Serving Up Personality Psychology in Europe
Abstract
<p>When I played racquetball, one of the many manifestations of my lack of ability was my serves. Sometimes when my first serve was too short, I would compensate for this by hitting my second serve too long. My description of such serves was that “their mean is great but their variance is awful.” I had the same kind of reaction to this volume. It represents a fairly substantial addition to the personality psychology literature, but it suffers from too much variability in the contributions it contains.</p><p> Personality Psychology in Europe is the fourth volume in a continuing series. Thirteen of the 17 chapters are based on presentations at the Fifth European Conference on Personality, held in Italy in June 1990. Four additional chapters were solicited by the editors to provide a “well-balanced representation of the various topics” (p. xiii). The book is divided into five parts: Personality and Basic Processes; Personality and Intelligence; Personality and Self-Presentation; Personality and Health; and Personality and Aging. Each part begins with a brief Introduction in which the editors provide an overview of the section's theme and contents.</p><p>As I suggested in the first paragraph, my evaluation of this volume is mixed. I will