Further Reading — Chapter 8: Personality

Annotated resources for deeper exploration. Items marked with ★ are especially recommended as starting points.

Foundational Books

★ McAdams, D. P. (2009). The Person: An Introduction to the Science of Personality Psychology (5th ed.). Wiley. The most comprehensive and readable academic introduction to personality psychology. Covers the Big Five, psychodynamic perspectives, narrative identity, development, biological approaches, and more. Graduate-level rigor in an accessible package. Ideal for anyone who wants to go substantially deeper than this chapter.

★ Nettle, D. (2007). Personality: What Makes You the Way You Are. Oxford University Press. An evolutionary account of the Big Five for general readers. Nettle argues that each trait persists in the population because it offers real advantages in some environmental contexts — and that understanding this makes the traits make more sense. Beautifully written, intellectually rigorous, and accessible without being dumbed down.

Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A., & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The power of personality: The comparative validity of personality traits, socioeconomic status, and cognitive ability for predicting important life outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 313–345. The paper that makes the strongest case for personality as a predictor of life outcomes — comparing it favorably to IQ and socioeconomic status. Essential reading for understanding why personality psychology is not merely interesting but practically consequential.

Primary Sources on the Big Five

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. Jr. (1987). Validation of the five-factor model of personality across instruments and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52(1), 81–90. The paper that helped establish the cross-method validity of the Big Five. Accessible and historically significant.

Goldberg, L. R. (1993). The structure of phenotypic personality traits. American Psychologist, 48(1), 26–34. Goldberg's comprehensive account of the lexical hypothesis and the development of the Big Five from factor-analytic studies of personality-descriptive words. The foundational methodological paper.

McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. Jr. (1999). A five-factor theory of personality. In L. A. Pervin & O. P. John (Eds.), Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research (pp. 139–153). Guilford. The authoritative theoretical statement of the Five-Factor Theory — which is distinct from simply the descriptive Big Five model. Distinguishes personality traits from characteristic adaptations and personal narrative, a distinction that becomes important in Chapter 9.

On Personality Change

★ Roberts, B. W., Walton, K. E., & Viechtbauer, W. (2006). Patterns of mean-level change in personality traits across the life course: A meta-analysis of longitudinal studies. Psychological Bulletin, 132(1), 1–25. The definitive meta-analysis of longitudinal personality change studies. Establishes the maturity principle across 92 studies and 50,000+ participants. Dense but comprehensive.

Hudson, N. W., & Fraley, R. C. (2015). Volitional personality trait change: Can people choose to change their personality traits? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109(3), 490–507. The key study on deliberate personality change. Shows that people who set intentions to change specific traits show measurably more change than controls. Practical and methodologically careful.

Soto, C. J., John, O. P., Gosling, S. D., & Potter, J. (2011). Age differences in personality traits from 10 to 65: Big Five domains and facets in a large cross-sectional sample. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(2), 330–348. Large-scale cross-sectional study of personality change across the lifespan. Particularly useful for the detailed picture of how different facets (not just broad factors) change across development.

On Temperament

Kagan, J., & Snidman, N. (2004). The Long Shadow of Temperament. Harvard University Press. Kagan's account of his decades of research on behavioral inhibition — following highly reactive infants into adulthood and examining the biological underpinnings and long-term consequences. Meticulous, readable, and sobering in its implications for the stability of some temperamental patterns.

Thomas, A., & Chess, S. (1977). Temperament and Development. Brunner/Mazel. The original account of the New York Longitudinal Study and the nine dimensions of infant temperament. A foundational text in developmental personality research. More accessible than its age might suggest.

On the Dark Triad

Paulhus, D. L., & Williams, K. M. (2002). The Dark Triad of personality: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Journal of Research in Personality, 36(6), 556–563. The paper that coined the term "Dark Triad" and established the three-factor framework. Concise and readable.

Babiak, P., & Hare, R. D. (2006). Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. HarperCollins. A practitioner-oriented account of psychopathy in organizational settings — how psychopathic traits appear in professional contexts, how they are recognized, and how organizations can protect themselves. More clinical than pop-psychology accounts; Robert Hare is one of the world's leading researchers on psychopathy.

On Personality in Relationships

Donnellan, M. B., Conger, R. D., & Bryant, C. M. (2004). The Big Five and enduring marriages. Journal of Research in Personality, 38(5), 481–504. Longitudinal study examining how Big Five traits predict relationship stability and satisfaction. Establishes neuroticism as the strongest predictor of relationship difficulty in a naturalistic sample.

Botwin, M. D., Buss, D. M., & Shackelford, T. K. (1997). Personality and mate preferences: Five factors in mate selection and marital satisfaction. Journal of Personality, 65(1), 107–136. The foundational paper on how Big Five traits affect mate preferences and marital outcomes. Clear, accessible, and useful for understanding the personality dynamics of long-term relationships.

Accessible General Reading

★ Harris, J. R. (1998). The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do. Free Press. Harris's controversial and important argument that peer group matters more than parenting in shaping personality outside the home. Challenges the dominant narrative about parenting's impact on personality with rigorous evidence. Essential for anyone interested in the nature-nurture debate in personality development.

Cain, S. (2012). Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Crown. The accessible and well-researched account of introversion — its biological basis, its value, and the ways extraverted cultural norms misunderstand and undervalue it. Draws on solid personality research while being broadly readable.

For Skeptics: Critiques and Alternatives

Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and Assessment. Wiley. The book that launched the "person-situation debate" — Mischel's challenge to the idea that personality traits reliably predict behavior across situations. Though his strongest claims have been moderated by subsequent research (he later developed the CAPS model), this book is essential for understanding the argument that behavior is more situationally determined than personality psychology suggests.

Block, J. (1995). A contrarian view of the five-factor approach to personality description. Psychological Bulletin, 117(2), 187–215. A rigorous critical examination of the Big Five from one of its most sophisticated critics. Important for anyone who wants to understand the limitations and assumptions of the factor-analytic approach to personality.