ABSTRACT

The previous chapters in this volume each engage with aspects of personality science. In this chapter, we focus on personality science itself. We advance the position that contemporary personality science presents a dual picture. In part, personality science has accrued a stock of well-accepted knowledge about patterns in human behavior that make for a sort of consensual “paradigm.” But there are also major unresolved matters. On these disputed matters, one can delineate opposing views: a received and conservative but probably not entirely correct view, and an alternative and seemingly radical view that is probably just as likely to be correct. Reflecting the lively relevance of industrial–organizational (I/O) psychology for core personality science, numerous chapters in this volume intersect with aspects of this alternative view.