Personality Project

National and international societies the sponsor conferences and publish journals relevant to personality include:

• Specialized Societies
  • The European Association of Personality Psychology (EAPP). The EAPP produces one of the top international conferences in personality. The next biennial meeting of the European Conference on Personality will be in Lausanne, Switzerland, July 15-19, 2014. The 2012 meeting was held in Trieste, Italy, July 10-14.
  • The International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID) will hold its 2013 conference in Barcelona, Spain, July 22nd-25nd, 2013. For registration information visit the local arrangements web page.
    • The program of the 2011 meeting in London, United Kingdom is available on line.
    • Videos of the keynote and plenary sessions of the ISSID 2011 meeting include
      • Ian Deary : Intelligence across the lifecourse
      • Aljoscha Neubauer: Where in the brain is creativity
      • Robert Hogan: Psychology and Economics: The origins of employability
      • Linda Gottfredson: The sociology of biological intelligence
    • The July, 2009 meeting was held in Evanston, Illinois, USA, in conjunction with the Assocation for Research in Personality.
  • The Association of Research in Personality will hold its 2013 conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, June 20-22
    Programs for prior meetings are available as well.
    • Riverside, 2011
    • The first stand alone conference was in Evanston, 2009
    • Prior meetings were held as preconferences with SPSP Albuquerque, New Mexico, 2008.
  • Society of Personality and Social Psychology(SPSP) meets annually. The next conference will be in in Austin, Texas, February 13-15, 2014.
  • Social and Personality Section of the Canadian Psychological Association.
  • Spanish Society for the Research of Individual Differences
• General Societies
  • American Psychological Association (APA)
  • Association for Psycholigal Science (APS)
  • British Psychological Society
  • Canadian Psychological Association
  • American Statistical Association
• Related Societies
  • Behavior Genetics Association
  • Classification Society
  • Human Behavior and Evolution Society
  • TIP--The Industrial-Organizational Psychologist newsletter of The Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
  • Midwestern Psychological Association
  • Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology
  • Psychometric Society
• Conferences relevant to personality research include:
  • European Association of Personality Psychology (EAPP). Meets every other (even) year.
  • Association for Research in Personality meets every other year.
  • The World Conference on Personality had its first meeting in March, 2013 in Stellbosch, South Africa. It will hold a conference every three years. The next conference will be in Brazil, in March, 2016.
  • The Society of Personality and Social Psychology holds its annual meeting in late January or early February.
  • The American Psychological Association Annual Convention meets in August.
  • The Association for Psychological Science meets every May.
  • The annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association is held every May in Chicago, Illinois. (Program)
• For a much more extensive list of academic departments of psychology, see the World wide list of Psychological Sciences at Stanford University.

Graduate Departments of Psychology with Personality Programs

By no means a complete list, the following universities have graduate training programs in personality research or individual differences. Two comments: some departments offer training in "psychopathology" that is almost identical to those programs that offer training in "personality".

• University of British Columbia (Social/Personality)
• University of Buffalo, Social Psychology has faculty interested in personality
• University of California, Berkeley (social/personality)
• University of California, Los Angeles- psychometrics
• University of California, Davis.
• University of California,Riverside
• Center for Evolutionary Psychology at UCSB lists a variety of Evolutionary Psychology programs around the country.These overlap to some degree with personality programs.
• University of Colorado, Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Genetics
• University of Illinois Social/personality
• University of Iowa, Personality and Social Psychology
• University of Michigan (Personality and social contexts)
• University of Minnesota
• University of Missouri, Personality and Social
• Northwestern University personality and health.
• University of Oregon (social/personality)
• University of Pennsylvania Department of Psychology (clinical/positive psychology and social psychology)
• University of North Carolina (Quantative Psychology)
• University of Texas (Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology)
• York University, Toronto, Canada Personality and Social Psychology
• Vanderbilt University (Quantitative Psychology)
• Washington University in St. Louis (social/personality)
• University of Wisconsin (Personality/Social)
• Yale University (social/personality)

European universities that have active research programs in individual differences include:

• University of Barcelona Department of Personality
• University of Bonn
• University of London
• Oxford University
• University of Warsaw

Graduate Programs in related fields

A much more complete list of graduate departments is available from the Social Psychology Network server managed by Scott Plous at Wesleyan University.

The US National Research Council rankings of graduate deparments of psychology are provided by Wesleyan University which also maintains a list of Social Psychology in Action.

How to apply to graduate schools

Very good advice for undergraduates interested in graduate schools is available from PSYCH WEB, a project of Russ Dewey at Georgia Southern University. Marshall Dermer offers frank advice to graduate students and their advisors. He also has offered An insider's guide to choosing a graduate advisor. Advice geared to applicants to clinical psychology graduate programs is also useful.

Most graduate schools in the United States require taking the Graduate Record Examination. Information about the Advanced GRE in Psychology is available from Kaplan, one of the groups that provide coaching on the GREs.

Being a scientist

The National Academy of Sciences offers advice on Being a Scientist:Responsible Conduct in Research.This includes discussions and examples of such problems of whom should get publication credit, the difficult relation of graduate advisors and students, and general issues in research ethics. The NAS also offers a publication and online information about careers in science.

See also the online publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) devoted to the next generation of scientists. The pages include discussion forums on problems faced by graduate students and post doctoral fellows, as well as information on job availabilities and salaries in multiple disciplines.

The Ethical Principles of the American Psychological Association should be consulted to understand how psychologists deal with human subjects, publication credit, other work related aspects of academic and professional psychology. The code "applies only to psychologists' work-related activities, that is, activities that are part of the psychologists' scientific and professional functions or that are psychological in nature. It includes the clinical or counseling practice of psychology, research, teaching, supervision of trainees, devel- opment of assessment instruments, conducting assessments, educational counseling, organizational consulting, social intervention, administration, and other activities as well. These work-related activities can be distinguished from the purely private conduct of a psychologist, which ordinarily is not within the purview of the Ethics Code."

Graduate students may consult the Graduate School Survival Guide written by a computer science student, but useful for all or advice on may be found by searching for "How to Survive in Graduate School" on . Also see the compilation of Graduate Student Resources on the Web.

Then, once you are almost finished with graduate school, you might want to think about how to get an academic job. Guidelines for the job interview (missing) are very useful.

Why people want to teach and study at research universities was discussed in a commencent speech, "In praise of the research university" by Harry Mairson at Brandeis.

Faculty at most of the schools listed above may be contacted by searching either the departmental or the university directories.