Personality: A Systems Approach
John D. Mayer, University of New Hampshire

ISBN-10: 0205389147
ISBN-13: 9780205389148

Publisher: Allyn & Bacon
Copyright: 2007
Format: Cloth; 560 pp
Published: 04/04/2006

Suggested retail price: $128.80
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A lively new textbook that reflects the renaissance in the field of Personality Psychology by addressing in sequence: Human personality, its parts, organization, and development.

 

The discipline of personality psychology can be viewed as responsible for explaining how a person's major psychological subsystems — motives, emotion, cognition, self, and more — work together.  Today personality psychology is undergoing a renaissance in which new research and theory is emerging.  This textbook helps students keep up with those emerging trends. 

 

Personality: A Systems Approach employs a new organization that integrates the best  intellectual traditions within Personality Psychology.  Over its four parts, the book examines what personality is, what personality’s major subsystems (e.g., motives, the self) are, how personality’s parts are organized, and how personality develops. Students will finish the course with an understanding of how personality systems work together and how personality develops from birth to the conclusion of life.

  • Personality: A Systems Approach is based on a new, peer-reviewed outline for the field.  That outline has been classroom tested over three trial editions of the book by multiple instructors — all before this exciting first edition by Allyn & Bacon.
  • Personality perspectives are introduced early and are later drawn on in an integrative treatment of how personality functions.
  • Chapters open with a real-life example or experience (e.g., Jon Krakauer’s climb of Mount Everest as an example of motivated behavior), providing a concrete example with which to introduce the topics of the chapter.
  • Key terms are defined in the margins of the book as those terms are introduced.
  • Boxes focus on case studies, interdisciplinary connections, inside news of the field, and research studies
  • Study questions appear at the end of every chapter.
  • Short quotations appear in the margins to stimulate thinking and discussion.
  • Further real life case appear in Case Study boxes.
  • Disciplinary Crossroads boxes connect Personality Psychology to adjoining fields such as Literature, Artificial Intelligence, Political Science and Biology. 
  • Inside the Field boxes take the student behind the scenes -- to experience the discipline of personality psychology from the inside. 
  • Research in Focus boxes cover individual research issues or particular studies in detail.
  • Connecting Windows link related topics across the book.  For example, Freud's theory of motives is introduced in Chapter 3’s coverage of theoretical perspectives; a connecting window there links it to current thinking on motives in Chapter 4.
  • Facts at a Glance tables provide interesting statistics related to the subject matter.
  • Over 1400 original sources of theory and research are cited, many of which are recently published.   
  • The Instructors Preface includes a section on how to use the book, allowing instructors to re-order their lectures accordingly.
  • An extensive on-line instructor’s manual includes sample lectures, demonstrations, recommended films, practice quizzes, and other teaching tools.  Go to: www.ablongman.com/mayer1e.
  • An accompanying book of readings provides further support for the classroom.

  • Although this is the first Allyn & Bacon edition, three previous classroom-trial versions of the book were published by Pearson Custom Publishing.
  • The most noticeable advance with this edition (compared to the Pearson Custom "classroom-test" third edition), is its new look, entirely redesigned and reformatted in two-color.
  • The book's new design permits students to enjoy all the features planned for the book, including 60 added photographs, redrawn figures and tables, marginal quotes, and a marginal glossary.  
  • The research coverage has been updated throughout.  Chapters 1, 6, and 10, have undergone substantial revisions, and many other individual sections, boxes, and features have also been revised.

BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS:

 

