1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what got you interested in personality psychology?
Sure! I’m currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zürich working with Wiebke Bleidorn. I recently earned my PhD from Washington University in St. Louis where I worked with Josh Jackson. I was actually initially interested in clinical psychology, way back during my junior year of high school. I even continued on that trajectory throughout my undergraduate time and (all but one of) my graduate school applications! My undergraduate university had a large clinical focus but didn’t have much of a research emphasis on personality, so I didn’t get much exposure to it.
I was lucky enough to get research experience in places like the Department of Veteran Affairs for PTSD and more practical experience in local substance use clinics observing group therapy. I knew I had a tendency to view all of these clinical experiences through the lens of an individual’s qualities that influenced their outcomes and even their current situational circumstances, such as how talkative versus shy they were, how warm versus cold they were in social interactions with other group members, or how often they were on time versus late for their sessions. This made me realize I had developed a pretty clear interest in personality disorders and in linking them to “normal” trait models of personality. Near the end of my undergraduate studies while taking an introductory personality course and going through the graduate school interview process, though, I had a realization that it was actually just people’s general traits that I was interested in. I knew I cared about people’s individual differences – it just so happened I was only exposing myself to individual differences in clinical settings and populations!
Long story short, it turned out I had already been interested in personality for quite some time, but it wasn’t until I took a personality class and got a little exposure to the academic field of personality while applying to graduate school that I could accurately label it as such.
2. What are you currently interested in/working on regarding personality psychology?
Ah, I feel like I’m interested in so many things! A lot of my recent/current work has been focused on quantifying new individual difference metrics – or ways to describe new types of individual differences – for personality development and testing their utility. One example is individual differences in the best-fitting model for personality trajectories, such that people differ in the type of model form that best depicts their personality development (e.g., linear, cubic). Another example is individual differences in longitudinal within-person variability around long-term trait trajectories, with this indicating that some people are quite variable around their predicted personality trajectories whereas others adhere quite closely to their expected pattern of development. This line of research was mostly born out of a desire to test the implicit and explicit assumptions underlying a lot of previous work in the field of personality development, such as the belief that one single model form can adequately capture the range of individual-level personality development in a sample, or that the restrictive assumptions inherent in many of the typically used models in research (e.g., homogeneity of variance) are appropriate.
Another area of my current (and future) work is focused on understanding what elicits changes in personality at different levels (like traits, habits, and states) and the mechanisms underlying these change processes. My postdoctoral work is focused on a digital personality intervention for neuroticism that will use a series of intensive longitudinal studies and computational modelling to try and figure all of that out. I am really excited to see how it all unfolds.
3. Are there any specific findings in the field that you are excited about?
I’ve found that I’m really drawn to work which identifies novel individual difference metrics as well as that which compares the utility of different individual difference metrics. Some of the recent research on the more personality dynamics side of the field identifying individual differences in state-situation contingencies and variability in personality across different situations is super interesting to me. I’ve also been excited about some of the research on life events that mapped individual differences in change after events onto people’s perceptions of their event-related changes. I love seeing all of the nuance in these effects being investigated so closely.
4. Where would you like to see yourself, as an early career researcher in the next 5 years? Are there any specific movements/shifts in the direction of the field that you would like to see in the next 5 years?
For myself, I would ideally love to have an independent research program that focuses on expanding what we know about personality development, change, and prediction. I would also like to incorporate new types of studies (such as measurement burst designs) and use new analytic approaches in my research. I think there are so many cool potential effects out there that exist at different timescales and for different metrics, I’d love to be quantifying and fully exploring those in 5 years!
For the field, I would love to see a continued push in examining all of the intricacies that underlie effects, as well as generally quantifying effects using different approaches. The field seems to really love mean levels of traits, or mean levels of constructs in general for that matter, but I think this focus on mean levels neglects a lot of other valuable metrics for personality and other variables. For instance, people’s degree of within-person variability around their trajectory for a trait, such as neuroticism or conscientiousness, is uniquely associated with commonly examined variables in the field such as age, income, and cognitive ability. Moreover, this individual difference can also predict an outcome (e.g., health status) above and beyond any effects due to mean levels of traits or mean-level changes in traits. Valuable sources of information that come from these other metrics are frequently neglected in the field, and I think that results in a ton of really exciting routes for possible research not being explored. Relatedly, I think a greater focus on using both variable-centered and person-centered approaches would lead to a ton of cool research.
5. Do you have any tips for peer early career researchers?
Well, I have some tips that I myself would’ve liked to hear a few years ago, so hopefully these will do! First, don’t be intimidated by a new analytic approach or model that you’ve never worked with before. The best way to learn it and master it is to use it yourself in your own work! Second, pay attention to the aspects of your work that really interest you. For example, I found that I, of course, was interested in things like personality and its associations with future outcomes or how much personality changes across time. However, reading other studies and in every one of my own projects, I was always really interested in how the choice of the analysis, the form of the model, the scaling of the time variable, etc. influences effects. This made me realize I had probably an equivalent interest in the analytical side of personality research as much as the substantive content side of it. And this itself led to other work incorporating these interests of mine!
As minor and silly as it sounds, I think just being in tune with which parts of your work you’re most interested in can really help you shape your research “identity” (and really enjoy your research!).
Third, everyone’s experience in academia is so idiosyncratic that making comparisons to other people in terms of how they describe their experiences, what cool things they are working on, or how much they’re publishing is really a lost cause. Just simply reading and enjoying all of the cool research you see put out and making friends with your peers at a similar career stage is the best way to enjoy what you do!
If you are an Early Career Researcher and would like to promote your work and help other Early Career Researchers, email mmcilvenna02@qub.ac.uk.
Amanda J. Wright