Biology of Personality and Individual Differences [Hardcover]

Turhan Canli PhD (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 23, 2006 | ISBN-10: 1593852525 | ISBN-13: 978-1593852528 | Edition: 1

This is the first book to provide an overview of current research using cutting-edge genetic and neuroimaging methods in the study of personality. Integrating compelling lines of inquiry that until now have largely remained disparate, the volume brings together leading investigators from personality psychology; clinical psychology and psychiatry; cognitive, affective, and behavioral neuroscience; and comparative psychology. Coverage includes the structure of personality and its mapping onto biology, genetic markers for individual differences, vulnerability to psychopathology, sex differences, age-related processes, and functional neuroimaging approaches.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Questions about the biological basis of personality and the self are among the most important and least understood ones facing brain scientists and other biologists and psychologists. This volume provides an excellent, up-to-date survey of some of the key issues from a variety of perspectives. It will be a valuable resource for all who are interested in these topics."--Joseph LeDoux, PhD, Center for Neural Science, New York University

"This is an outstanding book on biological processes underlying some of the major dimensions of personality and individual differences. It will be of interest to graduate students and researchers alike. Current findings from diverse fields such as cognition, psychiatry, behavioral neuroscience, and comparative psychology address personality traits and processes, showing how far we have come and how far yet there is to go."--Paul T. Costa, Jr., PhD

"Individual differences have always been of fundamental concern to psychology, but until recently the neurological, biochemical, and genetic underpinnings of personality have been more a matter of speculation than research. Turhan Canli has gathered together as thoughtful a collection of scholars as one could imagine, and their research agenda will guide the field for decades. This is a fascinating read for personality and social psychologists who want to know more about the neurosciences, and for neuroscientists who want a better understanding of how their methods and paradigms can help us address that fundamental question in our field: What differentiates one person from another?"--Peter Salovey, PhD

About the Author

Turhan Canli, PhD, is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at Stony Brook University and a member of the Graduate Program in Genetics. He holds degrees from Tufts University (BA, 1988) and from Yale University (PhD, 1993). Dr. Canli’s research focuses on the neurogenetic basis of personality and emotion, using a combination of cognitive-behavioral paradigms, noninvasive brain imaging (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and stimulation (transcranial magnetic stimulation), and genotyping for gene polymorphisms related to personality traits.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 462 pages
• Publisher: The Guilford Press; 1 edition (January 23, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593852525
• ISBN-13: 978-1593852528
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,321,324 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars review on the book Biology of personality and individual differences, September 8, 2009

By 

Jose Vidal Gomez (Barcelona, Spain) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Biology of Personality and Individual Differences (Hardcover)

Title: Biology of personality and individual differences.
Editor: Turhan Canli.
Publisher: The Guilford Press, New York.
Year: 2006.

This book is a series of chapters on the biological bases of some individual differences, concretely, differences in extraversion, neuroticism, sex differences in response to stress and sexual stimuli, and individual differences in children; a section is included on the use of animals to study personality dimensions.
Each chapter is written by a specialist author, or several specialists authors, and deals mainly with the biological underpinnings of personality traits, specially extraversion and neuroticism. Thus, the contribution of genes, neurotransmitters, and hormones to the above traits is described in some detail; imaging techniques, mainly functional magnetic resonance imaging, are used throughout the book, although pharmacological and genetic approaches are also used. At the beginning of some chapters, a review of the literature is provided on the subject covered by that chapter. This contribution is appreciated by persons, like this reviewer, not fully acquainted with the subject.
I would not recommend this book as a primer to teach individual differences to undergraduate students, because a primer takes a wide (although not deep) look at a variety of subjects, whereas this book deals with some particular subjects in depth. Instead, I recommend this book for graduate student courses on the biological bases of personality; I also recommend this book to researchers and professionals interested in the biology of personality.
Given the paucity of books on this area (the biological bases of personality), the publication of this book is welcome.