Personality Assessment

In the fifteen years since the publication of the second edition of Personality Assessment, a series of fundamental changes and far-reaching advancements has lifted this area of psychological inquiry to a new level of technical sophistication and moved the entire discipline dramatically closer to the realm of applied science. These changes include an increasing differentiation between diagnostic assessment and assessment for theoretical study, greater acceptance of traits as fundamental aspects of personality, advances in the conceptual and psychometric technology of test construction, and the rapidly growing availability of high-speed computers along with multivariate statistical procedures to interpret data.

This fully updated and expanded third edition pays special attention to each of these trends, the roots of which can be traced back nearly to the discipline's beginnings. An entirely new chapter discusses issues surrounding the application of personality to the workplace, including its use in personnel selection and employment interviews, measuring leadership capabilities and assessing transformational leadership, and training and development.

As they did in this book's widely used predecessors, Richard I. Lanyon and Leonard D. Goodstein describe the major methods and techniques of personality assessment, discuss their underlying rationale and development, and provide a survey of central contemporary issues and problems. They explore areas of special application such as the assessment of children, forensic psychology, neuropsychology, and the effects of particular demographic factors such as gender, age, and ethnicity. And, reflecting the discipline's increasing orientation toward applications, they examine ethical, moral, and legal issues such as misuse of personality assessment devices, confidentiality, inviolacy, and restriction of freedom.

Thoughtful, comprehensive, and completely up to date, Personality Assessment, Third Edition is an excellent text for advanced undergraduate and beginning graduate students in a wide variety of academic and professional training settings, including psychology, social work, management assessment and development, and medicine. It is also a handy reference for professionals who want to stay up to speed with recent developments in the field.

Praise for the previous editions of Personality Assessment

"[Lanyon and Goodstein] provide an introduction to the concepts, methods, and issues in the area of personality assessment, written at a level appropriate for a rather broad range of readers, extending from advanced undergraduates to graduate students, and including members of such related professions as medicine and social work, as well as 'the informed layman'. . . . [They] present a large number of technical concepts, such as base rates, utility, and moderator variables, in a clear, understandable fashion."--Contemporary Psychology on the first edition

"After reading the second edition of Lanyon and Goodstein's Personality Assessment, I decided I needed help in order to write a critical review. In hopes of finding critical comments, I read all the reviews of the first edition I could find. My hopes were quickly dashed: praise was universal, criticisms few and generally minor. It also became apparent that, whether intentionally or not, the authors responded to many of the reviewers' critical comments in preparing the second edition."--Kevin L. Moreland, Journal of Personality Assessment on the second edition