Definition
An American personality psychologist, researcher, and writer.
Introduction
Dan P. McAdams is an American personality psychologist, researcher, and writer who studies personality structure and personality development across the human life course. He is most well known for introducing the concept of narrative identity to the behavioral sciences and for situating the concept within a broad theory of personality and life-span development. The theory conceives of personality as comprised of three layers or lines of development, tracking personality from the standpoint of (1) the social actor (dispositional traits), (2) the motivated agent (goals, values, plans, and other characteristic adaptations), and (3) the autobiographical author(integrative life stories or narrative identities). He has pioneered the use of narrative concepts and methods in personality studies, and he has applied these frameworks to psychological biography, political psychology, and the study of self and...
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McAdams, D.P. (2020). McAdams, Dan P.. In: Zeigler-Hill, V., Shackelford, T.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-24612-3_2229
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