direction to students of personality in their efforts to understand the whole person. Maddi's conversational style encourages thinking instead of memorizing, thereby helping readers master principles from which they can derive knowledge, rather than merely accepting the principles of one theory or another. He explains, compares, and contrasts a number of different personality theories to illuminate the overall models of human behavior they express and provides a frame of reference that coordinates important features of the theories with relevant personality research. Along with a thorough discussion of research methods, this approach shows how empirical efforts are used with theory to resolve the issues separating the different models, successfully merging theory and research.

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