Doing justice to the richness of personality : introduction to the Special Issue 'New Approaches to the Measurement of Personality: Translational Thoughts to Applied, Educational, and Clinical Settings'

Personality and its assessment are growth areas in the psychological literature and are important in applied practice. In the decades since personality reemerged as a viable scientific construct following the person-situation debate, we have learned much about the nature and full breadth of personality traits as well as refined methods for the assessment of personality characteristics. Indeed, the personality assessment literature currently is vibrant and now intersects with numerous other disciplines, including traditional psychometrics, developmental psychology and psychopathology, clinical psychology, neuroscience, industrial-organizational psychology, and educational and social psychology. This growth in the personality assessment literature inspired us to organize an expert meeting on personality assessment. This 2-day event-which was held in Oostduinkerke (Belgium) in September 2016-brought together junior and senior personality assessment researchers as well as a number of methodologists from around the world and focused on sharing modern viewpoints on personality assessment from a wide diversity of perspectives. Following the meeting, we envisioned this special issue, including papers from meeting attendees addressing topics that emerged from the discussion sessions and are the result of fruitful and often new collaborations. Although the papers were invited, all were subjected to critical peer review and underwent revisions prior to their publication here. In what follows, the overall rationale for the present special issue and the connection between the different papers will be outlined from an integrative perspective.Personality and its assessment are growth areas in the psychological literature and are important in applied practice. In the decades since personality reemerged as a viable scientific construct following the person-situation debate, we have learned much about the nature and full breadth of personality traits as well as refined methods for the assessment of personality characteristics. Indeed, the personality assessment literature currently is vibrant and now intersects with numerous other disciplines, including traditional psychometrics, developmental psychology and psychopathology, clinical psychology, neuroscience, industrial-organizational psychology, and educational and social psychology. This growth in the personality assessment literature inspired us to organize an expert meeting on personality assessment. This 2-day event-which was held in Oostduinkerke (Belgium) in September 2016-brought together junior and senior personality assessment researchers as well as a number of methodologists from around the world and focused on sharing modern viewpoints on personality assessment from a wide diversity of perspectives. Following the meeting, we envisioned this special issue, including papers from meeting attendees addressing topics that emerged from the discussion sessions and are the result of fruitful and often new collaborations. Although the papers were invited, all were subjected to critical peer review and underwent revisions prior to their publication here. In what follows, the overall rationale for the present special issue and the connection between the different papers will be outlined from an integrative perspective.