I. EXAMINING PERSONALITY

1. What is Personality?

A. What Are the Fundamental Questions Addressed by Personality Psychology?

B. What Is the Personality System?

C. What Is the Field of Personality Psychology

D. Why Study Personality Psychology?

E. How Is This Book Organized -- And What Will You Learn? 

2. Research in Personality Psychology

A. Where Do the Data Come From?

B. What Research Designs are Used in Personality?

C. What Does it Mean to Measure Personality?

D. How Do Psychologists Study Many Personality Variables Together?

3. Perspectives on Personality

A. What are Perspectives on Personality?

B. What is the Biological Perspective?

C. What is the Intrapsychic Perspective?

D. What is the Sociocultural Perspective?

E. What is the Temporal-Developmental Perspective?

F. How Does One Cope with Multiple Theories?

II. PARTS OF PERSONALITY

4. Motivation and Emotion

A. What Are Motives?

B. How Are Motives Expressed? 

C. What Are Emotions and Why Are They Important?

D. What Are the Emotional Traits and How Are They Expressed?

E. What Are Happy People Like?

5. Interior Selves; Interior Worlds

A. What are Mental Models?

B. What Are Our Models of Ourselves? 

C. What Are Our Models of the World? 

D. What Are Our Models of Relationships? 

E. How Good Are Our Models? 

6. Mental Abilities and Navigating the World

A. What Is A Mental Ability?

B. What Are Some Major Intelligences and Mental Abilities?

C. Are There Additional Intelligences and Mental Abilities? 

D. What Is The Relation Between Personality and Intelligence?

E. How Does Personality Express its Abilities?

7. The Conscious Self

A. What Is the Conscious Self? 

B. What Does it Mean for the Self to Be Conscious?

C. Does the Self Possess Free Will?

D. Are There Alternatives to the Conscious Self?

E. How Is the Conscious Self Expressed?

III. PERSONALITY ORGANIZATION

8. How the Parts of Personality Fit Together

A. What Is Personality Structure?

B. How Are Personality Traits Structured?

C. What Are Structural Models of Awareness and Why Do They Matter?

D. Can Identifying Key Functional Areas Help Develop Structural Models of Personality? 

E. What Are the Structural Connections from Personality to the Environment? 

F. Do Structures Matter? 

9. Dynamics of Action

A. What Are Dynamics of Action?

B. Which Need Will Begin Action?

C. How Does Action Develop in the Mind?

D. How Are Acts Performed? 

10. Dynamics of Self-Control

A. What Are Dynamics of Self-Control?

B. How Does Self-Control Occur?

C. Is Self-Control Always Conscious?

D. How Do We Deal with the Pain of Falling Short?

E. How is Self Control (Or its Absence) Expressed?

IV. PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

11. Personality Development in Childhood and Adolescence

A. What is Personality Development?

B. Do Infants Have a Personality? 

C. How Does the Young Child’s Personality Develop? 

D. What Are the Challenges of Middle Childhood?

E. What Are Adolescents Doing?

12. Personality Development in Adulthood

A. What Is the Nature of Adult Development?

B. What Are Young Adults Like? 

C. How Does the Individual Traverse Middle Adulthood?

D. Where Is Personality Headed In the Concluding Parts of Life?

Concluding Materials

 

 

FULL TABLE OF CONTENTS:

 

Prefatory Materials

Contents in Brief

Contents

Preface for Students

Preface for Instructors

Acknowledgements

About the Author

 

I. EXAMINING PERSONALITY

1. What is Personality?

A. What Are the Fundamental Questions Addressed by Personality Psychology?

Big Questions and Science

Questions and Inquiry

Who Am I?

How and Why Are People Different?

What Will My Future Be?

Different Kinds of Answers

B. What Is the Personality System?

A System of Systems

Defining Personality

Locating the Personality System

C. What Is the Field of Personality Psychology?

What Is a Field of Science?

The Emergence of Modern Personality Psychology (1890-1949)

Evolving Viewpoints on the Field (1950 to the Present)

Training and Research in Personality Psychology 

D. Why Study Personality Psychology?

The “Who Am I” Question – A Part of Scientific Inquiry

The “How and Why Are People Different?” Question -- Asked in Personality Assessment

The “What Is My Future” Question -- Prediction, Selection, and Change

E. How Is This Book Organized -- And What Will You Learn? 

Some Cautions, and a Beginning

Personality Psychology’s Answers

Identifying Personality

Parts of Personality

Personality Organization

Personality Development

Boxes:

Casual Thinking and Scientific Thinking about Personality

Does Becoming a Personality Psychologist Influence How You View Others?

Careers of Two Psychologists

What Does Personality Psychology Offer Other Fields?

