I’m Erik Noftle, your postdoctoral representative to ARP. I graduated from the University of California, Davis, in 2007, with a Ph.D. in personality-social psychology. My advisor Rick Robins and I collaborated on personality trait and emotion research, and I also conducted research on attachment with Phil Shaver and his lab. I’m currently a postdoctoral fellow with Will Fleeson at Wake Forest University, where we are working on a number of projects related to personality development, personality subcomponent structure, and personality and well-being.

My formal interest in personality and social psychology began at Grinnell College, where I conducted summer research with Laura Sinnett examining coping strategies in the context of discrete emotions, writing my thesis on this project. As a result of conducting research in college, I knew I wanted to go to graduate school and continue to do more research. Laura recommended Davis highly as a great place to do research on a variety of topics I was interested in: personality, emotion, the self, and close relationships. At that time, Davis had a record of producing great social-personality people including Veronica Benet-Martinez, Laura King, Ken Sheldon, and Chris Fraley. I applied to several schools my senior year, and decided on Davis as my top choice.

I arrived in Davis early to take part in a summer workshop held by Phil Shaver and his longtime collaborator Mario Mikulincer, which was focused on attachment research. This workshop included other new graduate students of Phil’s, such as Josh Hart (now a professor at Union College) and Dory Schachner (now a professor at CSU Chico), as well as advanced graduate students of Phil’s (Robin Edelstein, now a professor at Michigan) and Mario’s (Omri Gillath, who soon became Phil’s post-doc, and is now a professor at Kansas). The workshop germinated research ideas and collaborations that would build into significant research projects (e.g., Gillath, Hart, Noftle, & Stockdale, under review, Noftle & Shaver, 2006).

When I started at Davis, I also entered another lab, that of Rick Robins, who became my major advisor (and a good friend). Here was another vibrant (and productive) lab for research, with grad students Kali Trzesniewski (now a professor at the University of Western Ontario), Brent Donnellan (now a professor at Michigan State), Jessica Tracy (now a professor at the University of British Columbia), and Gina Sutin (now a post-doc with Costa and McCrae at the National Institute on Aging). Each graduate student had a slightly different focus and conducted research on a number of different topics: self-conscious emotions, self development, self-relevant memories, personality change and life outcomes (Noftle & Robins, 2007), and functional approaches to emotion (Noftle & Robins, under review). However, there was also a lively spirit of collaboration, which resulted in a number of shared projects (Robins, Noftle, & Tracy, 2007; Robins, Noftle, Trzesniewski, & Roberts, 2005).

I am currently working as a postdoctoral researcher with Will Fleeson at Wake Forest University, where we are conducting personality research using a variety of methods, including experience-sampling. Being at WFU, I am lucky to be in another department with great strengths in personality; along with Will, other personality faculty includes Mike Furr, Dustin Wood, and Jackie Friedman. Will and I are conducting research related to his NIH Grant “Integrating Process and Structure in Personality,” which stems from his SPSP award-winning density distributions approach to personality (e.g., Fleeson, 2001). We have been focusing on a number of projects, including topics such as personality consistency (Fleeson & Noftle, in press), developmental differences in density distributions of personality traits (Noftle & Fleeson, under review), and personality subcomponent structure in behavior. Will and I are collaborating with his former masters student Josh Wilt (who is now a doctoral student with Bill Revelle and Dan McAdams at Northwestern), and Jana Spain (who is happily nearby at High Point University) on a paper examining the relation between Extraversion and Positive Affect in behavior. Finally, Will and I recently published a paper in Personality and Social Psychology Compass which argues for the end of the person-situation debate, and the usefulness of aspects of both traditional trait and social cognitive approaches to personality when synthesized together (Fleeson & Noftle, 2008). I’ve really enjoyed being a part of Will’s large, friendly lab, and have been fortunate to be part of a very welcoming (and productive) psychology department at Wake.

In my free time, I enjoy DJing at college/community radio stations, hiking, watching films, and travelling with my girlfriend Jess.

I’m delighted to be your new postdoctoral representative and to have the chance to help out the executive committee in the coming year, especially given the exciting development of a stand-alone ARP conference. Please feel free to send any comments, questions or concerns my way: eenoftle@wfu.edu.