Past Citations

2012

Dan McAdams has been the leading thinker over the past quarter century in the study of personality, identity, and human development. His work has spanned the study of generativity in adult development, the role of power, intimacy, and redemption in human lives, modernity and the self, the psychological study of religion, and autobiographical memory. He is best known for developing a life-story theory of human identity, through which he has demonstrated that people form sense of purpose in their lives by creating "personal myths." This pioneering work is marked by the linking of theory and research, the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods, and an unparalleled ability to draw not only from various areas within psychology, but also from theology, history and philosophy. His book, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, received APA's 2006 William James Award and the 2007 Association of American Publishers Award for excellence in professional and scholarly publishing. While advancing the field of personality in important and creative ways, Dan McAdams has been an extraordinary ambassador, representing the best of personality psychology to the social sciences and humanities, and through his lucid writing, to the general public.

2011

TCharles Carver has been one of the most influential and integrative thinkers and prolific contributors to research on personality over the past three decades. His theory of self-regulation through goals (an overview was published as a book in 1998, together with his long-time collaborator, Michael Scheier) has influenced scores of personality psychologists and represents a sophisticated application of cybernetic principles to the description of personality dynamics. Among his other influential contributions to personality research are his work on self-directed attention, his work on optimism, a theory of emotion as resulting from discrepancies between projected and actual rates of goal progress, and an account of depression and impulsive aggression as resulting from impaired regulation of behavioral approach and avoidance systems. Charles Carver has been an incredibly prolific writer, sharp and rigorous thinker, and has helped shape the field through his tenure as editor at JPSP and author of a popular textbook (coauthored by Michael Scheier) that introduces new students to the field of personality with an amazingly broad and balanced approach to its diversity. Modern research on personality has benefitted tremendously from Carver's input and would be considerably poorer and less developed without it.

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