Contemporary Personality Psychologists
Personality psychologists are psychologists who are interested in the study of how an individual's major psychological subsystems -- motives, emotions, the self, and others -- function together to create a person's life patterns.
Today, most personality psychologists have Ph.D.'s in psychology -- usually with a specialization in personality, social, or clinical psychology. That was not always the case, however, and some earlier personality psychologists have been trained in medicine and other fields.
Today, many personality psychologists work in colleges and universities, where they teach courses in personality psychology and related areas, and conduct research on personality and how it influences people's lives.
Another group of personality psychologists work in organizational settings, where they often may be found in departments of Human Resources. In such roles, they may attempt to understand, for example, the particular personality traits that will help individuals work successfully at a particular job.
Still other personality psychologists work as consultants to organizations, helping with the selection and retention of key personnel.
Finding Out More About Contemporary Psychologists
If you are interested in seeing brief descriptions of contemporary personality psychologists, and visiting their web pages, you can find these from the web site maintained by the Association for Research in Personality. Click here to go to the member profiles for many of these individuals.
Other psychologists with interest in personality psychology can be found on the Social Psychology Network. To find them (the list will partly overlap with the ARP list), go to the Membership List area of the SPN web site -- and, using the search box at the top, enter the term "personality."
Of course, for either the ARP or SPN sites, if you have the name of a psychologist you are particularly interested in, you can search for that name.
Personality Psychologists in History:
The Grand Theorists of the Early-to-Mid 20th Century
When people think of personality psychologists, certain names often come to mind: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Carl Rogers, and others. These individuals were highly prominent theorists and researchers of human nature in the early-to-mid 20th century. They sometimes are referred to as the Grand Theorists of the field.
Today, there certainly are eminent theorists of personality, but the field no longer depends on grand theorists for its mission(s). Rather, it is focussed today on research about how the personality system operates.
Finding Out More About Grand Theorists
If you are interested in finding out more about grand theorists from an online source, a great resource is Professor C. George Boeree's on-line and open-access textbook, "Personality Theories."