Emerging Personality in Childhood and Adolescence: Implications for the Development of Narcissism and Machiavellianism

As long as psychological researchers have worked toward characterizing and understanding human personality, the belief has existed that individual differences can yield important information that can aid in the prediction of specific behaviors or outcomes. Childhood personality offers the potential to better understand, even predict, outcomes such as academic achievement, success in interpersonal relationships, and resiliency to the development of psychopathology. Increased attention to individual differences in children will have significant implications at the level of individual outcomes but also for outcomes at the level of the family, school, neighborhood, and society as a whole. The theoretical history and emerging evidence regarding the relevance of narcissism and Machiavellianism in the psychological functioning of children are presented in this volume. Here, we briefly set the stage for this discussion by describing important issues for conceptualizing individual differences in childhood and adolescence.