European Association for Personality Psychology
Marco Perugini and Jaap Denissen
Personality psychology is alive and well and more mature. Traditional theoretical divides between personality structure and personality processes (or bottom-up vs. top-down) are becoming thinner. There is growing shared awareness that studying personality is about studying processes but that these processes can be studied with reference to organizing structures, such as major trait dimensions or personality types. Likewise, studying personality structure is just a first step in the journey towards understanding the complex processes that underlie these structures and link them to dynamic behavioral outcomes. To use a metaphor, drawing a map that helps to locate and communicate systematically the location of interest related to the general coordinates is just the beginning of exploring the territory and uncovering islands, mountains, and valleys, what are their implications, and how they came about.
We know that the field has grown substantially during the last decades. We can see it in many ways, such as for example in the increased attendance to personality conferences, visibility of personality research, impact of personality journals, and growth of personality societies. The moment is right to coordinate efforts between societies to foster even further personality research in its manifold manifestations. As with so many cooperations, Europe and North-America are actively engaged in strengthening a mutual bond that has been forged over decades of productive collaborations. Needless to say, however, we must not forget to include other parts of the world (e.g., South-America, Africa) in these efforts.
This is the first time that the ARP adds one entry in the newsletter from the EAPP with the goal of becoming a regular feature. This initiative follows another first time, that one member of the Executive Committee of the EAPP (Jaap Denissen) attended the ARP Executive Committee meeting during the ARP conference in Charlotte, North Carolina. The EAPP will reciprocate. Both societies are engaged in creating active exchanges with each other with the goal of increasing communications and synergies between the two sister organizations. We need to start from somewhere and these two initiatives are a good way to start. Hopefully this is just the beginning of what will be a fruitful journey.