Dan P. McAdams (born February 7, 1954) is personality psychologist and the Henry Wade Rogers Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northwestern University.^[2][3]

He was raised in Gary, Indiana, where he attended nearby Valparaiso University. In 1979 he was awarded a Ph.D. from the Harvard Department of Social Relations.^[4]

McAdams is the author of The Person: An Introduction to the Science of Personality Psychology, a classroom textbook. He co-edited, with Amia Lieblich and Ruthellen Josselson, the eleven-book series "The Narrative Study of Lives".^[5] He is a member of The Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group at the Becker Friedman Institute for Research in Economics.^[6]

Three Levels of Personality

McAdams' three level model of personality^[7] was used in Jonathan Haidt's The Happiness Hypothesis^[8] The three levels are :

1. Dispositional traits, a person's general tendencies. For example, the Big Five personality traits lists: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism.
2. Characteristic adaptations, a person's desires, beliefs, concerns, and coping mechanisms.
3. Life stories, the stories that give a life a sense of unity, meaning, and purpose. This is known as narrative identity.

Publication

Bibliography

Selected publications:^[2]

• McAdams, D. P. (2015). "The art and science of personality development" New York: The Guilford Press
• McAdams, D. P. (2011). "George W. Bush and the redemptive dream: A psychological portrait." New York: Oxford University Press.
• McAdams, D. P., & Olson, B. (2010). "Personality development: Continuity and change over the life course." In S. Fiske, D. Schacter, and R. Sternberg (Eds.), Annual Review of Psychology (Vol. 61, pp. 517–542). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews, Inc.
• Bauer, J. J., & McAdams, D. P. (2010). "Eudaimonic growth: Narrative growth goals predict increases in ego development and subjective well-being 3 years later." Developmental Psychology, 46, 761–772.
• McAdams, D. P. (2009). "The person: An introduction to the science of personality psychology" (5th Ed.). New York: Wiley.
• McAdams, Dan P. (2008). Foreword to Explorations in Personality, by Henry A. Murray. New York: Oxford University Press.
• McAdams, D. P., Albaugh, M., Farber, E., Daniels, J., Logan, R. L., & Olson, B. (2008). "Family metaphors and moral intuitions: How conservatives and liberals narrate their lives." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 978–990.
• McAdams, D. P., & Pals, J. L. (2006). "A new Big Five: Fundamental principles for an integrative science of personality." American Psychologist, 61, 204–217.
• McAdams, D. P. (2006). "The redemptive self: Stories Americans live by." New York: Oxford University Press.
• McAdams, D. P., Josselson, R. & Lieblich, A. (2001). "Turns in the road : narrative studies of lives in transition" Washington, DC : American Psychological Association.
• McAdams, Dan P (2020). The Strange Case of Donald J. Trump: A Psychological Reckoning. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0197507476. Retrieved 29 October 2020.

Articles and essays

• McAdams, D. P., & Guo, J. (2015). Narrating the generative life. Psychological Science, 26, 475–483.
• Manczak, E., Zapata-Gietl, C., & McAdams, D. P. (2014). Regulatory focus in the life story: Prevention and promotion as expressed in three layers of personality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106, 169–181.
• McAdams, D. P. (2013). The psychological self as actor, agent, and author. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8, 272–295.
• McAdams, D.P. (1995). What do we know when we know a person? Journal of Personality. 63:3, 365 - 396. Duke University Press.