Personality: Classic Theories and Modern Research

by Howard S. Friedman, Miriam W. Schustack

This successful text puts “personality” back into the personality course, integrating the classic insights of the personality theorists with modern research in a manner that will fascinate and encourage deeper thought.   This text explores classic theory from a perspective that encourages critical thinking and fosters intellectual insight with respect to human nature.  For example, it shows the relevance of classic theory to topics of personality and culture, evolution, ego, gender, and person-situation interactionism.   Employing the highest scientific standards, Personality also uses a wide range of unique and provocative pedagogical devices that have been shown to motivate students. Hailed as the best-written, most relevant personality textbook on the market, Friedman and Schustack's fourth edition brings the field of personality to today's diverse student body.

Genres: Psychology, Textbooks, Counselling

Hardcover

First published August 1, 1998

About the author

Howard S. Friedman is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California in Riverside, California. For three decades, Professor Friedman has studied personality predictors of longevity, developing a scientific understanding of the "disease-prone personality" and the "self-healing personality." His latest book is "The Longevity Project: Surprising Discoveries for Health and Long Life from the Landmark Eight-Decade Study."

His scientific work on health and longevity has drawn wide attention in the scientific community and has been featured in popular media worldwide. In 2008, the Association for Psychological Science (APS) awarded him the James McKeen Cattell Fellow award, citing his research and ideas that are "changing how we think about the nature of health." Dr. Friedman is also the recipient of the career award for "Outstanding Contributions to Health Psychology" from the American Psychological Association (Div. 38). Professor Friedman is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the American Psychological Association (APA); and the Society of Behavioral Medicine.

Dr. Friedman is the Editor of the scientific journal called the Journal of Nonverbal Behavior. His research on nonverbal expressiveness and personal charisma has been widely applied in health promotion, leadership training, medical education, and viral marketing. The winner of several teaching awards, Friedman writes his books in an easy-read style, with the earnest learner in mind. A magna cum laude graduate of Yale University, Friedman received his doctorate from Harvard University, where he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.

Reviews

[Essie-Marie F. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty interesting stuff. One of my favourite aspects of psychology.

[Khalid Alnafai · Rating 3 out of 5]

الكتاب ممتاز من ناحية كمية المعلومات الحديثة وشرحه لها، وعدم تحيزه لأي نظرية وشامل جميع النظريات .
ولكن الترجمة سيئة مما يصعب الفهم، حتى تفهم تحتاج تقرأ المفهوم وشرحه أكثر من مرة. لذلك أعطيته 3 نجمات لو كانت الترجمة جيدة لاستحق الكتاب 5 نجمات .

[Ellie J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

3/5 stars
Recommended for people who like: psychology, personality, different methods of studying psychology

In terms of whether the textbook does its job in teaching personality psychology, it does a good job. In terms of whether the textbook is too verbose and spends too much time on certain sections and topics, it also does a good job.

I get that there's a bunch of different ways to study personality, from psychoanalysis to to the trait approach, but there really doesn't need to be a 30- to 40-page chapter on every single method. Some of them were definitely interesting, like positivism, but others were just drop-dead boring, like any of the chapters having anything to do with psychoanalysis, neo or otherwise. Vibing off of that, the textbook's authors definitely brought psychoanalysis and neo-psychoanalysis up way too often, and seem to put too much stock into both approaches, I think it's obvious which method they prescribe to. Likewise, it was frustrating to read about all these different methods only for it to end up that one of them incorporates different aspects of each, and poorly at that. I'm sure that actual psychologists studying personality use information, considerations, and techniques from different approaches of the field, they would be poor researchers and scientists otherwise, but the way the book is written makes it seem like each approach stands on its own and just completely disregards anything from the other approaches. It's ridiculous. Also, some of the claims made in the chapters dedicated to the different approaches are just wrong, but the textbook states them like they're true (hello Freud's psychosexual stages). There were some studies and side notes mentioned in these chapters that were actually helpful and insightful and weren't focused solely on the approach being discussed, which I appreciated.

The last 5 chapters were better. These dealt more with how personality is tied to language, culture, and religion; whether there are male vs. female differences in how personality presents; personality disorders; and where hate and prejudice comes from and how it impacts us. It's much more interesting, insightful, and interdisciplinary than the rest of the book (though psychoanalysis is still brought up too much).

So, it's a good textbook for teaching the different approaches to the study of personality, but it's not such a hot textbook when it comes to actually delving into the study of personality too much. If you're interested in learning about the psychology of personality for fun, I wouldn't recommend this book. If it's for a class....well, you're just out of luck.

[Audioreader · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best thing about this book is their balanced approach in presenting psychology as seen from eight different perspectives: psychoanalytic, neoanalytic/ego, biological, behavioral, cognitive, trait, humanistic, and interactionist. Too often in academia, authors will have a polarized view toward their own theories. Even worse, especially today, students (in all areas of life) often demonstrate very polarized and even binary thinking. The authors study what we currently know about personality psychology through these eight difference lenses, doing a great job of showing what each can contribute, without playing favourites. I found myself appreciating certain aspects perspectives I had discarded entirely before (such as the psychoanalytic and behavioural perspectives), and seeing new weaknesses in other perspectives I previously saw through rose-coloured glasses (such as the humanistic perspective). And I didn't know anything about the interactionist perspective at all, which if any perspective somewhat brings together the others, it would be this one.

So, not only does one learn about personality psychology from this book, one learns to think in a broader, balanced manner, keeping multiple theories and perspectives in mind at the same time. This is a mature and important skill in general, and especially in psychology, where it is not as easy to reduce to more "true" and "false" theories as it is in pure science. And even in pure science, we often examine the world through multiple perspectives (for example, a collection of matter such as a gas can be viewed using Newtonian mechanics, or thermodynamics, or statistical mechanics).

My only criticism is that the book tends (although not as bad as most psychology texts) a little toward unjustified left-wing views at times. Another criticism when they mentioned LSD, they simply discarded it in a sentence by saying that research stopped when people taking it started jumping off buildings. This is a breathtaking exaggeration and simplification of a statement with the tiniest grain of truth, and really does not do justice to a drug highly relevant to understanding the nature of personality (see Michael Pollan's book on Psychedelics "How to Change Your Mind").

[Kristina Bartholomew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book I read for Psychology of Personalty. I learned a lot from reading this and thought the book had a good flow that kept me interested. Was not too complex to read nor was it so simple that it was boring.

[Dar Nippur]

thanks dear

[Jaynee · Rating 3 out of 5]

easily readable but also not very in-depth or interesting, lots of repetition and intro to psych-esque content

[Amy Timpson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Surprisingly fantastic textbook! Fun, engaging and easy to read.

[Dorothy W. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a good book about personality. It was as thorough as I would like but it was a great book for my psychology personality class. It didn't draw me in but chapter 9 on humanism was really good.

[Syed · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good sumarized book for those wo want study classical and modern approach towards personalities....

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this textbook. Was easy and entertaining to read. And after was easy to find information I needed.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

well written text

[Babar Riaz]

chal oye