Integrating Personality Structure, Personality Process, and Personality Development

By Anna Baumert, Manfred J. Schmitt, Marco Perugini, Wendy Johnson, Gabriela Blum, P. Borkenau, G. Costantini, Jaap J. A. Denissen, William Fleeson, B. Grafton and 9 more. 2017

406 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this target article, we argue that personality processes, personality structure, and personality development have to be understood and investigated in integrated ways in order to provide comprehensive responses to the key questions of personality psychology. The psychological processes and mechanisms that explain concrete behaviour in concrete situations should provide explanation for patterns of variation across situations and individuals, for development over time as well as for structures observed in intra–individual and inter–individual differences. Personality structures, defined as patterns of covariation in behaviour, including thoughts and feelings, are results of those processes in transaction with situational affordances and regularities. It cannot be presupposed that processes are organized in ways that directly correspond to the observed structure. Rather, it is an empirical question whether shared sets of processes are uniquely involved in shaping correlated behaviours, but not uncorrelated behaviours (what we term ‘correspondence’ throughout this paper), or whether more complex interactions of processes give rise to population–level patterns of covariation (termed ‘emergence’). The paper is organized in three parts, with part I providing the main arguments, part II reviewing some of the past approaches at (partial) integration, and part III outlining conclusions of how future personality psychology should progress towards complete integration. Working definitions for the central terms are provided in the appendix. Copyright © 2017 European Association of Personality Psychology

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/eeec9c3857167f63e9fd16cc0dcbb942e82daf49

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Clinical Psychology

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

Citations in the corpus

Stability and variability of personality networks. A tutorial on recent developments in network psychometrics (2017, background): “In this way, networks provide an explanation of individual differences that connects their structure to potential underlying processes and dynamics (Baumert et al., 2017).”
Interpersonal Dynamics in Personality and Personality Disorders (2018, background): “…2005), personality psychologists have been increasingly interested in the dynamic processes that might account for those changes (Back et al., 2011; Baumert et al., 2017; Bleidorn, 2009; Carpenter, Wycoff, & Trull, 2016; Carver & Scheier, 1998; Denissen & Penke, 2008; Denissen, van Aken, Penke, &…”
Personality trait stability and change (2021, background): “…theoretical frameworks have begun to address this question, all of which define personality processes as a series of interconnected steps through which a person’s traits are either changed or stabilized (e.g., Baumert et al., 2017; Geukes et al., 2018; Hennecke et al., 2014; Wrzus & Roberts, 2017).”
Longitudinal Experience–Wide Association Studies—A Framework for Studying Personality Change (2020, background): “Roberts, 2018), and eventually translate into enduring trait changes that then serve as new defaults for the expression of states (Baumert et al., 2017; Geukes et al., 2018; Hennecke et al., 2014; Hopwood, 2018; Roberts & Jackson, 2008; Wrzus & Roberts, 2017; Wrzus, 2018).”
Objections to the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure—and why those Objections Fail (2020, background): “So whatever personality phenomenon you’re studying (see Baumert et al., 2017, for some suggestions), make sure you’re measuring all six factors.”
A Psychometric Network Perspective on the Validity and Validation of Personality Trait Questionnaires (2019, background): “A population attribute is not necessarily possessed by any one person in the population but rather represents between-person differences at the population level (Baumert et al., 2017; Cervone, 2005).”
Descriptive, Predictive and Explanatory Personality Research: Different Goals, Different Approaches, but a Shared Need to Move beyond the Big Few Traits (2020, background): “…been other recent contributions regarding how to explain phenomena that personality scientists consider as falling into their jurisdiction (e.g., Baumert et al., 2017; Briley et al., 2018; Grosz et al., 2020), including articles in this issue (e.g., Quirin et al., 2020; Costantini et al,. 2020;…”