Personality Psychology Podcast

Loren Toussaint shares the science of forgiveness with Lisanne de Moor. This episode focuses on what forgiveness is as a scientific construct and what are its personality correlates, as well as why it can be so beneficial to be forgive others -- and, tentatively, why it is beneficial to be forgiven. In this relatively new area of research, unexplored questions are raised for future research as well as insights for forgiveness in people's own lives.

In this episode, Shige Oishi and Felix Cheung discuss with Lisanne de Moor the topic of happiness and related well-being constructs. They delve into predictors at the individual, social, and societal level of what makes people happy. The conversation highlights the (limited) agency people have in improving their own happiness and what are important research questions and practical implementations of research for the future.  

In this paper spotlight episode, Rebekka Weidmann speaks with Michael Krämer about his recent publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, titled “What explains personality change intervention effects?”. Co-authored by Chris Hopwood, Travis Miller, and Wiebke Bleidorn, the paper summarized three studies that tested personality trait change interventions and compared them to acceptance interventions and examined whether they were driven by expectancy effects. Michael provides the theoretical background of the study, summarizes the findings, and provides ideas how these findings can be used for future research.

In this episode, Dr. Stephen Asatsa discusses his work on trauma and personality with Lisanne de Moor. He shares recent insights from his work on mourning rituals and a broader perspective on integrating experience and expertise held by local communities into mainstream psychology.     

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor talks with Simine Vazire about the history, development, and future of Open Science in the field of personalty psychology.

Elliot Berkman, Kaitlyn Werner and Andero Uusberg are all experts in the fields of self-regulation and affect regulation. In this episode, they define their respective fields and discuss how they intersect with personality research. There are many parallels, including the distinction between variability among and within people, issues with measurement and construct fuzziness, and a focus on interventions. Hosted by René Mõttus.

In this episode, Rebekka Weidmann speaks with Daniel Leising about his recent publication in Personality Science, titled “A Mathematical Model of Person Judgment Part I: Cue Emergence.” Co-authored with mathematician René L. Schilling, the paper introduces the first part of a formalized model of person judgment. It integrates components from existing narrative theories and presents them in a testable, mathematical framework. Daniel shares how the collaboration came about, what the model entails, and how it can be applied in both research and teaching.

In this episode that was recorded with a live audience, Lisanne de Moor speaks with Kate Rogers, Amy Summerville, and Tal Yarkoni about their decision to leave academia. The three guests openly share their own story of leaving academia behind and how they navigated this choice. In addition, they answer questions from the live audience.

In this episode, Estelle Moore and Martin Sellbom discuss with Lisanne de Moor the role of personality in forensic research and practice. They describe important personality traits as well as personality disorders and current developments in the view in the field on personality pathology. The episode concludes with an eye on crucial next steps.

In this episode, Anat Bardi and Laura Parks-Leduc join Rebekka Weidmann to discuss their research on values. They delve into their unique and shared definitions and research approaches to the topic of values, explaining how values can change and their associations with personality traits. The conversation also highlights well-established evidence about values and identifies areas that remain unexplored.

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor talks with Matthias Ziegler and René Mõttus about the change in editorship at the European Journal of Personality and how they reflect on and look ahead at their time in the role of Editor-in-Chief.  

During this episode, Lisanne de Moor talked with Jennifer Meyer and Jennifer Symonds about the links between personality and education – and the different levels at which to address this topic. They also discuss important real-world implications of the role that personality can play in education.  

René Mõttus talks to Sandra Matz and Michal Kosinski about the use of our digital footprints and AI in personality research and how this can be put to practical use. There is a lot going on in this field, with potentially profound theoretical and practical implications. Both Sandra and Michal are pioneers in this field, and Sandra has just published a book on the subject called Mindmasters.

In this episode, the three hosts reminisce about the past four years of the podcast—their favorite episodes, honorable mentions, and important lessons learned. They also talk about plans for the future of the podcast. The team’s newest addition, Celine Strohbehn, the podcast’s social media manager, is also introduced and her involvement with the podcast is described.

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor spoke with Filip De Fruyt about his career-long commitment to studying personality development in early life and the development of maladaptive personality traits in children. He also discusses historical shifts in the field that have allowed for new questions regarding development to emerge and to be studied.  

