Why Has Personality Psychology Played an Outsized Role in the Credibility Revolution?

Why moral psychology needs personality psychology

People vary in how they perceive, think about, and respond to moral issues. Clearly, we cannot fully understand the psychology of morality without accounting for individual differences in moral functioning. But decades of neglect of and explicit skepticism toward such individual differences has resulted in a lack of integration between moral psychology and personality psychology-the study of psychological differences between people. In recent years, these barriers to progress have started to break down. This special issue aims to celebrate and further increase the visibility of the personality psychology of morality. Here, we introduce the articles in this special issue by highlighting some important contributions a personality-based perspective has to offer moral psychology-particularly in comparison to the currently prominent social psychological approach. We show that personality psychology is well-placed to (a) contribute toward a rigorous empirical foundation for moral psychology, (b) tackle the conceptualization and assessment of stable moral tendencies, (c) assess the predictive validity of moral traits in relation to consequential outcomes, (d) uncover the mechanisms underlying individual differences in moral judgments and behavior, and (e) provide insights into moral development. For these reasons, we believe that moral psychology needs personality psychology to reach its full scholarly potential.

Personality Science in the Digital Age: The Promises and Challenges of Psychological Targeting for Personalized Behavior-Change Interventions at Scale

With the rapidly growing availability of scalable psychological assessments, personality science holds great promise for the scientific study and applied use of customized behavior-change interventions. To facilitate this development, we propose a classification system that divides psychological targeting into two approaches that differ in the process by which interventions are designed: audience-to-content matching or content-to-audience matching. This system is both integrative and generative: It allows us to (a) integrate existing research on personalized interventions from different psychological subdisciplines (e.g., political, educational, organizational, consumer, and clinical and health psychology) and to (b) articulate open questions that generate promising new avenues for future research. Our objective is to infuse personality science into intervention research and encourage cross-disciplinary collaborations within and outside of psychology. To ensure the development of personality-customized interventions aligns with the broader interests of individuals (and society at large), we also address important ethical considerations for the use of psychological targeting (e.g., privacy, self-determination, and equity) and offer concrete guidelines for researchers and practitioners.

Psychobiographies of social change agents: Introduction to the Special Issue

This Special Issue of Journal of Personality, focused on psychobiographies of social change agents, aims to make contributions to the field in terms of content, method, and process. The content of the issue is focused on understanding people who powerfully impact their world, from eminent global leaders to everyday change agents. The contributions to the Special Issue are unified by their adoption of psychobiographical methods, though as a set they offer both excellent representations of common psychobiographical approaches as well as vital innovations in this tradition. The process of curating this Special Issue sought to make several interventions in typical practices, including the cultivation of an intentional community of scholars representing both experienced and fledgling psychobiographers, the pursuit of a relational approach to publishing, and the adoption of open science practices. Psychobiography has an important role to play in contemporary personality psychology and we hope this Special Issue will itself serve as a foundation for continued innovation in the field.

Journal N-Pact Factors From 2011 to 2019: Evaluating the Quality of Social/Personality Journals With Respect to Sample Size and Statistical Power

Scholars and institutions commonly use impact factors to evaluate the quality of empirical research. However, a number of findings published in journals with high impact factors have failed to replicate, suggesting that impact alone may not be an accurate indicator of quality. Fraley and Vazire proposed an alternative index, the N-pact factor, which indexes the median sample size of published studies, providing a narrow but relevant indicator of research quality. In the present research, we expand on the original report by examining the N-pact factor of social/personality-psychology journals between 2011 and 2019, incorporating additional journals and accounting for study design (i.e., between persons, repeated measures, and mixed). There was substantial variation in the sample sizes used in studies published in different journals. Journals that emphasized personality processes and individual differences had larger N-pact factors than journals that emphasized social-psychological processes. Moreover, N-pact factors were largely independent of traditional markers of impact. Although the majority of journals in 2011 published studies that were not well powered to detect an effect of ρ = .20, this situation had improved considerably by 2019. In 2019, eight of the nine journals we sampled published studies that were, on average, powered at 80% or higher to detect such an effect. After decades of unheeded warnings from methodologists about the dangers of small-sample designs, the field of social/personality psychology has begun to use larger samples. We hope the N-pact factor will be supplemented by other indices that can be used as alternatives to improve further the evaluation of research.

Validation of a Spanish Translation of the Faceted Inventory of the Five-Factor Model in Two Mexican University Student Samples

The validity, and thus utility, of psychological instruments requires continued evaluation of their underlying psychometric properties across contexts. Measurement tools have been developed over the past few decades to assess personality constructs developed through various theoretical frameworks. The Big Five has been a particular focus of such inquiry; however, few studies have validated a Spanish version for use in Mexico. Using two separate Mexican college student samples (Sample 1: n = 289, Sample 2: n = 309) we tested factorial structure, reliability, and validity of a Spanish translation of the Faceted Inventory of the Five-Factor Model (FI-FFM; Watson, Nus, & Wu). An exploratory factor analysis showed a similar structure to the original FI-FFM, albeit with some exceptions primarily within the Extraversion and Agreeableness domains. Furthermore, the FI-FFM scales were internally consistent and highly stable over time (average interval = 5 months). Finally, the scales showed strong convergent and discriminant validity and the facet scales displayed validity in predicting outcomes.