Personality and Social Psychology: Towards a Synthesis

This lucid textbook presents a much-needed review and synthesis of recent developments in personality psychology. In particular, it provides a comprehensive overview of the latest work addressing the impact of the social on the individual. It convincingly shows the future to lie with an interactionist perspective that integrates key insights from social psychology.

Barbara Krah[ac]e outlines the background to the main controversies in the field. She assesses the theoretical and methodological developments resulting from various challenges to traditional personality theory and explores new methods, particularly idiographic, aimed at improving the measurement of stability and change in personality. Finally, she shows how various perspectives in related areas of psychology, most notably social psychology, can provide answers to questions not sufficiently addressed in mainstream personality research.