Personality Traits

Gerald Matthews is Professor of Psychology at the University of Cincinnati and has previously held faculty positions at the Universities of Aston and Dundee. He has co-authored several volumes, including Attention and Emotion: a Clinical Perspective (1994) which won the 1998 British Psychological Society Book Award, and has published many articles in the area of personality research. Ian J. Deary is Professor of Differential Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, and Director of the University of Edinburgh Centre for Cognitive Ageing and Cognitive Epidemiology. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has written extensively on personality and intelligence and won the 2002 British Psychological Society Book Award for Looking Down on Human Intelligence (2000). Martha C. Whiteman is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research and teaching are directed towards interpersonal aspects of personality, health and well-being, and the circumstances which may affect upward-moving or downward-moving health trajectories. She has contributed chapters to personality and health texbooks, while journal publications include articles in The Lancet and Psychosomatic Medicine.

• Part I. The Nature of Personality Traits: 1. The trait concept and personality theory; 2. Persons, situations and interactionism; 3. Personality across the life span; 4. Stable traits and transient states; 5. Alternative views of personality: challenges to trait theory; Part II. Causes of Personality Traits: 6. Genes, environments and personality traits; 7. The psychobiology of traits; 8. The social psychology of traits; Part III. Consequences and Applications: 9. Stress; 10. Traits and health; 11. Abnormal personality traits?; 12. Personality, performance and information-processing; 13. Applications of personality assessment; 14. Conclusions.