Virtue, Vice, and Personality offers researchers and students an important resource that explores the rich diversity of personality as both a virtue and a vice. The editors argue that a more balanced perspective of personality may help prevent overly biased or unbalanced clinical or educational formulations and profiles and, in contrast, may help foster a genuine empathetic connection with clients and students. Leading researchers focus on some of the most notable personality variables that have garnered the attention of researchers and scholars over the past decades, including self-esteem, optimism, intelligence, personal control, rumination, perfectionism, and neuroticism. The editors appeal for researchers and scholars to examine their assumptions about personality, which are rooted in philosophical notions of good and bad, and argue that a balanced view is essential for true understanding of human nature.
Contributors
Foreword
—C. R. Snyder
Preface
Introduction
Beyond Virtue and Vice in Personality: Classical Themes and Current Trends
I. Positive Personalities: When Virtue Can Become Vice
- High Self-Esteem: A Differentiated Perspective
—Michael H. Kernis - Optimism as Virtue and Vice
—Christopher Peterson and Robert S. Vaidya - Intelligence: Can One Have Too Much of a Good Thing?
—Robert J. Sternberg - The Hazards of Goal Pursuit
—Laura A. King and Chad M. Burton - The Virtues and Vices of Personal Control
—Michael J. Strube, J. Scott Hanson, and Laurel Newman
II. Negative Personalities: When Vice Can Become Virtue
- Pessimism: Accentuating the Positive Possibilities
—Julie K. Norem - Rumination, Imagination, and Personality: Specters of the Past and Future in the Present
—Lawrence J. Sanna, Shevaun L. Stocker, and Jennifer A. Clarke - On the Perfectibility of the Individual: Going Beyond the Dialectic of Good Versus Evil
—Edward C. Chang - Neuroticism: Adaptive and Maladaptive Features
—David Watson and Alex Casillas
III. Further Thoughts
- Going Beyond (While Remaining Connected to) Personality as Virtue and Vice
—Howard Tennen and Glenn Affleck - Beyond Virtue and Vice in Personality: Some Final Thoughts
—Lawrence J. Sanna and Edward C. Chang
Index
About the Editors
Edward C. Chang, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Psychology and a Faculty Associate in Asian/Pacific American Studies at the University of Michigan. He received his BA in psychology and philosophy from the State University of New York at Buffalo, and his MA and PhD degrees from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He completed his APA-accredited clinical internship at Bellevue Hospital Center-New York University Medical Center. He is on the editorial boards of several prestigious journals, including the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Cognitive Therapy and Research, Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, and the Asian Journal of Social Psychology.
Lawrence J. Sanna, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the Social Psychology Area at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his BA from the University of Connecticut, and MS and PhD degrees from the Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Sanna has previously held positions at Bucknell University and Washington State University, and was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Michigan. He has published numerous articles in the areas of social cognition, personality processes, social judgment, and group influences. Dr. Sanna is coauthor of Group Performance and Interaction (1999, Westview Press). He also currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, European Journal of Social Psychology, and Basic and Applied Social Psychology.
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