How we create believable characters. Resisting the urge to decide exactly who your character is before you know who your story needs them to be. The interdependence of character and plot and the emotional journey of the character. Moving beyond ‘show; don’t tell’: the interaction between characters allows the reader to get to know characters by observation rather than instruction. Managing minor characters. Conflict, consistency and contradiction all have a part to play in plausible characterisation. Characters come from you but they’re not you: the importance of freeing ourselves as writers from ourselves as people.

This chapter invites consideration of Bloomsbury as the Biography group. It details Bloomsbury’s founding and defining contributions to the “New Biography,” particularly in theoretical and creative works by Harold Nicolson, Virginia Woolf, and the most influential British biographer of the past century, Lytton Strachey. Focusing its attention most carefully on the latter two, it explores how both Woolf and Strachey, as “spiritual” writers of the modernist age (Woolf, “Modern Fiction”), understood biography as a means of revealing personality, while diverging on some essential matters. Woolf, whose initial understanding of biography as an art evolved into a more subdued description of it as (mere) craft, anticipated that this aim might be accomplished through archival assiduity over time by a succession of fact-bound biographers, each bringing a different perspective to facts, old and new. Strachey, for his part, who always considered biography an art form, thought such an aim might be accomplished in the present, using fictional means to reveal both the personality of the nominal biographical subject and the personality of the biographer. This chapter finally reads Strachey as the most important progenitor of biographical fiction.

Chapter 4 on Richard Feynman, my theoretical physics thesis advisor, is a collection of vignettes that reveal aspects of behavior and thought that contributed to his mystique and unique accomplishments in physics.

After relating the history behind Feynman’s V-A theory of party violation, much of it in Feynman’s own words, the rest of the chapter is based on my personal interactions with Feynman lasting for a little more than twenty years, from the time I arrived at Caltech in 1959 till I left in 1981. Feynman’s attitude towards experimental results related to parity violation provides an informative background to how he would handle experimental information related to the discovery of quarks. The intent here, and in the remainder of the Chapter, is to give the reader a sense of how Feynman thought about physics, how he practiced it, and what he valued. His struggle with constituent quarks (aces), and what to make of them, lasted considerably longer than a decade, passing though several phases, including one with partons, but eventually ending with his fully accepting their reality.

Individual differences researchers investigate many kinds of psychological variation, but the most widely studied of these are personality and intelligence. Personality is defined in many ways, but one way of thinking of it is as a form of motivational system which predisposes people to seek out particular situations and respond in particular ways. Personality is measured most frequently by self-report questionnaires. These questionnaires usually describe a personality on a number of dimensions of factors (e.g. extraversion, neuroticism, psychoticism). Research using twin studies suggests that personality is moderately heritable. Theories developed to explain variation in personality have to account for both heritable and non-heritable components. It is necessary not only to understand why personality might be passed on through the genes, but also why so much of the variation in personality appears to be due to the environment. Various theories were advanced to explain both of these aspects of personality.

The life history approach to individual differences has become a major influence in evolutionary psychology, not least thanks to the contributions made by Jay Belsky and his collaborators over the last three decades. Today the approach is at a turning point, with a lively dialectic between proponents and critics and a menu of theoretical and empirical challenges to address. In this chapter, I follow up on previous work and continue to critically examine the concepts and assumptions of the “fast-slow paradigm” in evolutionary psychology. Specifically, I try to clarify some aspects of the interplay between the demographic and psychological levels of analysis, make an updated case for the centrality of the mating–parenting tradeoff in the organization of life history-related traits, describe the constellations formed by those traits, introduce the notion of multiple fast/slow profiles, and (re)consider the role of puberty timing in relation to human life history strategies. Preserving the value of the life history approach demands that we work to keep the foundations healthy – constantly revising our concepts and assumptions, in the spirit of Jay’s remarkable scientific career.

The current chapter focuses on the relationships of stable, nonpathological individual differences to violent extremism. Traditionally, strong contextual forces have been viewed as overriding personal traits in determining group behavior generally and violent extremism specifically. This chapter challenges such conventional wisdom by emphasizing the role of individual differences. We argue and provide evidence that supports and highlights the interplay and complementary roles of individual psychology and social environments in shaping violent extremism. We review recent research exploring the relationship between violent extremism and individual psychological variables such as mental disorders, cognitive styles, motivational imbalances, group identity needs, ideological orientations, sensation-seeking behaviors, and group-based emotions, as well as the Big Five and HEXACO models of personality. We further discuss common criticisms against individual differences in approaches to violent extremism. Here, we distinguish between historical disputes, often based on researchers speaking past each other, and challenges in contemporary individual difference research. Having highlighted the significance of individual differences in violent extremism, we focus on how these insights can aid practitioners and shape policies that counteract violent extremism.

“Personality” is considered as a set of individual characteristics and behavioral dispositions based on both temperamental (partially genetic-driven) and developmental (partially culture-driven) components that are relatively stable across time and context. We suggest that these two intertwined components progressively shape autopoietic processes operating at an individual and a social level in accordance with the theory of evolution and its application to human behavior. We discuss existing evidence linking personality traits to the manifestations of personality disorders and diverse forms of psychopathology. Particular attention is dedicated to the evolutionary concept referred to as Life History Theory, considering its utility in predicting the development of personality traits. We also emphasize the need to explore sources of critique and further research, suggesting that a multifaceted approach to the understanding of personality dimensions is crucial.

Describe key elements of adolescent identity development; evaluate the genetic, social, and cultural influences on identity; understand creativity and cultural change as parts of adolescent development.

Chapter 8 focuses on the timescale in which the short-term timescale of activity and experience is embedded, namely, the creative artist’s life course. It discusses artistic talent, art school and training, the artist’s personality, including the relationship between psychopathology and art, the outsider phenomenon, motivation, inspiration, and drives for artistic creation, artistic identities, intersectionality, and the artistic persona, all of which are complex phenomena. The chapter also discusses the complexity of the relationship between personality and artistic creation, based on a complex dynamic systems approach to personality itself.

This chapter of the handbook reviews empirical research on moral character, which has only recently attained a prominent role in psychology, in contrast to long traditions in ethics and education. A person’s moral character comprises their dispositions to think, feel, and act morally, and these dispositions are cross-situationally and temporally fairly consistent. Against a long-standing belief in psychology that the personality disposition of warmth most strongly influences people’s impressions of one another, the evidence suggests that moral character occupies this central position. Moral character exerts its influence on impressions quite independently of other personality traits, and it features prominently in people’s representations of their own personality as well. Moral character is also a central element in a person’s perceived identity – who the person is perceived to be “deep down.” The authors close by charting some of the features from which people infer another’s moral character, including their actions but also, critically, their mental states such as their goals and intentions.