2021/02/01 by Niclas Kuper, Nick Modersitzki, Le Vy Phan +1 · 102 citations
Psychology · #Behavioral Health and Interventions #Cognitive science #Dynamics (music) #Engineering ethics #Field (mathematics) #Mental Health Research Topics #Personality #Personality Traits and Psychology #Personality psychology #Psychology #Relevance (law) #Social psychology #The Renaissance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/bjop.12486
published in British Journal of Psychology 112(1), 1-51 (Wiley)
openalex publication_date 2021/02/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/02
Personality psychology has long focused on structural trait models, but it can also offer a rich understanding of the dynamics, processes, mechanisms, and functioning of individual differences or entire persons. The field of personality dynamics, which works towards such an understanding, has experienced a renaissance in the last two decades. This review article seeks to act as a primer of that field. It covers its historical roots, summarizes current research strands - along with their theoretical backbones and methodologies - in an accessible way, and sketches some considerations for the future. In doing so, we introduce relevant concepts, give an overview of different topics and phenomena subsumed under the broad umbrella term 'dynamics', and highlight the interdisciplinarity as well as applied relevance of the field. We hope this article can serve as a useful overview for scholars within and outside of personality psychology who are interested in the dynamic nature of human behaviour and experience.