Study of Personality Architecture and Dynamics (SPeADy)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Christian Kandler
• Subject Area: Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: from 2015 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 272981829

The term ‘personality’ is often very sparingly conceptualized and empirically investigated with a small set of descriptive personality traits (e.g., extraversion and neuroticism). Those traits are often defined as broad, relatively stable and biologically anchored dispositions to individually different thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Other characteristics, such as self-related beliefs and evaluations, values, motives, major life goals and interests are equally important as psychological characteristics with respect to human thinking, feeling and behaving, yet have been rarely treated as personality characteristics. Is the reduction of the construct personality to very few traits theoretically and empirically justified? An integrative model of personality should encompass all characteristics which are essential to reflect the spectrum of the complexity of typical feeling, thinking, striving, and behaving of a person compared to other persons. Essential characteristics must capture the core of the individuality in its entirety. Which features of an adult person are core characteristics? Which features (i.e., surface characteristics) do result from combinations of specific core characteristics or interactions between these and experiences?The SPeADy project deals with those questions and aims to answer them with the use of longitudinal and genetically informative data. The combination of longitudinal and behavior genetic designs allows to proof the classification of some traits as potential core characteristics (e.g., extraversion and neuroticism) and other individual features (e.g., self-esteem, control beliefs, social values, religiousness, major life goals, and interests) – often treated as less consistent over time and more environmentally malleable characteristic adaptations – based on five criteria: Core characteristics are (1) more stable and (2) more heritable and less environmentally malleable, (3) they drive surface characteristics rather than vice versa, and (4) genetic variance in surface characteristics should be completely accounted for by genetic variance in core characteristics, whereas (5) surface characteristics mediate the effects from core characteristics on the environment (selection effects) and vice versa (socialization effects). Furthermore, the SPeADy project allows the empirical falsification of several existing personality conceptions and personality models and new insights as well as unique implications for an integrative model of both personality description and explanation of inter- and intra-individual stability and change from different perspectives (self- and other reports) and for different age groups against the background of a conceptualization of ‘personality’ as a dynamic network of core and surface characteristics. This individual personality network may stabilize or change as a function of its interplay with the individual environment.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants