Dan P. McAdams > Quotes

“People tailor their life stories for particular audiences. The recipient or audience for a story may crucially influence the stories form. Audiences are both social and intrapsychic – we have internalized private audiences.”
― Dan P McAdams

“We are all tellers of tales, and we seek to provide our scattered and often confusing experiences with a sense of coherence by arranging the episodes of our lives. Starting in late adolescence, we manufacture our dramatic personal myths by selectively mining some experiences and neglecting or forgetting others.”
― Dan P. McAdams

“E. Tory Higgins (1987) suggests that self-knowledge encompasses three major domains: the actual self, the ideal self, and the ought self. The actual self consists of your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) believes that you actually possess. The ideal self consists of your representation of the attributes that someone (yourself or another) would like you, ideally, to possess = that is a representation of hopes, aspirations, or wishes. The ought self consists of your representation of the attributes that someone believes you should or ought to possess - that is, a representation of duties, obligations or responsibilities. Discrepancies between the actual/own self and ideal selves lead to experiences of dejection-related emotions, such as sadness, disappointment and shame.”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology, Fourth Edition

“Nuclear episodes stand out in bold print in life story as narrative high points, low points and turning points, explaining how the person has remained the same and how he or she has changed over time.”
― Dan P. McAdams

“By creating chaos in the moment, Trump establishes the conditions of warfare in which a strongman is expected to rise. With evil enemies threatening us from every direction and with chaos engulfing our lives, we look to the glorious leader for protection, and for the victory we deserve. Fear and chaos work in Trump’s favor. They are his best friends for sustaining the authoritarian dynamic. Conveniently for him, fear and chaos capture well how Donald Trump has always experienced the world. This is how he has always lived. And now we are living it, along with him.”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning

“conscientiousness...an even stronger predictor of success as the level of occupational autonomy increases...when your occupational position grants you freedom to structure your time and effort...conscientiousness turns out to be an invaluable asset”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Person: An Introduction to Personality Psychology

“here is the weirdest thing in all of personality research: Studies of twins and adoptive children consistently show that shared environment effects are virtually zero. In other words, once you account for the effects of genes, the shared environmental effects that nearly everybody believes to be so important for the development of personality are vanishingly small—effectively nil in most studies. If my last two sentences do not surprise you, then you are not reading carefully enough (or else you took a course in personality psychology once upon a time and you have already wrapped your mind around these surprising findings). According to the research, the reason that identical (momozygotic [MZ]) twins are so similar to each other in personality traits is that they have all their genes in common. The fact that they happen to have grown up in the same family adds nothing to the similarity.”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Art and Science of Personality Development

“guilt serves as a check against immoral behavior...people who are susceptible to feeling guilt when they engage in immoral behavior tend, as a result, to steer clear of immoral behavior...Guilt is good for you (usually), and good for the group”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology, Fourth Edition

“He is the episodic man. The central theme in this strange psychological case is Trump’s inability or unwillingness to provide a narrative shape to life. He does not see his own life within the frame of a long-term narrative arc. Trump disregards the past and future, for the most part, to live exuberantly in the here-and-now moment. The same seems to follow for Trump’s view of the world, which pays no attention to long-term historical trends and reveals very little interest in the formulation of a long-term vision for the future—except to win, and to keep winning. In the strange case of Donald Trump, there is no past, and there is no future. Instead, the hero of this nonstory moves from one contest to the next, moment to moment, deal to deal. Fill an immediate need, and don’t worry about the long-term future consequences.”
― Dan P McAdams, The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning

“extraverted people build rapport with others (unconsciously) mimicking their behaviour, moving their bodies in ways that channel, or mirror, the emotional states presented by others...a skill they can turn on or off, depending on what they are trying to accomplish”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Person: A New Introduction to Personality Psychology, Fourth Edition

“But habits get you only half the way there. According to Aristotle, habits paved the way for the eventual development of character (in Greek, ethos). To express a virtuous character, a person must engage in rational and deliberative choice, and then act upon the choice: “Acts that are incidentally virtuous [should be] distinguished from those that are done knowingly, of choice, and by a virtuous disposition” (Aristotle, 2004, p.”
― Dan P. McAdams, The Art and Science of Personality Development