Personality Processes

Research on the role of personality in understanding individual differences in human behavior is a longstanding strength of the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences that cuts across several areas. Each area has considerable individual faculty strengths related to specific aspects of personality processes. For example, the Clinical area is renowned for research on personality assessment and personality dysfunction, with TAMU ranked 6th in a recent Journal of Personality Assessment publication (Morey, 2010) quantifying U.S. university rankings in terms of their relative contributions to the assessment literature. Within the Social and Personality area, faculty have particular strengths related to the links between personality and situational contexts, including parenting, health behavior, and the experience of interpersonal rejection, as well as the relationship between personality and attachment theory. Within the I/O area, faculty have particular strengths related to the links between personality and employee behaviors, issues involved in the use of personality testing for personnel selection, the impact of personality on rating behavior, and the influence of personality on driving behaviors, vehicle crash involvement, and safety behavior. Within the Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience area, faculty have particular interests in how personality affects reward processing and executive control during learning and decision-making, as well as how personality interacts with motivational factors such as performance pressure.

The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences does not offer a doctoral degree specifically in Personality and Individual Differences. Rather, students interested in personality would need to apply for admission into a particular graduate program and then develop a degree plan in conjunction with a faculty advisor or advisors that emphasizes research and training experiences in personality psychology.