The Evolution of Personality and Individual Differences

Capturing a scientific change in thinking about personality and individual differences that has been building over the past 15 years, this volume stands at an important moment in the development of psychology as a discipline. Rather than viewing individual differences as merely the raw material upon which selection operates, the contributing authors provide theories and empirical evidence which suggest that personality and individual differences are central to evolved psychological mechanisms and behavioral functioning. The book draws theoretical inspiration from life history theory, evolutionary genetics, molecular genetics, developmental psychology, personality psychology, and evolutionary psychology, while utilizing the theories of the "best and the brightest" international scientists working on this cutting edge paradigm shift.

In the first of three sections, the authors analyze personality and the adaptive landscape; here, the authors offer a novel conceptual framework for examining "personality assessment adaptations." Because individuals in a social environment have momentous consequences for creating and solving adaptive problems, humans have evolved "difference-detecting mechanisms" designed to make crucial social decisions such as mate selection, friend selection, kin investment, coalition formation, and hierarchy negotiation. In the second section, the authors examine developmental and life-history theoretical perspectives to explore the origins and development of personality over the lifespan. The third section focuses on the relatively new field of evolutionary genetics and explores which of the major evolutionary forces--such as balancing selection, mutation, co-evolutionary arms races, and drift--are responsible for the origins of personality and individual differences. Existing as a seminal work in the newly emerging evolutionary psychology field, this book is a "must-read" for anyone invested in the development of psychology as a field.

David M. Buss received his Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of California at Berkeley. He has taught at Harvard University, University of Michigan, and University of Texas at Austin, where he is currently Professor of Evolutionary Psychology. He has received the American Psychological Association (APA) Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology; the APA G. Stanley Hall Award; the APA Distinguished Scientist Lecturer Award; and the President's Teaching Excellence Award. In addition to the publication of over 200 scientific publications, Dr. Buss has also authored or edited several books, including The Evolution of Desire, The Dangerous Passion, The Murderer Next Door, The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, and Why Women Have Sex. His primary research interests include human sexuality, mating strategies, conflict between the sexes, the psychology of status and reputation, homicide, jealousy, stalking, and sexual victimization.
Patricia H. Hawley earned her Ph.D. in 1994 from the University of Callfornia Riverside. Her work there crossed the domains of animal behavior and psychometrics; her thesis quantified intraindividual change patterns of behavior of Asian elephants (i.e. personality). She was a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany, and at Yale University. She currently is an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology and Social Psychology at the University of Kansas. She recently was the lead editor of Aggression and Adaptation: The Bright Side to Bad Behavior (Lawrence Erlbaum) and has published several articles and chapters on evolution, individual differences, and social development.