2. Research in Personality Psychology

A. Where Do the Data Come From?

Olympian Issues

The Life Sphere and External (Life) Data

Observer Data

Test, Questionnaire, and Interview Data

B. What Research Designs are Used in Personality?

Types of Research Designs

The Case Study Method

The Method of Observationism

The Correlational Research Design

Natural Experiments

True Experimental Designs

C. What Does it Mean to Measure Personality?

The Psychometric Approach

Reliability

Validity

D. How Do Psychologists Study Many Personality Variables Together?

Multiple Variables and Multivariate Techniques

The Logic of Factor Analysis

Reading the Results of a Factor Analysis

A Critique of Factor Analysis

Boxes:

Are Self-Judgments or an Observers’ Judgments more Accurate?

Freud’s Case of Emmy Von N.

Funder’s Laws

The Measurement of Length in the Physical Sciences

3. Perspectives on Personality

A. What are Perspectives on Personality?

Frameworks, Perspectives, Theories

Perspectives on Personality      

Personality Theories

Micro-Theories and Research

B. What is the Biological Perspective?

Evolutionary Theory Views the Person

Natural and Sexual Selection

A Micro-Theory about Jealousy and Evolution

Biopsychology Views the Person

The Nervous System and Its Influences on Psychology

A Micro-Theory that Traits are Inherited

C. What is the Intrapsychic Perspective?

The Trait Psychologist Views the Person

The Nature of Traits and their Role in Personality

A Micro-Theory about Central Personality Traits

Psychodynamic Theory Views the Person

Defenses, Mental  Models, and the Role of Dynamics

A Micro-Theory of Hidden Sexual Desire

D. What is the Sociocultural Perspective?

The Social-Cognitive View of the Person

The Person and Environment in Interaction

A Micro-Theory of Conditional Aggression

The Cross-Cultural View of the Person

A Micro-Theory of Collectivism Versus Individualism

E. What is the Temporal-Developmental Perspective?

A Psychosocial Stage Theory and Development

A Micro-Theory of the Emergence of Traits

The Humanistic and Positive Psychology Views of the Person

A Micro-Theory of Empathy and Psychotherapy

F. How Does One Cope with Multiple Theories?

Which Theory is Right?

The Systems Approach

Boxes:

The Use of Psychiatric Drugs to Improve Personality

The Case of the Mathematician in the Guestroom

Smith and Glass’s Comparison of Psychotherapies Using Different Perspectives

Translating One Perspective Into Another

II. PARTS OF PERSONALITY

4. Motivation and Emotion

A. What Are Motives?

Motives, Instincts and Needs

Projective Measures of Motives

Types of Motives

Self-Report of Motives

B. How Are Motives Expressed? 

The Achievement Motive and its Relation to Personality

The Power Motive and Personality

The Affiliation Motive and Personality

The Sex Drive and Related Motives

Personal Strivings and Goals

C. What Are Emotions and Why Are They Important?

The Motivation-Emotion Connection

Emotions as an Evolved Signal System

Cross-Cultural Issues

Emotional States, Moods, and Emotion- Related Traits

D. What Are the Emotional Traits and How Are They Expressed?

The Two-Factor Approach to Measuring Emotion

Affect Intensity

From Emotional States to Emotion-Related Traits

How Are Emotional Traits Expressed?

E. What Are Happy People Like?

Natural Happiness

Demographic Influences

The Most Happy Students

Boxes:

Jon Krakauer and the Uneasy Fulfillment of a Boyhood Dream

The Projective Hypothesis of Shakespeare

Achievement Motivation and Economic Progress

Replicating Ekman’s Results

Positioning the Emotional Dimensions of Inner Space

5. Interior Selves; Interior Worlds

A. What are Mental Models? 

Mental Models and their Structure

Mental Models are (Usually) Learned  and Applied

Differences in Models across People

B. What Are Our Models of Ourselves? 

The Self and Self-Models

Possible, Actual, and… Perhaps… Unconscious Selves

Self-Esteem and Self-Efficacy

Stories of the Self

C. What Are Our Models of the World? 

Formal Models and Implicit Models

Implicit Knowledge

Learning Personality Types

Implicit Theories of Personality

The Concept of the Archetype

D. What Are Our Models of Relationships? 

Significant Other Models

Core Conflictual Relationship Themes

Roles and Role Playing

Morals and Values

E. How Good Are Our Models? 

Developing Constructive Models

Avoiding Irrational Models

Expressing Better Models

Boxes:

