required: The second is about the content of your research.  It might begin with the phrase “I chose the prompt because [I was interested in it, it’s my major, it looked like the easiest to me, etc.]–and it turned out that once I began reading in the topic area I…”

I chose this Psychology prompt because it is a topic that interests me. In the future, I may begin pursuing it as a second major. Once I began reading the topic area, I found so many different, controversial points of view. My subject dealt with the overall development of personality. During my research stages, I found various elements that indicated that my topic wasn’t going to be as straight forward as I thought. In the end,  my personal opinion was shifted because I too was under the assumption that personality was merely genetics.

required: One will be about how you found the research process– was this how you thought a University paper is put together?  Will you adopt or alter a method you’ve tried during the course of this project? 

 When I began my research, I had no idea what it would entail. Now, I have a better understanding of what I should be doing for any research paper/ project. I do like the concept of blogging, because not only am I able to see my progression, but in the end, I have a record of all of the steps of research that I have overcome. In the future, I can definitely see myself using this method.

Comprehensive handbook of personality and psychopathology / Michel Hersen, Jay C. Thomas, editors-in-chief. Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley, c2006 [i.e. 2005]. Boca Raton Campus Reference (Non-circulating) RC456 .C66 2005.

Encyclopedia of human development [electronic resource] / Neil J. Salkind, editor ; Lewis Margolis, associate editor ; managing editors, Kimberly DeRuyck and Kristin Rasmussen. Thousand Oaks, Calif. : Sage Publications, c2006. Electronic Resource.

Evans, Rachel. Ego development, guilt and hypocrisy : an online study of personality, 2007 Jupiter Campus NX00.5 .E792 2007.

Handbook of personality development / edited by Daniel K. Mroczek and Todd D. Little. Mahwah, N.J. : Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006. Jupiter Campus BF698 .H3343 2006.

Kellerman, Henry. Handbook of psychodiagnostic testing : analysis of personality in the psychological report / Henry Kellerman, Anthony Burry. New York, NY : Springer, c2007. Boca Raton Campus RC469 .K44 2007.

Kluckhohn, Clyde, 1905-1960, ed. Personality in nature, society, and culture. New York, Knopf, 1953.Boca Raton Campus BF698 .K58 1953.

McCrae, Robert R. Personality in adulthood : a five-factor theory perspective , Jr. New York : Guilford Press, c2003. Boca Raton Campus BF698.9 .A4 M33 2003.

Psychopathology in later adulthood / edited by Susan Krauss Whitbourne. New York : Wiley, c2000. Boca Raton Campus RC451.4.A5 P7777 2000.

Stratton, Peter. A student’s dictionary of psychology / Peter Stratton and Nicky Hayes. London ; New York : Arnold, 1999. Boca Raton Campus Reference (Non-circulating) BF31 .S69 1999.

The development of the person : the Minnesota study of risk and adaptation from birth to adulthood / by L. Alan Sroufe … [et al.]. New York : Guilford Press, c2005. Jupiter Campus HQ767.9 .D477 2005.

I have set up my ILL account.

Attached.  Main Menu Screen

A personality develops overtime, and during adulthood, these changes are strongly influenced by the overall self-satisfaction with one’s entire life and accomplishments so consequently, the happier you are is the happier you become and the question for those who don’t report self-satisfaction would be whether an “attitude adjustment” would result in continuous positive development. Most people would agree that your personality comes from genetics and doesn’t change, just your environment changes as you take on adult responsibilities. There are various stages that one’s personality passes through over the course of a lifetime. It is difficult to just say that most change occurs in one stage of life or another because even though most of one’s personality is genetic, there are still many every day influences involved. For instance, a person with a substance abuse problem may have a rapidly changing personality because of the fact that they have this outside influence. Also, one’s self- satisfaction plays a big role in the developing personality. According to research, one’s self-satisfaction tends to increase with age, of course, factoring in the gender and social class statuses variances.

