P: The Online Newsletter for Personality Science
Issue 1, Spring 2007
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Editor's Letter

Welcome to P: The Online Newsletter for Personality Science. The Newsletter is meant to contribute to a number of the core goals of ARP. It seeks to disseminate information about personality research in a more informal way than in JRP or other journals and to stimulate debate, reflection, and exchanges that capture the excitement of our flourishing field. I have consulted widely with a diversity of ARP members in creating P and the following lay out the rationale for this venture.

First. The short title for our Newsletter is P. I hope this sticks. It is meant to convey pithily the concepts of Personality, Person, Prediction, Probability (and only accidentally personal projects) and to provide a focus on the P in PXE Interaction. I take full responsibility for any mistaken notions that this is a newsletter for Urologists. To those who thought PS might be a better alternative, I would simply point out that it conflicts with Psychological Science, Policy Studies and other estimable publication organs. So P it is, until a new editor is appointed.

Second. We actually have two editors. Jennifer Smith, who is featured in this edition, is a senior doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has agreed to handle not only the student focused aspects of P, but also much of the technical work in its production (under the expert tutelage of Chris Fraley). I am delighted to have Jenn on board.

Third. P will regularly feature messages from the President and other members of the Executive Board to update ARP members and other readers to the ongoing activities of our association. In this first issue we feature Julie Norem’s Presidential Greeting. She also updates us on a number of ARP activities that are underway and provides a sense of the aspirations and directions of our Assocation. I also asked Laura King, the Editor of the Journal of Research in Personality to allow us to reprint her vision statement for JRP. Her aspirations for the journal splendidly capture our vision for personality science as a whole. In subsequent issues we will have updates from the various committees that are busily working on ARP projects. We will also feature, in each issue, a particular graduate program in personality psychology and within that feature will focus on a graduate student in the program who will give us a distinctive sense of what the program is like from the student perspective. In future issues we will highlight strong personality programs from around the world and solicit nominations of such programs from faculty and students familiar with them.

Fourth. We take the mandate of ARP to be the broad dissemination of information about ongoing research in personality around the world and we are explicitly interested in inviting personality researchers from outside of North America to tell us about what they are doing. In this issue we feature two such organizations: a report on the most recent European Association of Personality Psychology Conference by Dan Cervone, who attended as ARP’s official representative, and the Japanese Society of Personality Psychology. Like ARP, these are flourishing organizations and we hope P will serve as a way in which we can keep up with personality scientists around the world. We encourage similar organizations and societies to contact us and let us know what they are doing in the field.

Fifth. Each issue will have a number of special features. In this first issue we feature Remembering Memphis, the highly successful ARP Annual Meeting held in January and for whom Will Fleeson deserves great gratitude and credit from all of us. As part of this report we have a special feature on Lew Goldberg, this year’s winner of the Jack Block Award. This visually delightful and evocative address should bring back fond memories of the celebrations of Lew’s remarkable and inimitable contributions to the field. We also have a feature on the Tanaka Award winner, Colin DeYoung, who provides us with a stimulating view of our field as seen by one of its brightest rising stars. Remembering Memphis also gives you exclusive access to Steve Woods' award winning ARP poster "Improving the Criterion Validities of the Big Five with Job and Relationship Satisfaction using Metaperceptions".

Sixth. Although closely linked to the previous point, P will publish articles that are directly relevant to the professional issues of being personality researchers and of substantive issues and controversies in the field. For this initial issue of P, Jack Mayer has provided a valuable summary and commentary on the Presidential Round Table at Memphis, in which considerable discussion about definitional issues was heard. After noting the number of major textbook writers on personality in attendance at this session Mayer provides a balanced and optimistic view that a viable consensus definition of personality is possible. He then provides it. We hope to see many similar articles in P—thought pieces that catch us in the process of living and doing our science.

Seventh. We have included a paid advertisement in this issue. It is for Hogan Assessment Systems (HAS) and, as you will see, it is explicitly focused on one of the goals of ARP, which is the fostering of connections between institutions with a serious interest in both the pure and applied aspects of our field. We are going to be stringent and selective in accepting advertisements. They should emanate from those who are actively involved in ARP and offer possibilities for collaborative work. In the case of HAS personality researchers are offered free use of their published tests in exchange for HAS having access to the research findings. This seems to be a win/win situation all round and we are grateful to Bob Hogan for initiating it.

Eighth. P will attempt to keep its readership informed of conferences, workshop, postdoctoral opportunities and employment possibilities. We anticipate producing two issues of P a year, perhaps more if there is sufficient interest and willing hands.

Ninth. Finally, we encourage faculty, students and practitioners to use P as a forum for the exchange of ideas. I am particularly keen to keep the personal side of ARP in focus by encouraging individual accounts of experiences in the field. For example in the next issue of P we are hoping to having a Memorial montage of the life of the late Jerry Wiggins, truly an inspirational figure in our field. I also hope to launch a project of videotape and podcast interviews with those who have shaped and are shaping the field. Many of their stories are just too good to be left unrecorded. I would also encourage senior members of ARP to share with us some of the experiences they have had that would be helpful for the newly graduated members to know about. I would encourage a degree of audaciousness here. What are the piques and peaks of our professional experiences? How many rejection letters did we receive before that classic citation was finally published? What are your favorite articles in personality and why? What are your favorite personality related websites? Given the flexibility of the medium it is possible to share Personality course outlines, particularly if they offer a distinctive and creative way of conveying the field. Please contact me or Jenn Smith with any such ideas and we will be delighted to help you shape them into something that will have impact. We care, very deeply, about this field and will not be reticent in expressing that care with lively, thoughtful contributions from your very selves.

Brian Little, Editor

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