The International Society for Self and Identity (ISSI)

Markus and Nurius: Possible Selves in College Students

World Knowledge in the Field of Artificial Intelligence

Playing a Role While Playing Basketball?

6. Mental Abilities and Navigating the World

A. What Is A Mental Ability?

Questions about Mental Ability

Mental Abilities and Society

The Range of Mental Abilities: Three Examples

B. What Are Some Major Intelligences and Mental Abilities?

Verbal-Propositional Intelligence and Mental Development

Uncovering More Cognitive Intelligences  

C. Are There Additional Intelligences and Mental Abilities? 

Social Abilities and Related Intelligences

Practical Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence

Measuring Creativity

The Theory of “g”

D. What Is The Relation Between Personality and Intelligence?

Personality Calls on Abilities

The Relations among Mental Ability Traits and Other Traits

Personality, Mental Abilities, and the Construction of Mental Models 

E. How Does Personality Express its Abilities?

Intelligence in the Expression of Thought

Intelligences at School

Intelligences and Mental Abilities at Work

Intelligences in Relationships

Personality and Mental Abilities: The Big Picture

Boxes:

Francis Galton’s Own Intelligence

Alfred Binet’s Rough Start

Emotional Intelligence

Valued Qualities and Social Meritocracies 

7. The Conscious Self

A. What Is the Conscious Self? 

The Appearance of the Conscious Self

James’ Self-as-Knower

Freud’s Concept of the Ego

The Dialogical Self 

B. What Does it Mean for the Self to Be Conscious?

What Is Consciousness?

Scientific Accounting for the Feeling of Consciousness

Is Consciousness of Recent Origin?

The Brain and Consciousness

C. Does the Self Possess Free Will?

The Appearance of Will

The Free-Will – Determinism Debate

Freedom from the Free-Will Debate

Voluntary Cause and Control

D. Are There Alternatives to the Conscious Self?

Agencies

Alters

The Unconscious, Id, and Superego

E. How Is the Conscious Self Expressed?

Contents of Consciousness

The Structure of Consciousness and Flow

Levels of Consciousness

Self-Determination Theory

Self-Control: A First Look

Boxes:

The Idea of Free Will: Origins in Western Religious Thought

Some Personality Psychologists Don’t Like the Denial of Free Will

Is There a Biophysics of Free Will?

An Example of Flow in Adolescence

Brain Correlates of Higher Consciousness

III. PERSONALITY ORGANIZATION

8. How the Parts of Personality Fit Together

A. What Is Personality Structure?

Personality Structure Described

Why Is Personality Structure Important?

There Exist Multiple Personality Structures

Personality Structure Provides Organization

B. How Are Personality Traits Structured?

The Big Two and the Big Three

The Big Five

The Big Six and Other Considerations

C. What Are Structural Models of Awareness and Why Do They Matter?

Rationale for Structural Models of Awareness

Consciousness and How Things Become Conscious

The No Access Unconscious, or Unconscious  Proper

The Implicit or Automatic Unconscious

The Unnoticed Unconscious

The Dynamic Unconscious 

D. Can Identifying Key Functional Areas Help Develop Structural Models of Personality? 

The Id, Ego, and Superego as a Processing-Area Model

The Trilogy and Quaternity of Mind

A Brain to Match?

Integration in the Systems Set

E. What Are the Structural Connections from Personality to the Environment? 

Structures of Social Interaction

Using Structural Dimensions to Fill in Personality

Extending Personality to the Life Space

F. Do Structures Matter? 

Revisiting the Organization of Traits

Traits of the Life Space

Structure and the Description of the Person

From Structures to Dynamics

Boxes:

More on Christopher Langan and his Life

Does the Big Five Count as a Personality Structure?