A personality develops overtime, and during adulthood, these changes are strongly influenced by the overall self-satisfaction with one’s entire life and accomplishments so consequently, the happier you are is the happier you become and the question for those who don’t report self-satisfaction would be whether an “attitude adjustment” would result in continuous positive development..

required: a minimum of ten abstracts, with each abstract’s bibliographic information; for your final portfolio you’ll include pages of the full-text article, with passages that were especially helpful highlighted, as well as printouts of the abstracts that were useful in your draft and revision stages, with their most relevant information highlighted.

note: the abstracts that you begin to read and collect may also direct you to make an Inter-library loan of the source, if it’s not one that the library owns, or isn’t available in e-text. It’s most time-effective to make the ILL request immediately once you determine from its abstract that the entire work will be useful for your research.

1. Behavioral genetic methods were used to estimate genetic and environmental contributions to (a) attachment-related anxiety and avoidance and (b) the overlap between these attachment dimensions and the Big Five personality traits. Two major findings emerged from these analyses. First, individual differences in attachment-related anxiety and avoidance were heritable, and second, much of the overlap between adult attachment and the Big Five traits was due to shared genetic influences. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for attachment theory and research and provides a speculative account of the interplay between temperamental dimensions and internal working models of relationships across the life span.
Genes, Personality, and Attachment in Adults: A Multivariate Behavioral Genetic Analysis Authors: Donnellan BM, Burt AS, Levendowsky AA, Klump KL

2. Psychology’s early allegiance to behaviorism and experimental methods led many to disparage personality approaches throughout much of last century. Doubts about personality psychology’s viability culminated in Mischel’s assertion that measures of personality account for modest amounts of variance in behavior. In the years immediately following this critique, interest in personality research waned and many psychology departments dropped their training programs in personality. Throughout the past two decades, however, personality psychology has enjoyed a resurgence. The authors discuss several possible explanations for personality’s comeback and then describe the emergence of a promising symbiosis between personality psychology and its sister discipline, social psychology. The article concludes by noting that although this emerging symbiosis is likely to continue bearing considerable theoretical fruit, the traditional distinction between personal, situational, and interactional determinants of behavior continues to be useful within appropriate contexts.
Personality Psychology’s Comeback and Its Emerging Symbiosis With Social Psychology
Author: Swann Jr. WB

3. Drawing on 6 decades of participant observation in personality and social psychology, this article provides comments on the qualities of the founding generation at mid-20th century (e.g., Allport, Lewin, Murphy, Murray, Newcomb, and Sherif). Their breadth, commitment to a humane science, and interest in its social applications have since been in short supply. The juncture of personality psychology and social psychology has become problematic. Reasons for this are explored. Holistic personology may presentlyfind a more congenial setting in life span developmental psychology than in social psychology.
“Personality and Social Psychology”: Retrospections and Aspirations
Author: Smith MB

4. Personality psychology explores personal determinants of social behavior, that is, psychological systems that causally contribute to the coherent patterns of experience and action that distinguish individuals from one another. This article explores two obstacles faced by evolutionary accounts of personality functioning. The first is the problem of act identification. Explaining social behavior by reference to an evolved mental module requires that one determine which module to invoke. This generally requires identifying the meaning of complex, culturally and socially embedded actions. Evolutionary psychology provides no tools for unambiguously making these identifications. The second obstacle derives from the fact that, in evolutionary psychology, behavior may reflect the joint action of multiple mental modules. Prediction and explanation would require assessment of the relative strengths of activation of the multiple modules. This commonly is not possible. Alternative accounts of personality structure and functioning, including that of social-cognitive theories of personality, are considered.
Evolutionary Psychology and Explanation in Personality Psychology
Author: Cervone D

5. Mainstream social/personality psychology, an essentially North American post-World War II construction, has remained wedded to a physical science metatheory in pursuit of behavioral universals, while treating cultural idiosyncrasies as epiphenomena. This project, pursued overwhelmingly within the context of capitalist economic constraints, has seldom led to findings of sufficient generality to justify the search, and is further undermined by increasing recognition that differences provided by sociohistorical contexts have ontological significance for human development. The context of the mainstream is examined and, as a hermeneutic alternative, Marxian/communal metatheory is proposed and shown to be in synchrony with positions taken by several prominent internal mainstream critics. The paper also questions the appropriateness of the modal personality projected by mainstream theorists to a world of shrinking natural resources.
Social/Personality Psychology in Context
Author: Smith RJ

