Personality Psychology Podcast

In this episode, Rebekka Weidmann spoke with Theo Klimstra and Kate McLean, the two authors of a recently accepted Target Article in the European Journal of Personality titled "Reconsidering Normative Interpretations in Personality Research". The authors summarize their article and speak about how the field can move forward.

René Mõttus talks to Bill Revelle and Bob Hogan who are well respected personality researchers in the field. They argue that the main use of personality research is to predict what real people do in the real world. Yet, much of academic psychology has not taken this seriously, focusing on abstract ideas and models with little real-world relevance. They discuss why useful personality assessment is not about complex statistics or even measuring traits, but simply adding up questions that best predict important outcomes. They also discuss why we should stop believing in Easter Bunnies, how to reassess your work after forty years, and how to build a successful global company. And many other things.

Creative products—paintings, poems, but also innovative ideas like the invention of the wheel—help societies move forward. As such, it is no surprise that formal interest in creativity from psychologists dates back at least 100 years, and the informal interest arguably much longer. In this episode, Rodica Damian and Andreea Sutu, two experts in the study of creativity, discuss with Lisanne de Moor what creativity is, what the personality traits of a creative person are, and if creativity is linked to psychopathology.

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor spoke with David Hughes and Paul Irwing, two of the authors of a recent publication in the European Journal of Personality titled "Toward a taxonomy of personality facets". The authors summarize their article and its studies and outline how they developed the facet map.

Many lay people and scientists think that life events can change personality traits. But proving or disproving this has been surprisingly challenging. Wiebke Bleidorn and Chris Hopwood are among the leading researchers on this topic, and they were involved in a recent large study that summarized the evidence so far. They will talk to René Mõttus about the latest research on life events and personality trait change, and discuss possible ways forward.

In this episode, Lucius Caviola discusses his psychological research on effective altruism and how people can be encouraged to give more effectively. You can try out effective giving yourself using his research-based donation platform https://givingmultiplier.org/personality. The episode also explores Lucius' research on how we perceive the value of animals and think about future risks.

Have you ever pondered about your purpose? In this episode, we talked with Gabrielle Pfund about sense of purpose. What does it mean to have a sense of purpose, how can we measure it, and how is it related to important life outcomes? Gabrielle also describes the characteristics of people who are more likely to have a sense of purpose and in what direction her research is headed.

There is a lot of interest in the idea that people can voluntarily change their personality traits. René Mõttus talks to Mathias Allemand, Gabriel Olaru, and Christoph Flückiger about personality change interventions. Why people want to change their personality traits, how can they do it, and how long could the effects last? They also discuss ethical issues related to trait change, and whether most people have already been subjected to a personality change intervention – at school.

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor talks with four researchers in the field of personality and aging about common trends in personality change into old age, antecedents and consequences thereof and, most importantly, individual differences.

In this episode, Marie Hennecke and Jana Nikitin talk about their research on goals and motivations. Specifically, they discuss why goals and motivations are important, how they change across the lifespan, and how we can achieve our goals—and even change our personality traits.

What is a good life? And can people have it? A recent European Journal of Personality paper authored by Emily Willroth and colleagues explored this question among U.S. Americans and Japanese, and also asked whether most people have the lives that they want.

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor talks with three experts on what narrative identity is, what important contributions it makes to the field of personality psychology, and what is needed to further advance research on narrative identity.

Personality research occupies itself with not only the Big Five traits but a myriad of other important constructs. Bill Chopik talks in this episode about his research on attachment, optimism, and honesty, and also close relationships (including pets). He shares his experience with cross-cultural and lifespan studies, and important lessons from grad school.

Many researchers like to think of personalities as patterns of dynamic states. Thanks to technological advances, they can now measure the states and build statistical models from these measurements. Other researchers may have remained more sceptical: after all, isn’t personality something relatively stable, by definition? Can state models really help us better understand how people differ from one another in their personality traits? Trying to make sense of this topic, René Mõttus speaks to three experts on the topic: Gabriela Harari, Kai Horstmann and Whitney Ringwald. They discuss what personality states are and how these relate to personality traits, the primary focus of personality research.

In this episode, Michael Grosz talks about what causal inference is, how difficult it is to test in personality psychology, and why he doesn't give up on our field.

In this episode moderated by Lisanne de Moor, Colin DeYoung, Isabel Thielmann, Luke Smillie, and Reinout de Vries discuss personality traits and trait models, and debate the evidence for and against two of the most dominant trait models: the Big Five and the HEXACO model.

What does geography have to do with personality? In this episode, Rebekka Weidmann speaks with Fritz Götz, Elisa Militaru, and Markus Jokela about studying personality from a geographical psychology approach—what that research field is, how things are measured (and how tricky it is to measure), past interesting findings and future directions.

Julie Exline is an expert in studying spirituality and religiosity. For this episode, Julie talked with Rebekka Weidmann how she came to study spirituality and religiosity, the nature of spiritual struggles, and supernatural operating rules—how people envision or experience God or other supernatural powers.

Michel Nivard and René Mõttus discuss classical and modern behaviour genetics, and why much of personality genetics is no longer focused on finding personality genes (there are none) but using genes to learn about environment. Perhaps paradoxically, then, genetics is as likely to help with building psychological and sociological theories of personality as biological theories.

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor chats with Adam Fetterman about his work on the role of personality and beliefs in shaping people’s behavior in contemporary phenomena such as doomsday prepping, science denial, and people’s willingness to admit to being wrong.