If There Are Structural Areas, What Are the Boundaries Between them Like?

Was that Octopus You Saw Last Night Shy?

9. Dynamics of Action

A. What Are Dynamics of Action?

Approaching Dynamics

Dynamic Traits and Micro Dynamics

Mid-Level (Meso-) and Macro-Level Dynamics

Dynamics and their Change

B. Which Need Will Begin Action?

Urges, Needs, and Presses

Needs and their Relative Strengths

Determinant Needs and Subsidiary Needs

Needs and Need Conflicts

Need Fusion

C. How Does Action Develop in the Mind?

Motivation, Emotion, and Mood-Congruent Thought

The Dynamic Lattice

From Thought to Action

Partial Expressions and Slips of the Tongue

D. How Are Acts Performed? 

The Communication Channels

Conscious and Automatic Forms of Action

Latent Versus Manifest Content

Stagecraft and Self-Presentation

Symbolic Interactionism and Social Alignment

The Urge and the Situation

Boxes:

The Mysterious Social Activities of Robert Leuci

Computer Models of Personality Dynamics

Greenwald’s Studies of Subliminal Perception and Motivation

Deception in Myth and Literature 

10. Dynamics of Self-Control

A. What Are Dynamics of Self-Control?

How Dynamics of Self-Control are Distinctive

The Need for Self-Control

Aims of Self-Control

B. How Does Self-Control Occur?

The Self in Self Control

The Problem of the Egotistical Ego

Feedback and the Feedback Loop

Personal Control as a Hierarchy of Feedback Loops

Kelly’s Circumspection-Preemption-Control Cycle

The Search For – and Effect of –  Feedback

Levels of Action and Behavioral Identification

Bottom-Up Control?

C. Is Self-Control Always Conscious?

Automatic Control and Dissociation

Dissociation and the Unconscious

Divided Consciousness and Hypnosis

Dissociation and the Hypnotic State

Individual Differences in Dissociation

Positive Affirmations  

D. How Do We Deal with the Pain of Falling Short?

Falling Short and Mental Defense

Suppression

Repression 

Specific Defense Mechanisms

E. How is Self Control (Or its Absence) Expressed?

The Search for Self Control

Control versus Impulsiveness

Implications of Self-Control

Boxes:

An Example of Divided Consciousness

A Brief History of Hypnosis

Cybernetics, Personality, and Robots

The New Research on Developing Self-Control

IV. PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT

11. Personality Development in Childhood and Adolescence

A. What is Personality Development?

Questions of Personality Development

Dividing the Life Span

Research Designs in Developmental Studies

B. Do Infants Have a Personality? 

The Infant’s Challenge

Infant Temperament

Attachment Patterns

C. How Does the Young Child’s Personality Develop? 

The Young Child’s Self-Concept

Self-Control as a Part of Temperament

Parents and the Family Context

Family Size and Birth Order

The Gendered World

D. What Are the Challenges of Middle Childhood?

Middle Childhood’s Challenges and Self Concept

From Temperament to Traits

Overcontrolled, Undercontrolled, and Flexible  Children

Friendship Patterns 

E. What Are Adolescents Doing?

Puberty and the Changing Self-Concept

Sexual and Sex-Role Development

Establishing Identity in Adolescence

Boxes:

Jay’s Self Understanding

Cultural Influences on Child Personality

Does What Parents Do Matter?

Childhood Patterns and Experimentation with Drugs

12. Personality Development in Adulthood

A. What Is the Nature of Adult Development?

Questions of Adult Development

The Transition to Adulthood

Temperament and Traits: From Childhood through Adulthood

Models of the Self and World 

B. What Are Young Adults Like? 

The Tasks of Young Adulthood

Finding a Desirable Partner

In Search of Good Work

C. How Does the Individual Traverse Middle Adulthood?

Staying Married

Finding Occupational Success

Personality and Health

Who Adjusts Course?

No Regrets?

