 xiThis fourth edition of the Handbook of Personality follows three decades after the 
1990 inaugural volume and just over one decade after the third edition. It chronicles 
the substantial advances in recent personality research. Indeed, the field of personality 
psychology, as a unified discipline distinct from clinical and social psychology, has con -
solidated and expanded greatly, and the fourth edition of the Handbook is testimony to 
its increasing growth and maturation.
To accommodate changes in the field over the past decade, we have expanded and 
restructured the Handbook . With more topics to cover, we have increased the number 
of chapters from 32 in the third edition to 42 in the fourth edition. More than half of 
these chapters are entirely new, and the remaining chapters have been thoroughly up -
dated and revised.
The organization of the Handbook  has also been updated and now consists of eight 
sections. Part I provides a broad overview and introduction to the field; each of its five 
chapters summarizes a theoretical perspective that is foundational to the field.
The major body of the Handbook  consists of five sections that represent the main 
content areas of personality theory and research, with greatly expanded coverage 
compared to the previous edition. Part II addresses biological foundations  and cov-
ers temperament, personality in animals, neurobiology, and behavioral and molecular 
genetics. Part III focuses on the development  of personality, with chapters on the over -
all life course, four specific periods in the life course (childhood, adolescence, young 
adulthood, and adulthood to old age), and parenting influences. Part IV covers cogni -
tive and motivational processes  and includes chapters on attention and memory pro -
cesses, implicit motives, the cognitive–affective processing system, and creativity. Part 
V covers affective processes and reviews research on emotion, the approach system, 
self- conscious and social emotions, emotion regulation, and stress and coping. Part VI 
reviews research on self- and social processes and includes chapters on self-concept 
and self-perception, identity, self-regulation, narcissism, attachment, person–situation 
interactions, and culture.
Personality research connects with other fields and has important implications 
and practical applications . These connections are explored in Part VII, which includes Preface