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Objective Personality Assessment

  • Chapter
The Clinical Psychology of Aging

Abstract

This chapter aims to provide a broad, empirically-based sketch of normal personality and its changes throughout adulthood. While it is not intended as a cookbook treatment of the application of objective tests to geriatric populations, it does attempt to make specific links between normal personality and clinical gerontology. One example of this is provided by a consideration of the male midlife crisis, that putatively universal, normative, developmental phase which at the same time can be considered a pre-geriatric clinical condition. Similarly, our theoretical discussion of openness to experience—a personality dimension relevant to the call for more humanistic approaches to aging—is supplemented by presentation of an instrument which may prove a useable operationalization of it. Objective personality assessment has a long and controversial past, but evidence and arguments presented here suggest that its careful use can make a substantial contribution to the field.

Research supported in part by the Council for Tobacco Research—U.S.A., Inc., Grant #1085R1 (University of Massachusetts at Boston) and the Medical Research Service of the Veterans Administration (Normative Aging Study).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Normative Aging Study, V. A. Outpatient Clinic, USA

    Paul T. Costa Jr. Ph.D.

  2. University of Massachusetts at Boston, USA

    Paul T. Costa Jr. Ph.D. & Robert R. McCrae Ph.D.

Authors
  1. Paul T. Costa Jr. Ph.D.
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  2. Robert R. McCrae Ph.D.
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

    Martha Storandt

  2. Duke University Medical School, Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Ilene C. Siegler

  3. University of Maine at Orono, Orono, Maine, USA

    Merrill F. Elias

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© 1978 Plenum Press, New York

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Costa, P.T., McCrae, R.R. (1978). Objective Personality Assessment. In: Storandt, M., Siegler, I.C., Elias, M.F. (eds) The Clinical Psychology of Aging. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3342-5_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-3342-5_5

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4684-3344-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4684-3342-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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