Personality psychology is a field devoted to the study of all that it means to be human, and with Personality Psychology 8e, Larsen and Buss capture the excitement of the discipline. This text is unique in two significant ways. First, rather than arranging their text around the traditional grand theories of personality, Larsen and Buss instead used a framework of six domains of knowledge about personality functioning: the dispositional domain, the biological domain, the intrapsychic domain, the cognitive-experiential domain, the societal and cultural domain, and the adjustment domain. Research in the field reinforces the fact that these domains effectively organize the key theories within personality psychology. In addition to the six major organizing themes, Personality Psychology 8e also differs from other personality texts in the importance placed on culture, gender, and biology, areas of personality scholarship that have shown substantial growth in recent years.
About the Authors
Randy J. Larsen received his PhD in Personality Psychology from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1984. In 1992, he was awarded the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award for Early Career Contributions to Personality Psychology from the American Psychological Association, and in 1987 he received a Research Scientist Development Award from the National Institute of Mental Health. He has been an associate editor at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and has been on the editorial boards of the Journal of Research in Personality, Review of General Psychology, and the Journal of Personality. RandyLarsen has served on several Scientifi c Review Groups for the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Research Council. He is a Fellow in the Association for Psychological Science and the American Psychological Association. His research on personality has been supported by the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Aging, the McDonnell Foundation for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Solon Summerfield Foundation. In 2000 he was elected president of the Midwestern Psychological Association. He has served on the faculty at Purdue University and the University of Michigan. Currently Randy Larsen is chairman of the Psychology Department, and the William R. Stuckenberg Professor of Human Values and Moral Development, at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches Personality Psychology and other courses. He lives in St. Louis with his wife and two children.
David M. Buss received his PhD in 1981 from the University of California at Berkeley. He served on the faculties of Harvard University and the University of Michigan before accepting a professorship at the University of Texas at Austin, where he has taught since 1996. Buss received the American Psychological Association (APA) DistinguishedScientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology in 1988, the APA G. Stanley Hall Award in 1990, and the APA Distinguished Scientist Lecturer Award in 2001. Books by David Buss include The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating (Revised Edition) (Basic Books, 2003), which has been translated into 10 languages;Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind (4th ed.) (Allyn & Bacon, 2012), which was presented with the Robert W. Hamilton Book Award; The Dangerous Passion: Why Jealousy Is as Necessary as Love and Sex (Free Press,2000), which has been translated into 13 languages; and The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology (Wiley, 2005). Buss has authored more than 250 scientifi c publications and has also written articles for The New York Times and the Times Higher Education Supplement. He appears in the ISI List of Most Highly Cited Psychologists Worldwide, and as the 27th Most Cited Psychologist in Introductory Psychology textbooks. He lectures widely throughout the United States and abroad and has extensive crosscultural research collaborations. David Buss greatly enjoys teaching, and in 2001 he won the Presidents Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Texas.
