Foreword

During the past 50 years, there has been remarkable progress in the understanding of individual differences in personality. There now is considerable agreement that lengthy lists of personality trait terms can be reliably referred to a small number of independent, descriptive factors, notably sociability, emotional stability, impulsiveness, sensation seeking, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. Although there is some debate on which of these personality factors are fundamental, this psychometric work constitutes an important foundation for defining and structuring personality characteristics into a rational classification schema. The heritability of personality factors was also convincingly demonstrated in several large-scale identical twin and adoption studies. Determining the genetic architecture that serves individual differences in personality is now an important research objective. Moreover, this work strongly suggests that constitutional factors, under the influence of genetic mechanisms, contribute substantially to the expression of personality traits. In this respect, too, significant progress has been made in revealing the psychological processes and physiological mechanisms that mediate individual differences in personality. Throughout this span of inquiry, Marvin Zuckerman was an important contributor and an inspiring catalyst for a broad range of scientific research on the nature of personality.

In recognition of his outstanding productive scholarship, colleagues of Professor Zuckerman at the University of Delaware initiated a plan to honor his academic career and his retirement from the University with a symposium on personality at the University of Delaware and with the dedication of a book of essays contributed by colleagues, collaborators and experts in the field of personality. I was invited by his colleagues to organize and edit this book and I was pleased to do so.

Marvin Zuckerman is a well-established, renowned leader in research and writing on the social and biological bases of personality. In particular, he is a leading authority on the biological bases of sensation seeking and fundamental personality dispositions and on the manifestation of these dispositions in social behavior and in psychopathology. His major books Sensation seeking: Beyond the optimal level of arousal (1979), Psychobiology of Personality (1991), and Behavioral expressions and biosocial bases of sensation seeking (1994) are well known, required reading by students and researchers in this field. His personal research contributions and commentary exploited the full range of methods and models in psychological and physiological research, from the identification of fundamental personality traits through factor analysis, social behavior, psychopathology, psychophysiology, biochemical assays to molecular genetics. During the course of this interdisciplinary work, he collaborated and communed with leading authorities in those fields. These colleagues have committed to contribute essays in this tribute to Professor Zuckerman.

The title of this book, On the psychobiology of personality: Essays in honor of Marvin Zuckerman, mirrors the title of his first major work and marks the scope of this book. An important objective of the text is to encompass the broad range of research in personality that provided the context for Zuckerman’s work and that also highlights his own contribution to progress in this field. The contributors to this volume were encouraged to address issues within their area of expertise that were resolved, to discuss issues that are unresolved, and to make an informed statement on current knowledge in their research domain. Thus, the text is intended to provide a succinct and state-of-the-art analysis of our current understanding of personality. The text offers both reflections on issues in personality research and technical reviews and research reports. By this approach, it is hoped that the text will constitute a useful resource and reference guide for students of personality. In addition, the text will serve as a catalyst for future research in the area, in much the same way that the contributions of Marvin Zuckerman served as a catalyst for work by a host of research scientists.

The book is organized in five parts. Part I provides brief historical perspectives on the biological bases of personality. Part II treats the identification and structure of fundamental personality traits and Part III deals with personality and social behavior. The fourth part is presented in two sections, psychophysiological analyses and biochemical analyses. The fifth section, an epilogue, contains a postscript on personality and it also includes an autobiography by our protagonist, Marvin Zuckerman.

1 Part I

A framework for understanding the psychobiology of personality is developed in the first section by introducing influential concepts and by identifying significant developments and issues. The text begins with a chapter by Ernest Barratt, who is a pioneer in personality research and noted for his work on impulsiveness, and by his colleagues Luis Orozco-Cabal and Gerard Moeller. This chapter provides a historical perspective on current challenges to research on impulsivity and sensation seeking. In the second chapter, Robert Stelmack discusses the role of the arousal construct in understanding the personality dimensions of extraversion, and sensation seeking. The arousal construct is of significant heuristic value as an explanatory construct in several theories of personality, including Zuckerman’s theory of sensation seeking and Eysenck’s theory of extraversion. This introductory section closes with a chapter by Jan Strelau and Magdalena Kaczmarek who provide an international, East European perspective, in a chapter on sensation seeking research that was conducted at the University of Warsaw.

2 Part II

The second section includes chapters that are germane to the identification and structure of fundamental personality factors. A rigorous, independent, personality classification scheme that receives broad endorsement from the academic community is an essential criterion for advancing the empirical analysis of personality. The contribution of Zuckerman to the development of a Five-Factor Model (FFM) of personality is outlined in essays by his colleague and co-author Mike Kulhman and by Jeffrey Joireman. They also detail the construction of the Zuckerman-Kuhlman Personality Questionnaire (ZKPQ) and chart the validity studies that have established authenticity of the test. Paul Schmitz describes his work on the confirmatory factor analysis of the German version of the ZKPQ and the validation studies that he conducted with the test. The chapter by Alois Angleitner and his colleagues, Frank Spinath and Rainer Riemann, report on their study of the psychometric properties of the ZKPQ and its relation to the FFM. They also present a behavioral genetic analysis of genetic and environmental influences on the ZKPQ scales and facets. In her chapter, Sybil Eysenck discusses issues and developments that define the place of impulsiveness and venturesomeness in Eysenck’s well-known typology of personality.

As Zuckerman (1991) noted, the stability of personality across the life span and the heritability of personality factors are two criteria that are important in determining that personality factors are fundamental. The former topic is addressed by Gordon Bazana and Robert Stelmack who present a detailed meta-analysis of studies that examine the test-retest reliability of the FFM at different age intervals. They present a strong case that personality factors are stable across the life span. The genetic basis of substance abuse and the mediating effects of sensation seeking are treated by Andrew Johnson and Tony Vernon. There is good evidence of the genetic and physiological basis of individual differences in sensation seeking. They argue that the latent trait purported to underlie alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse is a sensation seeking dimension similar to that originally conceptualized by Zuckerman.

3 Part III

The development of a fundamental personality typology is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a rational means to describe, and subsequently, to understand human behavior and to reveal the social and biological determinants of that behavior. The third section of the text includes chapters on a broad range of social activities and life experiences that illustrate the pervasive expression of personality differences in our daily lives. How personality dispositions are linked to the selection of leisure activities is discussed by Adrian Furnham, and Monserrat Gomà i Freixanet reviews research on the role of sensation seeking in participation in physical risk sports.

Individual differences in personality are also implicated in the development of personality disorders, substance abuse, and psychopathology. These are vital personal and social subjects. Lewis Donohew, and his colleagues Michael Bardo and Rick Zimmerman, make the case that sensation seeking and impulsive decision-making play significant roles in attention and persuasion. They show that these traits must be taken into account in programs that aim to discourage individuals from engaging in risky activities such as unprotected sex or that promote health and safety such as anti-smoking campaigns and safety in the work place.

Marvin Zuckerman is a leader in research on the role that personality, especially sensation seeking, plays in alcohol and drug abuse. Sam Ball, a former student with Zuckerman, pursued this line of research. In his chapter, he suggests that impulsivity, novelty...