ABSTRACT
A notable theme linking the descriptive attributes together – and, equally, much of the focus in the encyclopaedia – is the inclination sport and exercise psychologists have for personality traits as the basic, and often sole, constructs through which to know the person. The contribution – and the multilayered assessment of Mel’s personality – has provided some guidance and clarification for the way in which different personality constructs can be integrated to create a richer understanding of people’s complexity. The contribution has mainly focused on the applied aspect of using D. P. McAdams’s framework in personality assessment in sport and exercise psychology. By focusing most of their attention on the actor’s trait profile, sport and exercise psychologists continue to underplay the historical mission of personality psychology, which is to study the full gamut of human personality in all of its richness and complexity.