6. The concept of authoritarianism has been widely misunderstood because of both confusion about values and science and disagreement about a definition of the concept within different areas of psychology. Research in cognitive and social psychology has focused on linking scores on authoritarianism scales with social behavior or information processing, but these efforts have not been very successful at either defining the concept or predicting behavior. In developmental research, authoritarian parenting refers to an emphasis on parental control and decision making. Organizational authoritarianism has been linked to higher productivity and, in some cases, with lower job satisfaction. One way of making sense of the variety of definitions of authoritarianism is in terms of evolutionary personality theory and the concepts of dominance and submission. These biological concepts are relevant to both human and animal behavior, and they can be used to explain authoritarianism in scientific, rather than pejorative, terms.
Authoritarianism, Dominance, and Social Behavior: A Perspective from Evolutionary Personality Psychology
Author: Smither RD

7. Recent research on the acquisition of cognitive dispositions indicates that the cognitive system is capable of unconsciously processing even nonsalient and “hidden” patterns of stimuli that, due to the limited controlled processing capabilities of the cognitive system, cannot be detected on the level of conscious cognition. The information about such unconsciously processed patterns of stimuli is stored in memory and it unconsciously influences subsequent cognitive processes. It is argued that to account for observable phenomena of social behavior and to explain the development of stable (personality) dispositions, research in personality and social psychology should focus on reconstructing the process of such unconscious earning and investigate the dynamics of the development of the unconscious algorithms of encoding social stimuli. Recent cognitive research on unconscious information processing is demonstrated to provide a conceptual framework for addressing issues of particular relevance to personality and social psychology.
Unconscious Processes as Explanations of Behavior in Cognitive, Personality, and Social Psychology
Author: Lewicki P

8. We examine whether homogamy (similarity) in sociodemographic variables and personality traits in late adulthood is greater among couples characterized by high life satisfaction than among those characterized by low life satisfaction. The research sample included 256 participants (128 husbands and 128 wives) in Israel. The findings on homogamy in sociodemographic variables reveal no differences between participants in the ‘high’ and ‘low’ satisfaction groups. However, with regard to personality traits (self-esteem and anxiety), there are differences between participants in ‘high’ and ‘low’ satisfaction groups. In the high satisfaction group, the husbands (and the wives to some extent) have more similar personality traits than their counterparts in the low satisfaction group. In general, the findings reveal greater similarity in sociodemographic variables than in personality traits among the spouses. The findings also indicate that in late adulthood wives are less satisfied with life, have higher anxiety, and lower self-esteem than their husbands.
The Impact of Spousal Variables on Life Satisfaction of Individuals in Late Adulthood
The Israeli Case
Author: Kulik L

9. This study explored the applicability of previous research (obtained with groups of college-educated women) about the subjective experience of aging in midlife to men and less-educated people. Two-hundred fifty-nine men and women who graduated from a public high school in 1955-1957 retrospectively assessed their feelings of identity certainty, confident power, generativity, and concern about aging for their 60s, 40s, and 20s. Participants reported higher levels of identity certainty, confident power, and concern about aging at each age, and a leveling off of generativity in their 60s. There were some gender and social class differences. Although men and women recalled the same trajectory of these feelings, men reported higher levels of identity certainty and confident power across age. Non-college-educated men recalled the highest levels of concern about aging across age. We discuss how these findings add to our understanding of the experience of aging in these domains.
Gender, Social Class, and the Subjective Experience of Aging: Self-Perceived Personality Change From Early Adulthood to Late Midlife
Authors: Miner-Rubino K, Winter DG, Stewart AJ

10. In this study we examined personality traits, in particular openness to experience and agreeableness, and-in an exploratory step – recalled parent-child relations as antecedents of friendship involvement in adulthood. Data from 392 middle-aged (43-46 years) and 345 older participants (61-64 years) in the first wave of the Interdisciplinary Longitudinal Study of Adult Development (ILSE) support the hypothesis that openness contributes to friendship involvement in middle age, while agreeableness contributes to friendship involvement in old age. Further, structural equation models showed that the relation between recalled mother-child relationship and friendship involvement in older adults was mediated by agreeableness. Recalled father-child relationship was directly associated with friendships in both age groups, independent of personality traits.
The contribution of adult personality and recalled parent-child relations to friendships in middle and old age
Authors: Heyl V, Scmitt M