ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses personality over the life-span tries to show how the several perspectives work together to produce the impression of an enduring personality. The distinction between explicit and implicit theories refers to the distinction between psychologists’ theories of personality derived from formal investigations versus lay persons’ theories or systems of beliefs about personality derived from everyday experience. Psychologists have studied personality by observing behaviour and developing formal theories to account for their observations. Lay personality theory is a form of general knowledge comparable to our knowledge about other aspects of the animate and inanimate environment. Accounts of implicit personality and the self are more commonly found in social psychology texts. The social construction of personality involves the combination of explicit and implicit personality and the self.
