Gorkan Ahmetoglu - Personality 101

James C. Kaufman, PhD, Series Editor

Director, Learning Research Institute

California State University at San Bernardino

Gorkan Ahmetoglu, PhD, is an occupational psychologist and visiting lecturer at the University of Londons Goldsmiths, City, and Heythrop Colleges. He is an expert in psychometrics, personnel selection, and organizational training and development. His core areas of research include personality psychology, entrepreneurship, and consumer psychology. G o rkans pioneering research on entrepreneurship is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and he has published numerous research articles in important scientific journals. G o rkan has also made several media appearances and frequently acts as a governmental, media, and organizational adviser. His clients include HSBC, BBC, Channel 4, Google, Ford, Tesco, Sainsburys, Mars, The Edrington Group, the Office of Fair Trading, the British Brand Groups, The Grocer, Marketing magazine, KPMG, and Harvards Entrepreneurial Finance Lab, with which he is now an associate.

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, PhD, is an international authority in personality profiling and psychometric testing. He is currently professor of business psychology at University College London (UCL) and visiting professor at New York University, and has previously taught at the London School of Economics. Tomas has published six books and over 100 scientific papers, making him one of the most prolific social scientists of his generation. His work has received awards from the American Psychological Association and the International Society for the Study of Individual Differences, for which he is now director. Tomas is also the director of the MSc program in industrial-organizational and business psychology at UCL and has previously codirected the MSc program in occupational psychology at University of Londons Goldsmiths. Over the past two decades, Tomas has provided consultancy services to a wide range of organizations, in both the private and public sectors. His clients have included the following: JP Morgan, HSBC, the JLT group, Prudential, Unilever, Reckitt Benckiser, the British army, the BBC, Hogan Assessment Systems, and Harvards Entrepreneurial Finance Lab. Tomas frequently appears in the media to offer psychological expertise to a wide audience. His broadcasting career includes more than 200 media appearances and over 70 TV appearances for the BBC, CNN, and Sky News. Tomas is also a regular keynote speaker for the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Gorkan Ahmetoglu, PhD

Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, PhD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ahmetoglu, Gorkan.

Personality 101 / Gorkan Ahmetoglu, Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8261-0784-8ISBN 978-0-8261-0785-5 (ebk)

1. Personality. I. Chamorro-Premuzic, Tomas. II. Title. III. Title: Personality one hundred one. IV. Title: Personality one hundred and one.

BF698.A335 2013

155.2dc23

2012025999

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To my family, for showing me the value of strong bonds and character.GA

To Zdenka Premuzic, who is responsible for the good parts of my personality.TCP

Contents

Preface

Peoples interest in understanding people is universal. Students choose to study psychology because they want to know more about who they are, and why they behave the way they do. Personality psychology answers these questions because it concerns the nature of human nature. It tells us how a person will act in different situations and why. It also tells us what a person is likely to do in the future. Finally, personality reveals whether and to what degree people change.

While many personality books have been written, there are no concise books that address this topic from a scientific but jargon-free way. Most books on personality fall into one of two categories: academic textbooks or pop-psychology books. The former are usually too complex for a lay audience and too long to read. The latter fail to discuss recent scientific findings about the nature of personality. This book attempts to bridge both categories.

Indeed, Personality 101 has been written in an attempt to make cutting-edge research in personality accessible to a wide audience in a compact book. It is a book that tells the story about the differences and similarities between people, and the causes and consequences of these differences. This story is based on more than a century of research and thousands of scientific studies. It encompasses state-of-the-art investigations and the most widely accepted theories and facts in the field. It reveals to the reader the current state of affairs in personality psychology and the anticipated future directions of this field.

Finally, we hope to challenge some of our readers preconceptions about people. Personality is often the subject of peoples conversationsit is used to describe friends, partners, and work colleaguesbut lay beliefs about personality are often in stark contrast with the research evidence. Whatever your purpose for reading this book, we hope that it will make you a bit more knowledgeable in this area and encourage you to read more about it. To this end, we have included an extensive bibliography.