Our previous chapters have explored personality psychology's past and present. In this epilogue we look to its future. We consider the field's future prospects in the hope of identifying contemporary trends that will prove to be of enduring value. In so doing, we of course are interested not only in personality psychology but in persons. Any normative discussion of the field's future must be guided by convictions about the determinants of personality functioning and the nature of human tendencies and potentials.

Discussion of an academic discipline's future can lapse into idle speculation. Anyone can identify purportedly promising trends and project them ahead. Different writers are likely to identify different trends, and there is no firm basis for evaluating the accuracy or utility of different visions. Nonetheless, pondering the future of our discipline serves a useful purpose. It forces us to evaluate critically the current state of the field; specifically, it forces an evaluation on the most fundamental of criteria: Are contemporary theories and empirical results likely to contribute to a cumulative science of personality in the long run? In other words, what will people think of our current field 50 or 100 years from now? Will history view our work as the first steps in a cumulative science of the person or as a well-intentioned but misguided enterprise of little lasting value?

REASONS FOR OPTIMISM?

In the past two decades, commentators commonly have viewed the field with optimism (e.g., Buss & Cantor, 1989; Kenrick & Dantchik, 1983).