Individual Differences and Personality, Fourth Edition provides a comprehensive overview of research regarding what personality is and how and why it differs between people. This book begins with a description of the study of personality and then presents basic principles of personality measurement, the concept of personality traits, and the major dimensions of personality variation. Further chapters review personality change and stability, biological causal mechanisms, genetic and environmental influences, and evolutionary adaptive function. Personality disorders are examined as are life outcomes (such as relationships, work, and health) that are predicted by personality characteristics. In addition, the book examines important individual differences beyond personality, such as mental abilities, religious beliefs, political attitudes, and sexuality. Revisions to the fourth edition include updates to all chapters and substantial new content. For example, the developmental change chapter includes new studies of long-term stability, and the biological bases chapter includes new research about the effects of dopamine-like substances on impulse control. The genetics chapter has been heavily revised to cover recent meta-analyses and large-scale studies of the heritability of personality traits. In the chapter on the evolutionary function of personality, the discussion of sex differences is expanded to include cross-cultural variation. The chapter on personality and life outcomes includes new coverage of rating the personality of one's hypothetical ideal partner. The chapter on mental ability has updates on brain volume and IQ and on motivation and IQ.

People who have high levels of H are sincere and modest; people who have low levels are deceitful and pretentious. The "H" in the H factor stands for "Honesty-Humility", one of the six basic dimensions of the human personality. It isn't intuitively obvious that traits of honesty and humility go hand in hand, and until very recently the H factor hadn't been recognized as a basic dimension of personality. But scientific evidence shows that traits of honesty and humility form a unified group of personality traits, separate from those of the other five groups identified several decades ago. This book, written by the discoverers of the H factor, explores the scientific findings that show the importance of this personality dimension in various aspects of people's lives: their approaches to money, power, and sex; their inclination to commit crimes or obey the law; their attitudes about society, politics, and religion; and their choice of friends and spouse. Finally, the book provides ways of identifying people who are low in the H factor, as well as advice on how to raise one's own level of H.

Individual Differences and Personality, Third Edition provides a comprehensive overview of research on personality. The book begins with the main approaches to the study of personality, basic principles of personality measurement, the concept of personality traits, and the major dimensions of personality variation. Further chapters review personality change and stability, biological causal mechanisms, genetic and environmental influences and evolutionary adaptive function. Personality disorders are examined as are life outcomes-such as relationships, work, health, and others-that are predicted by personality characteristics. The book additionally examines important individual differences, such as mental abilities, vocational interests, religious beliefs, political attitudes and sexuality. The third edition is updated with new findings on age-related differences in personality, on sexual orientation and personality, on socially desirable responding in personality assessment, and on the biological and social origins of mental ability differences. Treatments of several topics have been streamlined, including reliability and validity, developmental change, genetic and environmental influences and the structure of mental abilities.