An Interview with 2017 Early Career Award Winner, Wiebke Bleidorn
by Ted Schwaba
UC Davis
Who are some of the mentors or researchers that have helped you get here?
There are so many colleagues and researchers who I admire... but I guess four people stand out. The first is Alois Angleitner. I took his personality class during my 3rd undergrad year at Bielefeld University (Fridays, 8am-11:00 for 2 semesters!). We read the classics, discussed trait theory, and learned the principles of factor analysis. I loved his class and was extremely happy when he asked me to join his lab as an RA. Alois was on his way to retirement when I started working on his longitudinal twin study project, but he continued to be involved during my time as an undergrad and as a grad student. I am grateful for his support and very sad that he passed away last year.
The second person is my grad advisor Rainer Riemann who was and continues to be a great mentor. From the very beginning, Rainer helped me developing an independent research program and pushed me to develop my skills in measurement and quantitative methods. His thinking about individual differences in general and behavioral genetics, in particular had a great impact on my work.
The third person who had a tremendous impact on my thinking was Brent Roberts (yes Brent, you!). I was (and still am) fascinated by his work on lifespan personality development and decided that this is what I want to do with my time in grad school... and, as it turns out, for a living. Finally, I would like to thank Simine Vazire for being a great role model and friend. I admire Simine for so many reasons including her research, her service to the field, and her passion for science. I feel extremely lucky to have her as a colleague at UC Davis and as a friend.
Do you have any really good advice to give to early career researchers? Any really bad advice?
I'm not sure if I have any new advice to give to early career researchers. I guess I would quote Willie Nelson and say that the "good songs come easy." At least in my career (and personal life), those ideas and decisions that felt right and came easy turned out to be the best.
Since you're interested in the concept of person-city fit, how has your experience been moving from Germany, to the Netherlands, to California?
That's a great question. I like all three places for different reasons and I am very grateful that I had a chance to work in Germany and the Netherlands before I moved to California. UC Davis turned out to be a great fit for my research interests and probably also my personality. I am surrounded by smart colleagues and excellent students in an environment that allows me to do the research I like to do. I guess that, more than country or city, the fit between a person's personality and their immediate environment might be most relevant for their well-being.
In a past interview, Rich Lucas predicted that the field wouldn't look much different 20 years from now. So let's fast-forward 100 years. Will there even be a personality psychology? What type of research do you think the field will be doing?
That's a tricky question. About 100 years ago, Gordon Allport had published "Personality and Character" in the 18th edition of the Psychological Bulletin ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0066265) in which he summarized the state of evidence by "experimental and clinical researches, together with a review of the best of the speculative work, [to provide a] clarified notion of the present status of psychological investigations concerning personality and character"(p. 441). From his report, it becomes clear that although we've made some progress since that time, several issues remain. For example, over the past 100 years, the field has come to a more unified view regarding the question "what traits do psychological writers recognize as constituents of personality?" (p. 443). However, there has been little progress regarding several other issues such as the widespread and problematic use of self-report methods ("self-rating is fraught with perils", p.444).
Overall, I would say that our field has made some progress but we are moving slowly. This is partly because we got caught up in several (mostly unproductive) debates about the nature of personality (person vs. situation, genes vs. environment, stability vs. change) and we had to establish some basic principles of good research (I guess we're still in the middle of doing this). So rather than predicting ground-breaking developments and major accomplishments, I would hope that our field will pick up some pace by focusing on the important issues, avoiding unproductive debates, and investing in good research practices to solve some of the issues that are lingering since Allport published his review 100 years ago.
Are there any off-the-wall ideas or hypotheses about personality development that you've always wanted to pursue but never have?
Definitely! In fact, I have a long list of ideas and untested hypotheses most of which would require data that are difficult or impossible to collect. Let's say I'd like to study whether the Trump presidency has an immediate and / or long-term impact on the personality traits, values, motives, or attitudes of people who live in the United States. But to do that, I would need prospective longitudinal data from a large and ideally representative sample of US residents and citizens who provided personality data before, during, and after the Trump presidency. If I had any particular hypotheses concerning the timing of responses (e.g., immediate level shifts after the inauguration) or the trajectories of traits (e.g., non-linear slopes or discontinuous trajectories), then I would need multiple assessments before, during, and after the Trump presidency that are timed around certain key events (e.g., Election Day) and according to our theories regarding the pace of change in the constructs of interests (e.g., x-month intervals?). If I had hypotheses regarding the reactions of certain subsamples (e.g., immigrants, Republicans, adolescents, etc.), then I would need to make sure I had large enough subsamples to test my hypotheses with sufficient power. And if I was interested whether any of my observed reactions are specific to Americans, then I would need a meaningful comparison group (e.g., European residents and citizens).
It is hard to imagine that a single lab would have the resources to conduct a study of this caliber. However, I'd like to dream about the possibility that a collaboration of many labs with overlapping research interests would be able to run a long term representative panel study of that kind to advance our understanding of the factors and mechanisms that drive personality development – maybe in 100 years from now.
Has your personality changed much in the time you've been researching personality change?
Ha! I have a feeling it did. Not sure whether all changes are going in the normative direction though.
Final question: as the winner of the early career award, you've still got a long career ahead of yourself. Broadly, what kinds of topics are you looking to research in the future?
Currently, I am interested in the degree and ways in which life events may or may not impact our personality. My impression is that this research is still in its early stages and that there is a lot of work that needs to be done. We know very little about which life events matter for whom, for which traits, and at which stages in life. And we know even less about the processes that might drive changes through such transitional periods. So my feeling is that I will spend a little more time on these questions before I move on to different adventures in personality psychology.