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A comprehensive overview of timely, theoretical perspectives on personality development throughout human lifespan

Table of Contents

Part One: Introduction 1. Personality development research: State-of-the-art and future directions

Part Two: Personality Development in Different Life Phases 2. Personality development in childhood 3. Personality development in adolescence 4. Personality development in emerging adulthood 5. Personality development in adulthood and old age 6. On the role of personality in late life

Part Three: Theoretical Perspectives on Personality Development 7. Five-Factor Theory and personality development 8. Theoretical perspectives on the interplay of nature and nurture in personality development 9. Set-Point Theory and personality development: Reconciliation of a paradox 10. Evolutionary aspects of personality development: Evidence from nonhuman animals 11. A critical evaluation of the Neo-Socioanalytic Model of personality

Part Four: Important Personality Characteristics and Their Development 12. The lifespan development of self-esteem 13. The development of subjective well-being 14. Getting older, getting better? Toward understanding positive personality development across adulthood 15. The development of perceived control 16. The development of goals and motivation 17. The development of attachment styles 18. Identity formation in adolescence and young adulthood 19. Development of cognition and intelligence 20. And the story evolves: The development of personal narratives and narrative identity

Part Five: Personality Development in Context 21. Personality development in reaction to major life events 22. Personality development in close relationships 23. Personality development and health 24. Personality development and psychopathology 25. Vocational interests as personality traits: Characteristics, development, and significance in educational and organizational environments 26. Intercultural similarities and differences in personality development

Part Six: Methods in Research on Personality Development 27. Personality assessment in daily life: A roadmap for future personality development research 28. Analyzing processes in personality development 29. Behavior genetics and personality development: A methodological and meta-analytic review 30. Analyzing personality change: From average trajectories to within-person dynamics

Part Seven: New Areas of Research on Personality Development 31. Cohort differences in personality 32. Development of implicit personality 33. Volitional personality change

About the Author

Jule Specht is a professor for assessment and personality psychology at Universität zu Lübeck, Germany. She studied psychology at University of Münster from 2005 to 2010 and received her doctorate at the same place in 2011 for her research on "Causes and characteristics of changes in personality: Differences in the Big Five and perceived control across the life course." Afterwards, Jule Specht worked as a postdoc at Leipzig University and was a junior professor at Freie Universität Berlin from 2012 to 2016.

Her research focuses on personality development in adulthood and on how major life events and health impact trajectories of change in personality. She is particularly interested in changes that take place in old age, because this is a period in life she figured out to be surprisingly susceptible to changes in personality and that has been studied far less than other periods of life like young adulthood.

Despite her research on personality development, Jule Specht aims at interdisciplinarity collaborations, for example in the context of her research fellowship at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin) and her membership at the German Young Academy. Furthermore, she was a principle investigator of a scientific network on personality development in adulthood granted by the German Research Foundation from 2012 to 2016.

Jule Specht is an associate editor for the Journal of Research in Personality and a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, and Social Psychological and Personality Science. She was awarded the Berlin Science Prize for Junior Scientists by the Governing Mayor of Berlin in 2014 and the Best Junior Publication Prize 2013 by the Society of Friends of the German Institute of Economic Research in 2013. To communicate psychological research to the general public, Jule Specht blogs on her personal blog (http://jule-schreibt.de) and for Psychologie Heute, a German popular science magazine (http://blog.psychologie-heute.de/author/jule-specht/).