Research programme
Personality and individual differences
How stable differences between people are described, structured and measured.
- Studies
- 5
- Span
- 2004 to 2026
- Published
- 4
- Under way
- 1
Stable differences between people are among the oldest objects of psychological measurement and among the least settled. This programme covers how those differences are described, how the descriptions are structured, and whether the structures survive being taken somewhere else.
Most of the work is cross-cultural. Implicit theories of creativity differ by culture in what people nominate as creative rather than in how they rate it. Attitudes in Luxembourg differ by ethnic group and by nationality, and separating those two is a measurement problem before it is a substantive one. Cultural intelligence, as a construct, has to survive translation into the settings it claims to describe.
The through-line is that a structure recovered in one population is a hypothesis about others, not a finding about them. Five factors in one language may be four in another, and the difference is often in the items rather than in the people. Work in this programme feeds directly into the instruments published on this site.
Studies in this programme
A short form of the Cultural Intelligence Scale
Structure, fairness and a brief form of the most used cultural intelligence measure, in 1,459 people.
Personality characteristics and their assessment
Why personality frameworks became the backbone of skill assessment.
Cross-national and cross-ethnic differences in attitudes in Luxembourg
One country, several language communities, and the measurement problem that creates.
Implicit theories of creativity across cultures
What ordinary people believe creativity is, and how that belief varies by culture.
Metacognition as a cognitive paradigm
An early review of metacognition as an organising idea rather than a single construct.
Publications from this programme
- 2017Personality matters: relevance and assessment of personality characteristicsOECD Education Working Papers Read itWorking paper
- 2012Cross-national and cross-ethnic differences in attitudes: a case of LuxembourgCross-Cultural Research DOIArticle
- 2010Cross-national and cross-ethnic differences in political and leisure attitudes: a case of LuxembourgCEPS/INSTEAD Working Paper Series Read itWorking paper
- 2009Implicit theories of creativity: a cross-cultural studyPsihologija DOIArticle
- 2004Metacognition: a new cognitive paradigmPsihologija DOIArticle