Helson’s Typology of  Growth    

D. Where Is Personality Headed In the Concluding Parts of Life?

Optimal Personality and Values

Good Functioning

Adding Strengths: Positive Psychology

Strengths in Context

Optimal Types

A Final Life Review

Boxes:

How Consistent is Steven Reid’s Personality?

Identical Twins Reared Apart

Personality and the Future

Abraham Maslow’s Early Life and his Theory of Self-Actualization

Concluding Materials

Postscript

References

John D. Mayer received his B.A. from the University of Michigan and his M.A. and Ph.D. from the doctoral program in psychology at Case Western Reserve University. After obtaining his doctorate, he taught his first course in personality psychology at Case Western using Hall and Lindzey’s classic text, Theories of Personality. Although he loved the book, the problems of teaching personality psychology by studying various theories led him to a career-long search for a better way to teach–and more generally, think about–personality psychology.

 

Dr. Mayer examined the contributions of mental abilities to personality in his postdoctoral work at Case Western Reserve, and the interactions of emotion and thought within personality, as a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University. Dr. Mayer returned to teaching personality psychology with his first faculty position at the State University of New York at Purchase. There he resumed his search for a better way to teach the course. In 1989, Mayer moved to the University of New Hampshire and began to publish a series of articles on the “systems framework for personality,” a new approach to integrating the study of the discipline. The framework elaborated in those articles provides the basis for this new textbook. While developing the systems framework and this textbook,

 

Dr. Mayer published over ninety articles, chapters, books, and psychological tests. His 1990 articles on emotional intelligence, with Professor Peter Salovey of Yale University, are often credited with beginning scientific research on the topic. Dr. Mayer is coauthor of the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT), and coeditor, with J. Ciarrochi and J. P. Forgas of Emotional Intelligence in Everyday Life: A Scientific Inquiry. Dr. Mayer has served on the editorial boards of Psychological Bulletin, the Journal of Personality, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the Review of General Psychology. He has been the recipient of an Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, and has been a senior research fellow of the United States Army Research Institute. In addition to many years of teaching university classes, Professor Mayer also has lectured to diverse audiences throughout the United States and abroad on topics related to personality psychology.

Today, the discipline of Personality Psychology is undergoing a renaissance: Fresh new thinking and innovative research are creating a newly integrated field. Such rapid change, however, makes it hard for students to keep up with the latest thinking.

A new textbook that fully reflects today’s new view of human personality– in a lively, contemporary fashion, PERSONALITY: A SYSTEMS APPROACH, is constructed according to an exciting new roadmap of the field, one that draws together the best of the field’s intellectual traditions. The book helps students to understand personality, including their own personalities, as well as how personality influences a given individual’s life over time.

In this textbook, human personality is described in a sequence of four richly explanatory sections, each one written in a careful, even-handed, and engaging fashion.

The first section describes the field of personality and defines personality itself. The second dissects personality into its major parts. The third examines how the parts are organized, including the dynamics among them. The fourth section considers personality as it develops over time. Students will finish the book with an understanding of how human personality systems work together and how personality develops from birth to life’s conclusion.

Selected Features:

  • Introductory graphics at the outset of each chapter make it easy for students to follow the book’s outline and the progress of their own study of personality.
  • Real life case examples illustrate central points. These cases appear both in chapter openings and in Case Study boxes.
  • Disciplinary Crossroads boxes connect Personality Psychology to adjoining fields such as Literature, Artificial Intelligence, Political Science and Biology.
  • Inside the Field boxes take the student behind the scenes to experience the discipline of Personality Psychology from the inside.
  • Connecting Windows link related topics across the book. For example, Freud's theory of motives is introduced in Chapter 3’s coverage of theoretical perspectives; a connecting window there links it to current thinking on motives in Chapter 4.
  • The book’s organization follows a peer-reviewed new plan for the discipline– and has been classroom tested by multiple instructors.
  • Over 1,400 original sources of theory and research, many published in the last decade, are covered in the text.

For more information including an online instructor’s manual and information on requesting an examination copy, please visit www.ablongman.com/mayer1e or the author’s companion website at www.personalitysystem.com.

View a Sample Chapter PDF:

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