2011

Friday December 16: Personality Scepticism: Why (I think) we should be questioning our existing models of personality (also Xmas JCLub)

This talk focuses on the psychometric tradition of personality research, and in particular the Five Factor Model (FFM), although the arguments raised are generalisable across most if not all mainstream personality models. The aim of the talk is to encourage a little more scepticism and critical review of the FFM and other psychometric models. The talk will focus on some historical studies that a new generation of personality researchers may not have considered in detail (Cattell, Tupes & Christal, Fiske, Norman, Borgatta). The talk will then whisk at break neck speed through the core early work of Costa and McCrae to consider how the problems identified may impact upon measurement in the current day. Here I will focus mainly on my own, largely unpublished (to date) research.

  1. Questions to consider; Have we got it all wrong in using psychometric tests of personality?
  2. Are the issues of structure in confirmatory studies due to method, poor measurement, inherent complexity, or a little of everything?
  3. In the wake of GWAS, behavioural-genetic and neuro-imaging studies on personality, is taking the "this is good enough" attitude the right way to take personality psychology to the top table of scientific research?

Friday December 9: Q& A for MSc Students

  • Presenter: everyone

Friday December 2 ed: Facial width–height ratio and masculinity/dominance

Friday November 25 th: The non-shared environment

  • Presenter: Tim Bates
  • Details: Plomin, R (2011). Commentary: Why are children in the same family so different? Non-shared environment three decades later. Int J Epidemiol. 2011 June; 40(3): 582–592. [doi PMCID: PMC3147062

Friday November 18 th: How We See Colour

Friday November 11 th: Progress in Inspection time

  • Presenter Dave Hill
  • Details: Inspection Time is a knowledge-free discrimination task which correlates around .4 with IQ

Friday November 4 th: Philosophy and tragedies of the (global) commons

Friday October 28 th: Is willpower a form of energy?

Friday October 21 st: Is Spearman's Law also a Diminishing Return?

  • Presenter Aja Murray

Friday October 14 th: Paternal age effects on intelligence & personality?

  • Presenter Ruben Arslan
  • Paper draft forthcoming.

Friday October 7 th: Latent inhibition & Creativity

Friday September 30 th: Prenatal androgen and career interests

Friday September 23 rd: Does education drive down creativity.

Friday September 9 th: HEXACO or 5FM?

  • Presenter Sean & Tim Bates
  • Are Five factors enough topic page
    • Ashton, M. C. and Lee, K. (2007). Empirical, theoretical, and practical advantages of the HEXACO model of personality structure. Personality and social psychology review, 11. 150-166. doi. pubmed.

Friday September 2nd: Planning future meeting

  • Presenters Mark Adams and Timothy Bates
  • Papers Go over the list of future topics, and bring your own current work and ideas.