An Interview with 2013 Tanaka Award Winner Ivana Anusic
by Jess Wortman
Why do you study personality?
I have always been fascinated by differences between people. There’s so much variation in how people think, feel, and behave out there, and I think sorting all that variation out, and figuring out why it happens and what it means for them in the long run is super interesting.
What is your most exciting discovery?
In my work with how people react to major changes in their lives, I consistently see much variation in both short-term reactions and long-term adaptations to life events. Recently, I’ve been trying to find moderators of changes in well-being that people experience over time but so far this search has not resulted in any consistent moderators. For example, personality does not seem to moderate how much people are affected or how much they adapt to marriage, childbirth, unemployment, or widowhood. Social support also does not explain differences in adaptation to widowhood. Development of cultural identity does not seem to be related to changes in well-being experienced by immigrants. But the individual differences in changes in well-being are robust and often substantial. I’m not sure if this would be considered the most exciting discovery, but it is definitely most puzzling to me. And in a way it is exciting because there is still a lot more work to be done in this area.
If you had to pick a high point in your career so far, what would it be and why?
My high point so far would have to be defending my dissertation. It was just a wonderful feeling to be done something I had been working towards for so long. And there is definitely that feeling of permanence, that this cannot be taken back. Sometimes I still sit back and think “Ahh, I don’t have to worry about my dissertation anymore.”
What are important but understudied topics in personality?
I know this has been one of the staples of personality research from the beginning, but I think issues of stability and change in personality are still not well understood and are deserving of more research. For instance, how does the personality stabilize over the lifespan, how much control do we have about personality change? I think these are some of the most important questions in personality. And this can also inform other important issues that are currently not really considered as issues, such as ethical concerns about discrimination based on personality – for example hiring someone high on extraversion just because they may be more fun to be around.
What are the most exciting developments in personality right now?
I think developments in longitudinal methods are pretty exciting. There has been much debate about stability and change in personality, but older methods just were not able to adequately address these issues. The newer longitudinal models can explicitly separate stability from change and then test the predictions of different theories about what factors should affect each of these components. These methods are just starting to be used more and much of their potential is still unexplored. They will be really useful for addressing questions of what is personality, how it came to be, and why it matters. Also, inclusion of more psychological and personality-related variables in long-term longitudinal datasets such as the GSOEP and the BHPS is also exciting because it gives us access to very large samples that are followed over very long periods of time and that would be very difficult to collect on our own.
What is the best advice that someone has given you throughout graduate school or your career?
It would probably be the advice I received about writing, and that is to just write. I’m sure this happens to many people, but at some point I just feel stuck in the writing process. Just getting myself to write anything relevant that comes to mind at that moment really helps keep things going. And looking back, what I had written usually ends up sounding pretty good.
What advice do you have for new personality researchers or incoming graduate students?
I think it’s important for the new graduate students to find as much information about academia as possible. Many things regarding the job market have changed in the past decade. It may be a good idea to start looking through job postings in the early years of graduate school to get an idea of the skills that are currently in demand. Also, learn as much as possible – grad school is an excellent time to take all those method courses so you can set yourself up with as many tools as possible for answering most innovative questions. Also, keep your options open and find out to whom you can talk about alternative career paths outside of academia – it’s not something most people think about at the start of grad school, but it definitely helps to be informed about different possibilities.