Much of psychological science is about measurement. But are we any good at it? How could we do (even) better? Ruben Arslan and Farid Anvari argue that researchers often act like there was no past, inventing ever new tests without re-using, improving or even referring to what already exists. This unchecked proliferation of tests has left many subfields of psychology fragmented, as research findings are often not comparable to others. But Ruben and Farid also offer a path forward and argue that there is much to be happy about in psychological measurements—it often works surprisingly well. Listen to find out why 0.42 is (not really) a magic number and how scientific debate can inspire a rap battle. Hosted by René Mõttus.

In this episode, Jaap Denissen, the new editor-in-chief of Personality Science, discusses the journal's recent relaunch with Rebekka Weidmann. Jaap shares insights into what the relaunch involved, the current initiatives and goals of the journal, and highlights a recently accepted special issue. Learn more about the exciting changes and future directions of this open-access journal.

In this episode, Rebekka Weidmann spoke with Nic Weststrate about how he incorporates different, but less represented methods in his research with LGBTQ+ communities, such as narratives, psychobiographies, and community-engaged work. He also talks about how the field can embrace a “Yes, and” mindset in better valuing different theoretical and empirical approaches.

In our daily lives, we may come across many situations in which we act in ways that are different from our typical personality. In this episode, Lisanne de Moor speaks with Evy Kuijpers about what counterdispositional behavior is and what the consequences of behaving in ways that are “out of character” are.

Loneliness has received a lot of attention—especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. In this episode, Rebekka Weidmann speaks with loneliness experts Marlies Maes, Julianne Holt-Lunstad, Marcus Mund, and Susanne Bücker about the definition of loneliness and related but distinct constructs, the rising interest in loneliness, measurement issues, interventions, and more.

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.

Personality psychology is an exciting field of research. However, as we learn in Moin Syed’s presentation, this excitement has been dampened by a hyper focus on methodological and definitional issues based on the history of our field. However, personality can be more. Moin Syed talks in his presentation about how our field can earn back its excitement. 

For this episode, we talked to ten researchers at the 20th European Conference on Personality (#ECP20) in Madrid, including Anna Hakobjanyan, Jérome Rossier, Matej Bjurković, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura Buchinger, Markus Jokela, Barbara De Clercq, Verònica Benet-Martínez, Arij Yehya, and Kendall Mather.

This episode's guests were Nick Turiano, Damaris Aschwanden, and Yannick Stephan, three experts in personality and health psychology, who talked with Rebekka Weidmann about the importance of considering personality when predicting important health outcomes across the life span.

Many people believe that traumatic experiences are often followed by psychological growth. What does not kill us, makes us stronger, right?  Laura Blackie and Eranda Jayawickreme are among the leading researchers on this topic, and they just guest-edited a special issue on post-traumatic personality growth in the European Journal of Personality. They talked with René Mõttus what they have learned about how trauma can change us—or if it even changes us, after all.

René Mõttus talks with Emily Willroth and Brett Ford about their recently published paper in the European Journal of Personality entitled: "Emotional responses to a global stressor: Average patterns and individual differences"

In this episode, Lisanne de Moor talked with three experts about a dimensional approach to conceptualizing and measuring psychopathology, and the HiTOP model as an example of one of the advancements of this approach.

Rebekka Weidmann talks with Paul Eastwick about his recently accepted paper in the European Journal of Personality entitled: "Predicting Romantic Interest during Early Relationship Development: A Preregistered Investigation using Machine Learning"

Lisanne de Moor speaks with Ulrich Orth, Ketaki Diwan, and Lorenzo Filosa, three self-esteem researchers, about what self-esteem is, why it has attracted so much scientific attention, some interesting new discoveries, and some outstanding research questions.

René Mõttus speaks with Ian Deary, who has published many hundreds of articles on intelligence and personality traits, alongside several books. They discuss the value of robust empirical findings over grand theories and key findings about human intelligence. They also compare personality and intelligence research and discuss their future. And finally, this is the first episode of the podcast where a guest also sings.

In this episode, Rebekka Weidmann speaks with Chris Hopwood about his research on personality and psychopathology, and also his work on authenticity and realness, sustainable behavior, and veganism.