From Personality and Assessment (1968) to Personality Science, 2009

This article reviews the context in which Personality and Assessment (1968) was written, why I wrote it, what it said and did not say, and the key challenges and issues it raised for the field in the 40 years since its publication. I focus on the theoretical re-conceptualization that became the Cognitive-Affective Processing System (CAPS) model of personality, the empirical discoveries about the structure and organization of the individual’s social behavior that enabled it, and the resolutions they allow for the problems identified in the 1968 book. These developments also suggest a very different agenda, indeed a new paradigm, for the future of personality science, which is outlined here.