Personality Tests with Deep-Sounding Questions Provide Shallow Answers about...
Have you ever clicked on a link like “What does your favorite animal say about you?” wondering what your love of hedgehogs reveals about your psyche? Or filled out a personality assessment to gain new...
View ArticleHaving a Growth Mindset Makes It Easier to Develop New Interests
“[T]echnology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” — Steve Jobs Steve Jobs’s vision for...
View ArticleResearchers have identified a new personality type. Chances are you’ve had it
Whether it’s the ancient Greeks trying to divine one’s character from the stars, or modern surveys that purport to tell you what type of person you are, experts have struggled to come up with a...
View ArticleScientists identify four personality types
Personality type tests are hugely popular, though if you ask working psychologists, they’ll tell you the results are little better than astrological signs. But a new study, based on huge sets of...
View ArticleFive myths about personality tests
In its earliest use in the 13th century, “personality” referred to the quality, character or fact of being human. By the 18th century, the word pointed to the traits that made a person a distinctive...
View ArticleAPS Past President Walter Mischel (1930-2018)
APS Past President Walter Mischel, whose landmark experiments examining children’s ability to delay gratification spawned a rich array of research on self-control and life outcomes, has passed away. In...
View ArticleBig Data Gives the “Big 5” Personality Traits a Makeover
From the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare to Hollywood, humans have attempted to understand their fellow man through labeling and categorization. There was Hippocrates’s blood, phlegm, yellow and black...
View ArticleHow Accurate Are Personality Tests?
If you’re looking for insight into the true you, there’s a buffet of personality questionnaires available. Some are silly—like the internet quiz that tells everyone who takes it that they are...
View ArticlePeople Link Body Shapes With Personality Traits
When we meet new people, our first impressions of their personality may depend, at least in part, on their body shape, according to research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the...
View ArticleThe problem with ‘Type A’ personalities
You likely know someone with a “Type A” personality – an ambitious, competitive person striving for success. Perhaps it’s how you would describe yourself. It’s a label that has been applied to...
View ArticleNew Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: High Level of Trait Anxiety Leads to Salience-Driven Distraction and Compensation John M. Gaspar and John J. McDonald Individuals with...
View ArticleThe Dark Triad and the Evolution of Jerks
A great deal of recent research on evolution focuses on altruism—the tendency of creatures to help others, often at great cost to themselves. This is especially true of human beings, who help one...
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New Research From Psychological Science
Read about the latest research published in Psychological Science: Tracking Colisteners’ Knowledge States During Language Comprehension Olessia Jouravlev, Rachael Schwartz, Dima Ayyash, Zachary...
View ArticleMost Personality Quizzes Are Junk Science. Take One That Isn’t.
What’s your personality, and what can it tell you about your true self? Those questions have launched a thousand online personality quizzes. But you can do better than those specious — yet...
View ArticleFor Professionals, Personality May Be Best in Moderation
It’s easy to see how someone with low levels of conscientiousness or extraversion might struggle in the workplace. An employee who can’t stay organized might lose track of important papers or miss a...
View ArticleThe Personality Trait That Makes People Feel Comfortable Around You
Some people can walk into a room and instantly put everyone at ease. Others seem to make teeth clench and eyes roll no matter what they do. A small body of psychology research supports the idea that...
View ArticleDoes a ‘dark triad’ of personality traits make you more successful?
The dark side of human personality has long fascinated the public and psychologists alike. Research has linked unpleasant traits such as selfishness and a lack of empathy to a higher income and better...
View ArticleMost Links Between Personality Traits and Life Outcomes Are Replicable,...
Studies showing links between personality traits and life outcomes, such as marital stability and vocational achievements, provide a reasonably accurate map of the relationship between personality and...
View ArticleBirth order may not shape personality after all
Birth order, according to conventional wisdom, molds personality: Firstborn children, secure with their place in the family and expected to be the mature ones, grow up to be intellectual, responsible...
View ArticleThe Opposite of Procrastination
For every employee who chronically misses deadlines, there is another who completes assignments far ahead of schedule. One worker may take days to respond to an email, while another may write back so...
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