistic, and so forth. This perspective-by-perspective organization was first employed 50 years ago, in the mid-20th century. At the time, there was little common language across the theoretical perspectives, and the theories' competing viewpoints were difficult to reconcile. Textbooks that still teach by theoretical perspectives, it seems to me, possess many admirable qualities but nonetheless perpetuate that earlier fragmented approach.
Today, a better plan for teaching our discipline is possible.
The rationale for Personality: A Systems Approach is that a new, contemporary treatment of personality psychology is now both possible and justifiable. Such a new approach can do justice to the unity of the personality system, as well as to the burgeoning theory and research of the field, while still respecting the traditional theoretical perspectives that have led to that contemporary work.
For a textbook to provide a truly contemporary overview of the field, it is first necessary to develop new approaches to organizing the discipline that highlight its best attributes. The textbook Personality: A Systems Approach, employs one such new overview: the systems framework for personality psychology, as its outline. That very simple outline addresses four topics in turn:
- Examining Personality
- Parts of Personality
- Personality Organization, and
- Personality Development
The systems framework is one among a number of new outlines for the field that have been advanced in recent years -- each with its own particular merits (e.g., Buss, 1984; Cervone, 2004; Goldberg, 1993; Mayer, 1993-1994, 1998, 2005; McAdams, 1996; Pervin, 1990).
A distinctive feature of the systems framework has been the intentionally pan-theoretical, contemporary fashion in which it was developed. That developmental process supported its compatibility and connections with (most) the alternative outlines recently proposed. Moreover, the framework arguably posseses roots in a very long-standing, widely-accepted, and general vision of the field (Mayer, 2005).
One can easily use the textbook without understanding the many particulars of the framework on which it is based. All one really needs to know to begin with, are the four topics above. For those interested, further aspects of the framework are described in this section (Rationale) of the web site. The framework, and the book that uses it, are both simple outgrowths of the central rationale discussed here: to make the training of students altogether contemporary.
Also in support of that rationale, great efforts have been made to develop a textbook that will involve and excite students' interests in this new approach to the personality system. When students are involved and interested, it provides natural classroom support for instructors as they teach with the new approach.
References
Buss, D. M. (1984). Evolutionary biology and personality psychology: Toward a conception of human nature and individual differences. American Psychologist, 39, 1135-1147.
Cervone, D. (2004). The architecture of perosnality. Psychological Review, 111, 183-204.
Cervone, D., & Mischel, W. (2002). Advances in personality science. New York: Guilford Press.
Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48, 26-34.
Mayer, J. D. (1993-1994). A system-topics framework for the study of personality. Imagination, Cognition, and Personality, 13, 99-123.
Mayer, J. D. (1998). A systems framework for the field of personality. Psychological Inquiry, 14, 277-283.
Mayer, J. D. (2005). A tale of two visions: Can a new view of personality help integrate psychology? American Psychologist, 60, 294-307.
McAdams, D. P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: A contemporary research framework for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295-321.
Pervin, L. A. (1990). A brief history of moden personality theory. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.) Handbook of personality theory and research (pp. 3-18). New York: Guilford Press.
Swann, W. B., & Seyle, C. (2005). Personality psychology's comeback and its emerging symbiosis with social psychology. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin,31, 155-165.
