Personality: A Systems Approach

The Student Workbook

Examining Personality * Personality's Parts * Personality Organization * Personality Development

Using the Student Workbook with

Personality: A Systems Approach (1st Allyn & Bacon Ed.)

10/20/2006. The current version of the student workbook was designed for use with the 3rd Pearson Custom edition of Personality Psychology: A Systems Approach. The three Pearson Custom editions of the textbook served as classroom-test versions. Those editions precede Allyn & Bacon's first edition.

The Allyn and Bacon editors and I first focused on revising the textbook itself and the associated readings book. The workbook has not yet been updated for use with the Allyn & Bacon first edition.

Instructors who are interested in employing the student workbook with the Allyn & Bacon 1st edition of the textbook will need to make slight adjustments to do so.

Here are what, to me, are the major points to consider:

• Although designed for an earlier edition, the workbook exercises mostly match the first Allyn & Bacon edition. On rare occasions, however, there is some loss-of-fit between exercises in the workbook, and the way they refer to the Allyn & Bacon edition, owing to the revision represented by the first edition. For example, exercises in the workbook occasionally may make passing (non-essential) references to parts of the textbook that have, since the Pearson Custom 3rd edition, been de-emphasized or moved to a neighboring chapter. That said, so far as I can tell, most or all exercises match up to the proper chapter of the new edition. I am guessing this is unlikely to be a major issue for students.
• A number of the student exercises in the workbook (about 25% of the total) involve finding a specific reading (often from a scientific journal) and commenting on it. If you are using Readings in Personality Psychology, this may over-weight supplementary readings for some courses.
• In using the workbook myself (JDM), I have found that students find the best exercises to be these:
  • Chapter 1: What is Personality?
  • Chapter 2: Activity 1: How to Organize Multiple Variables
  • Chapter 3: Activity 1: Comparing Perspectives
  • Chapter 3: Activity 3: Your Signature Strengths
  • Chapter 4: Activity 1: Mood Awareness and Regulation
  • Chapter 4: Activity 2: Social Needs
  • Chapter 5: Activity 3: Romantic Relationships
  • Chapter 6: Activity 1: Competing Theories of Intelligence
  • Chapter 7: Activity 3: Unconscious Bias
  • Chapter 8: Activity 3: Big Five Personality Traits
  • Chapter 9: Activity 3: Mood Congruency
  • Chapter 10: Activity 1: Negotiating the Id, Ego, & Superego
  • Chapter 10: Activity 2: Exploring the Unconscious
  • Chapter 11/12: Activity1: Personality: Stable or Malleable?
• The Workbook is published through Pearson Custom Publishing rather than by Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. Your Pearson/Allyn & Bacon sales representative should be able to coordinate these orders for you, or help you to do so.