• Northwestern University
  • Chairman, Department of Psychology 1987 - 1993, 1998-
  • Professor of Psychology 1984 - present
  • Associate Professor of Psychology 1979 -1984
  • Assistant Professor of Psychology 1973 - 1979
• University of Michigan
  • Teaching Assistant, 1972-1973
  • Research Assistant, 1968-1970
• United States Peace Corps Volunteer Sarawak, Malaysia September 1965-December 1967

Recent work in the Personality, Motivation, and Cognition Laboratory has focused on the interactive effects of personality (e.g., impulsivity, trait anxiety) and situational determinants of motivation (e.g., time-of-day, caffeine, films, monetary incentives, exercise) combine to influence motivational states (energetic and tense arousal), and how these motivational states in turn affect cognitive processes (sustained attention, working-memory capacity, long-term memory) to determine cognitive performance. The long term goal is to develop a better understanding of how individual differences interact with situational moderators to affect efficient information processing.

Additional work in personality theory has focused on the personality characteristics associated with differential sensitivities to cues for reward and punishment. Current work is being done on the personality and situational determinants of affective state and dimensional analyses of affect.

I am also working on the Personality Project , an attempt to bring information about current personality theory and research to the readers of the World Wide Web. Suggestions for additions to this project are very welcome.

Computer programs that have been developed for research in personality and measurement are written in Pascal (using Lightspeed Pascal for MacIntosh computers) and are meant for ease of modification and use a set of standard units that have been found useful in the PMC lab. Source code as well as stand alone applications are available by ftp.

Recent publications

• Baehr, E.K., Revelle, W., & Eastman, C.I. (2000). Individual differences in the phase and amplitude of the human circadian temperature rhythm: with an emphasis on morningness-eveningness. The Journal of Sleep Research, 9 117-127
• Revelle, W.(in press) Individual Differences. An entry for the Encylopedia of Psychology (A. Kazdin, editor).
• Dawood, K., Pillard, R. C., Horvath, C., Revelle, W., & Bailey, J. M. (2000). Familial aspects of male homosexuality. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 29 , 155-163.
• Rafaeli-Mor, E.; Gotlib, I.A.; Revelle, W. (1999). The meaning and measurement of self complexity. Personality and Individual Differences. 27 341-356. (Abstract)
• Gilboa-Schechtman, E.; Revelle, W.; Gotlib, I. A. (in press) Stroop Interference Following Mood Induction: Emotionality, Mood Congruence, and Concern Relevance. Cognitive Therapy Research.
• Rogers, G. and Revelle, W. (1998) Personality, mood, and the evaluation of affective and neutral word pairs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1592-1605. Abstract.
• Revelle, W. (1997) Extraversion and Impulsivity. In Nyborg, H. (Ed.) The scientific study of human nature: Tribute to Hans J. Eysenck at eighty Elsevier Science Press.
• Revelle, W. (1995). Personality Processes. Annual Review of Psychology, 46, 295-328.
• Anderson, K. J. & Revelle, W. (1994) Impulsivity and time of day: is impulsivity related to the decay of arousal? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology., 67,334-344. Abstract
• Gilboa, E., & Revelle, W. (1994). Personality and the structure of emotional responses. In S. Van Goozen, N. E. Van de Poll, & J. A. Sargent (Eds.), Emotions: Essays on current issues in the field of emotion theory (pp. 135-159). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Revelle, W. (1993). Individual differences in personality and motivation: Non-cognitive determinants of cognitive performance. In A. Baddeley & L. Weiskrantz (Eds.),Attention: Selection, awareness and control: A tribute to Donald Broadbent (pp. 346-373). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• A more complete list and some abstracts of recent publications.

Educational Activities

• Students supervised

• Teaching

  • 205: General Experimental Psychology :
  • 301: Personality Research:
  • 405: Psychometric Theory:
  • 442: Experimental Approaches to Personality:
  • 460: Affect and Cognition in Humans and Machines
  • 498: Cognition, Personality, and Motivation:
  
  

Professional societies

• Federation of American Scientists
• Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology
• International Society for the Study of Individual Differences (ISSID)
• American Association for the Advancement of Science (fellow)
• American Psychological Association
• American Psychological Society (fellow)
• European Association of Personality Psychology (EAPP)
• Societiy of Personality and Social Psychology

Although a long time resident of Evanston, I was raised in La Jolla where I tended to spend too much time on the beach or racing Flying Dutchmen. I now like to sail Lasers and Laser IIs on (and sometime in) Lake Michigan. I have been known to visit the occasional Ultimate Frisbee match when it is convenient.

I also spend some time browsing the The Source, the San Diego Daily Transcript's information source of San Diego and the world. I am interested in exploring the ways that the web can increase citizen participation by increasing public access to information using projects such as that of the League of Women Voters or the Federation of American Scientists.. For a discussion of the way that the web can used for informing the public, see the Cyberstrategy[tm] discussion by John Pike of the FAS. Other examples of use of the web for encouraging active citizen involvement are also available.

Another use of the web is in linking distant relatives together through genealogical research.

This page is running on a PowerMac G3 in the Personality, Motivation, and Cognition (PMC) Laboratory using MacHTTP.
Last updated May 30, 2000.