Randy J. Larsen

Personality psychology is a field devoted to the study of all that it means to be human, and with Personality Psychology 8e, Larsen and Buss capture the excitement of the discipline. This text is unique in two significant ways. First, rather than arranging their text around the traditional grand theories of personality, Larsen and Buss instead used a framework of six domains of knowledge about personality functioning: the dispositional domain, the biological domain, the intrapsychic domain, the cognitive-experiential domain, the societal and cultural domain, and the adjustment domain. Research in the field reinforces the fact that these domains effectively organize the key theories within personality psychology. In addition to the six major organizing themes, Personality Psychology 8e also differs from other personality texts in the importance placed on culture, gender, and biology, areas of personality scholarship that have shown substantial growth in recent years.