Letter from the Editors
Erik Noftle and Jonathan Adler
Welcome to the Fall 2014 edition of P: The Newsletter of the Association for Research in Personality. The new issue is packed with news and information which is important to our organization and its future. The current content can be divided into at least four themes: reflections, transitions, connections, and opportunities.
Reflections
The new issue includes reports from the leaders of ARP: the President, Executive Officer, Secretary-Treasurer, and the Graduate Student/Postdoctoral Representatives. We won’t steal their thunder, but check out their columns: they share lots of exciting news for ARP!
It also includes four interviews of personality award winners which represent both junior and senior level researchers: the recent winners of the Block award (Jeff McCrae), Murray award (Dean Keith Simonton), and Tanaka awards (Ivana Anusic and Nick Turiano). Congratulations to the award winners and thanks to their interviewers for posing great questions. We found the interviews both fascinating and edifying and think you will too. Erik also encourages you to check out Jon’s thought-provoking essay on teaching personality to non-majors. Many of us have a non-trivial portion of non-majors in our classes but often forget about this part of the audience—Jon’s piece shares wisdom about connecting to them.
Transitions
These reflections also mark several transitions, as Rebecca Shiner assumes the Executive Officer (XO) position from Lynne Cooper, Jennifer Tackett takes over as Secretary-Treasurer from Jennifer Pals Lilgendahl, Michael Boudreaux transitions from the graduate student rep to the postdoc rep position previously filled by Grant Edmonds, and Kathryn Bollisch assumes the grad student rep. Finally, the issue marks the end of Brent Donnellan and Ken Sheldon’s three-year terms as members at large, and the beginning of Julie Norem and Tom Widiger’s terms. We want to acknowledge and thank all for their valuable service to ARP.
Connections
A third theme relates to sister organizations. We thank Filip De Fruyt, the President of the European Association of Personality Psychology (EAPP) and Mark Leary, the President of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) for their perspectives and ideas about bringing our organizations closer together.
Opportunities
The final theme has to do with opportunities for members of ARP.
We include reports from editors of two of our publications, Richard Lucas from the Journal of Research in Personality and Allen McConnell from Social Psychological and Personality Science, who share their thoughts about best practices for publishing in JRP and SPPS, and measures those journals are taking to publish the best personality science.
We also include announcements about upcoming conferences. The newsletter includes information from the ARP 2015 program committee and local arrangements committee in advance of the June conference in in St. Louis. In addition, we include information from the organizers of the Lifespan Social Personality 2015 preconference (in Long Beach before SPSP), which has been officially sponsored by ARP.
Finally, our deep thanks to Annie Seiver, an undergraduate psych major who tackled web development (and to Chris Soto for helping with the transition), and to Hogan Assessment Systems for sponsoring the Fall 2014 newsletter.
As always, if you have any comments or ideas for future features in P please let us know: Erik Noftle (enoftle@willamette.edu) and Jon Adler (jadler@olin.edu). Don’t forget about our Facebook page or the Personality Metablog!