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The Association for Research in Personality is growing in the scope of its scientific endeavors and in its strength as a community of scholars. In this issue of P we cast a look back at the intellectual excitement of the conference in Albuquerque and look forward with great anticipation to our first stand alone conference next July in Evanston, Illinois. Although conveniently linked to the ISSID Conference this year, it is essentially a milestone event in which, as the conference announcement describes, ARP members can propose symposia and participate more fully in the crafting of our annual conference. In his President's Report, Bill Revell provides a rich overview of ARP's origins, current accomplishments and future aspiriations, including an invitation to the exciting ARPConference in Evanston in July, 2009. Under the direction of Past President Julie Norem we have just completed elections for four Members at Large positions and for a new Secretary/Treasurer and I am grateful to each of the winners for providing, on very short notice, statements about their vision for ARP. Hearty congratulations to those who will be joining the Executive Committee of our Association. Congratulations, also, to our outgoing editor of the Society’s flagship journal, the Journal for Research in Personality, Laura King, who will be leaving this position at the end of the year to assume the highly influential position of Editor of the PPID section of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Under her stewardship there has been a surge in the volume of creative contributions to JRP. I would like to thank Laura for her considerable achievements with the JRP. A formal announcement regarding the search for her successor will be forthcoming soon. We once again have featured an outstanding program in personality psychology. The University of California at Riverside is not only a distinguished program in our field. UCR's faculty and students have been a visible and generative force in ARP activities since its inception. I thank David Funder and the recent graduates of UCR for agreeing to piece together this report on one of the top notch schools in personality science. Our graduate student and postdoctoral members continue to be a vibrant force within ARP and we have sections in P3 devoted to their activities, including the results of elections of new representatives to the Executive Committee. As was very apparent in Albuquerque the new generation of young personality scientists are keen, committed, connected and playing an increasingly important role in our association. They are in many respects an audacious and irrepressible group, well worth feeding and nurturing. One of the initiatives of the student group, highlighted (in red) in P3 is the search for “Hot “Spots” in Personality psychology. We are interested in identifying those institutions (not necessarily restricted to universities) that young researchers find exciting as potential intellectual homes either for post-doctoral work or faculty positions. To start this off, we have identified those schools supplying the greatest number of ARP student members, together with some preliminary responses to a survey identifying current hot spots as well as “ideal” venues in which personality science can be pursued. I am grateful to Jenn Lodi Smith who has set up the infrastructure for pursuing the hot spot project. In P2 we initiated a feature on P Puzzlers and the first Puzzler was to identify “Theory X”—which, as you will see from this Issue, was Michael Apter’s Reversal Theory. This issue’s puzzler is a little different and is designed not only to stimulate interest in identifying the sources of greatest (numerical) strength in the membership of ARP but, we hope, to increasing membership in the Society. One of the benefits of membership in ARP is the opportunity to have us feature members’ books, including new editions of textbooks, and several of these appear in P3. We have also introduced a Featured Book section which provides a more in depth look at the content and background of an important new book in personality science. Our first featured book is Jack Block’s reissuing and creative updating of his classic work on Q-sort methods. We congratulate Jack on this landmark volume and encourage ARP members to dip into a volume that is not only of historical significance but charts innovative new directions for personality research. We have included, as in past issues of the Newsletter, some general announcements regarding jobs, conferences, and new positions and awards achieved by our Members. Jenn Lodi Smith has suggested that we make access fo such information available on a continuous basis, through a blog, which she has generously agreed to monitor. New vacancies, announcements and events can be updated in a timely fashion by accessing our Newsletters's "Plog" at http://pnewsletter.blogspot.com/. Members are beginning to realize that P can serve as an ideal place to advertise new books, including recent issues of textbooks and to let us know of your achievements. Beginning with P4 we hope that a larger number of ARP members will submit information about their books, grants, and personal information on changes and moves. Your colleagues in ARP are truly interested to hear how you are getting ahead (and even how you are getting along) in your careers so please do not err on the side of being unduly diffident. For those dispositionally unable to self-promote please arrange for one of your students or colleagues to send us relevant information. Indeed, some of this issue’s announcements arose from precisely this procedure. We also have encouraged assessment and consulting groups working within the field of personality psychology to advertise in P. From the outset, Hogan Assessment Systems has supported this venture by offering to work collaboratively with ARP members to use their diverse assessment devices for free in exchange for research data that can inform their state of the art assessment programs. I thank Bob Hogan for his continued support of all matters ARP. We continue to be open to suggestions regarding your newsletter and encourage you to help craft future issues. I continue also to hope that ARP members will step up with thought pieces, even potentially controversial ones, that will be of interest to the membership. This is meant to be an informal, lively, and engaging venue in which personality scientists can feel free to express themselves without some of the constraints of more traditional publication outlets. There continues to be a sense of considerable excitement within our small intellectual community and we hope that P will record and amplify the reasons for that excitement. Brian R. Little, Editor |
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