An Interview with 2017 Tanaka Award Winner, Daniel Briley
by Frank Mann
What first interested you in personality when you began your doctoral training?
I entered graduate school wanting to know more about all the ways that people could differ, what causes those differences, and ultimately how those differences influence perception and interpretation of the world. These interests were sparked in undergrad when I took my first personality psychology course and realized it gave me the language to think and talk about all the fascinating (and sometimes perplexing) differences in behavior across people. I wanted to understand how the wheels turned in peoples' head as they made decisions and thought about complex topics. The first psychology study I ran in undergrad looked at whether personality could predict whether someone adopted duty-based compared to utilitarian ethical principles or rationalist compared to empiricist philosophical orientations. (A very, very niche topic, I know). The thing that initially hooked me into studying personality psychology was the idea that people could differ in so many unique ways and these differences could have profound impacts on how people see the world, but most of the time this goes unnoticed.
Why focus on developmental trajectories of personality?
After finding that personality was associated with philosophical dispositions, but not in a way that was very coherent or interpretable, I focused on figuring out how people come to be different. What makes some people act in a more extraverted or conscientious manner? I think this is a hugely fascinating question that has implications for all sorts of models of personality processes. The idea of development is inherent in the question of how people come to be different. Sure, perhaps there are some initial differences, but personality maturation unfolds across the lifespan. By studying this process, hopefully more can be understood about why personality plays an important role in the world.
What led you to embrace behavior genetic methodology in your approach to studying personality and, what methodological advantages do you think the field of behavior genetics has to offer?
It was kind of a happy accident. In undergraduate, there was not a ton of behavior genetic material in my coursework. I believe we went over some biological models of personality and discussed topics like heritability, but not much beyond that, which is typical in most schools. When I was putting together a list of graduate programs to apply to, my research mentor, Steve Rouse, noticed that all of them tended to be places that had strong behavior genetic programs. He suggested a few others even though I didn't know that was the route I wanted to pursue, and ultimately, I ended up at the University of Texas at Austin in a behavior genetics lab led by Elliot Tucker-Drob and Paige Harden. The types of questions they brought up seemed interesting, but I didn't have a strong biology background, much less in genetics. It was only after a fair bit of time and training that I realized how useful behavior genetic methods were for addressing my research questions. I probably should have figured it out a bit sooner, as the field is explicitly about identifying where sources of individual differences come from! There are several beneficial aspects of these sorts of study designs, such as the ability to ask questions that other designs don't allow and to gain some handle on issues related to sorting into environments. I definitely did not see a career in behavior genetics in my future when applying to grad school, but I am very thankful to all of the research mentors along the way that have guided me in this direction.
What do you think is the most commonly misunderstood aspect of behavior genetic research as it applies to personality?
I think people outside of behavior genetics overestimate how much of the field is devoted to gene hunting. Although that is definitely a strong focus, there are lots of other really interesting examples of theoretical work that flow from efforts to identify genes associated with personality. For example, the best available evidence seems to indicate that genetic influences on personality may be nonadditive, meaning the effects don't simply sum up across the genome. In contrast, just about every other complex phenotype seems to be largely additive. There are lots of options for why this might be: there might be dominant genetic effects, or perhaps more interestingly, personality might develop as an emergent or emergenic (to borrow a phrase from David Lykken and colleagues) trait whereby subcomponents of personality all interact with one another across development. This issue is directly relevant to debates in personality about factor structure and what personality dimensions actually represent in the real world. I think there is a lot to be gained in personality psychology by more fully integrating developmental behavior genetic theories into the field, even if one might not be too terribly interested in which bits of DNA are associated with a given trait. These sorts of broad theoretical models tend to be just as much if not more focused on how psychological dimensions interplay with the environment to influence development, something that recent models of personality have increasingly drawn upon.
Why study fertility and how it relates to personality?
I would never have predicted that I would have a line of research focusing on fertility when I started grad school. However, I found myself in a course on demographic approaches to fertility and couldn't help but recognize personality in all the readings. Except, no author called anything personality, just intentions, preferences, and the like. That motivated me to research how similar the types of demographic models were to the ones used in psychology. Luckily, there were already some solid studies in psychology to build on for those links. Fertility is an interesting example from a personality perspective because there have been such dramatic cultural shifts in how personal characteristics might influence fertility over the past 50 years or so. At some points in time, there was relatively little that behavioral characteristics could do to control fertility, and currently there are a host of social attitudes that might persuade people to differing degrees depending on their personality.
What is the greatest challenge you have faced in your career?
My greatest challenge was one that most graduate students go through, figuring out one's place in the larger system of psychology. In particular, I did not have a well-defined role at UT. My advisor had fairly different research interests than mine. There's lots of interesting personality work at UT, but I wasn't in the social-personality area, meaning I didn't quite fit automatically in with those grad students. The area that I was in was primary populated with evolutionary psychologists, an area I find interesting but doesn't quite match my interests in individual differences. Within my lab, I was the only non-clinical student until my third year, so I didn't really share much coursework or other tasks with my lab-mates. I also took about as many courses outside the psychology department as within. I think these sorts of experiences are extremely common among graduate students, but can be disorienting. Parts of these experiences were beneficial. For example, Elliot, my advisor, rubbed off on me enough that his primary area of interest, cognitive development, is just as interesting to me as personality development (and I think I rubbed off on him to think about personality development too). I know that figuring out where I fit in both interpersonally and in research pushed me to explore lots of different options.
What is the best advice you have received in your career?
Following from the answer to the last question, the best advice I've gotten is to try lots of things! Grad school is a time to explore. I was encouraged to seek out speakers outside of psychology. Also, I was lucky to be trained at the Population Research Center at UT, which included faculty from across the social sciences. That's where I received training in human fertility and many other policy relevant outcomes that matter in the real world but don't always make it into psychology papers. That experience shaped my research trajectory. Specialization and having a coherent program of research is important, but sometimes I worry these goals are followed to the detriment of personal growth and interdisciplinary connections. Thankfully, all my research advisors have pushed me in this direction across my career, and I certainly would not be writing advice to other students now if it weren't for them.