An Interview with 2019 ARP Service Award Winner, Rich Lucas
1. What fascinates you about personality psychology?
I think that figuring out why people exhibit stable patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors is one of the most challenging questions that psychologists can hope to answer. These characteristic patterns define who we are and have important implications for how our life turns out. Yet the breadth of these patterns and the fact that they are so stable (at least relative to the short time frame in which most of our studies are conducted) means that we are limited in the methods we can use to understand them. Many of the standard approaches for furthering our understanding of psychological phenomena simply won't work when studying personality. So what fascinates me most is thinking about the methods that will be able to provide insight into why these differences exist and how they affect outcomes.
2. What do you think does our field need more of? Of what maybe less?
Related to the prior point, the field can always use more methodological expertise and development. This is why initiatives to improve psychological practices have been so exciting; people working in these areas have identified entirely new ways that our methods and practices have been deficient, and they've quickly identified feasible solutions to these problems that I strongly believe will work. I think more focus on developing methods that are appropriate for the study of personality, including broad methods that can be implemented anywhere in the field (i.e., the adoption of registered reports and replication studies) and more specific methodological techniques that are relevant to specific areas of personality research will lead to exciting new developments.
3. How can researchers in their early careers be engaged in serving our field?
I think the two most obvious choices are to get involved in reviewing and to get involved in organizations like ARP. In terms of reviewing, it never hurts to contact editors of journals you like to let them know that you are available for reviewing. This is especially true if you just got a paper published in that journal; your expertise will be especially salient at that time and might be more likely to stick in the editor's mind. In terms of service to organizations, it is often possible to volunteer for specific society committees as a way to get your foot in the door. Once the other members of the society start to recognize your name, it becomes easier to move into additional service positions. Of course, when it comes to both reviewing and organizational service, it is always important to remember not to take on too much. I love reviewing and editing, and I've tried to focus my service efforts on the types of tasks I like. So an important piece of advice is to try to focus on service opportunities that benefit the field but that are also enjoyable and help with your own career.
4. For personality researchers, especially graduate students, who are especially interested in teaching/mentoring/outreach, what advice do you have?
In terms of developing skills, I think that the first step is to attend carefully to what you like and don't like about other people's teaching and mentoring. It's sometimes hard to pay attention to those things when you're in the role of a student, but if you recognize early that that being a good teacher or mentor is a goal, then you can focus your attention on figuring out which of the things that other people do work and which things do not. Of course, once you have an idea of what works, the best thing you can do to improve your skills is to look for opportunities to practice them. This can include formal teaching opportunities as well as more informal opportunities to present research to different types of audiences. Even thinking about conference presentations or other types of research presentations as opportunities to practice teaching can be helpful. For many of us, these things don't come naturally, so paying attention and practicing can go a long way towards improvement.