An Interview with 2011 J. S. Tanaka Award Winner Joshua Jackson

by Kate Rogers

Joshua JacksonWhy do you study personality?

For whatever reason, I was always struck by the differences between people, rather than the similarities. I was always interested in why people do, choose, and think differently than I, and personality offers a platform to address those questions. I wager to guess that interest in individual differences is an individual difference in and of itself, and I am hanging out on one of the tails.

What is your most exciting discovery?

Gosh, that is tough. Usually the most exciting is the latest discovery. If pressed, I think it’s probably the study where I looked at changes in personality associated with military experience, partly because of the real world implications and partly because of the stat-wonkery involved. In terms of the real world implications, I think the study could have something important to say policy wise. Typically, discussions of war and the military are centered on more macro issues -- how much money is earmarked, how it should be used, when soldiers should be deployed – and only when tragedy strikes is there a real focus on the individual. This study explores how the military influences the personality of military recruits and finds personality changes associated with military experience. These changes in personality can have long-term ramifications for these individuals, impacting their interpersonal relationships and occupational attainment, for example. I think that if this study is replicated, there needs to be a frank discussion for anyone going into the military that there could be long-term psychological consequences. There is enough research out there on the effects of PTSD and suicide rates that I think recruiters should be more upfront about it.

If you had to pick a high point in your career so far, what would it be?

In my short career thus far, I think getting a job was a definite highpoint; all of those years of hard work in grad school finally paying off. There are other high points as well: my first, first author in JPSP felt really great. My first lab meeting as a faculty member with all my students present was kind of big moment too; I tried to step back from the moment and had this feeling that things were coming together.

What about low points?

Oh, there’s just so many of them. Ha. I want to say some rejections, but those aren’t too bad as it is part of the process. I would say working on a project for a long, long time and the results not playing out. The hours and hours, that weren’t necessarily wasted, because I gained new skill sets, but there’s a particular project I’m thinking of, where lots and lots and lots of time went into it with no discernable end product. You know, part of that is process of grad school and I can rationalize that away, but that was just no fun.

Did you learn anything from that experience to help you avoid it in the future?

I don’t think you can completely avoid it. I think it’s good for everyone to go through that at least once because it’s a good lesson to struggle. You should have a number of projects that span the spectrum of high risk/high reward to low hanging fruit, so failure will be part of the game. I think the worst is the first time you encounter it, so it is important to not think of it as wasted time but as just part of the process.

So you’re still willing to take the high risk stuff, even after that?

Oh yeah, that’s the most exciting stuff. With a lot of these low risk, low hanging fruit projects, you have a pretty good idea of what the results will look like.  The riskier projects address the big questions and it’s the big questions that get me up each morning to go to work.

Do you have any career advice for new researchers?

I think that balancing that high risk/high reward with getting some good publications that are moving the field forward is something to keep in mind. Collaborations are also important. Both for idea generation as well as being more efficient if you team up with people that have complimentary areas of expertise. It’s also good to meet a lot of people and talk through your ideas with a lot of individuals. I see that the successful graduate students are ones who are able to work with multiple advisors or with other graduate students within their university as well as outside their university. Oh, and love what you research. That’s kind of important.

Do you have any ideas as to how as graduate students we can increase collaboration because it’s not necessarily the easiest thing.

No, no it’s not, especially for academics as a whole; we’re introverted and it’s hard to get out of our shells. I guess the sensible thing would be to have a few drinks. But seriously, it is easy as going up to people and saying, “Hey I like your research, I’m interested in the same things”. People love talking about their research, just show an interest, that’s your in and it’ll go from there. It’s kind of like dating, if you go up to a lot of people and ask them, after a while it’ll get easier. Plus it’s also a cumulative effect where once you know someone, they introduce you to someone and your network continues to branches out.

What’s the best advice someone has given you throughout graduate school or your career?

The best piece of advice was actually from Jeremy Biesanz, and it was initially said in reference to grad school, but it’s applicable for your entire career. “Grad school (or insert whatever career period), is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So you have to pace yourself.” It has come in handy many times. There are times where I feel like I’m sprinting and I’m going to run out of oxygen, but in those instances you have to step back and look at the bigger picture. Our research just takes so long to do, so you have to think about it as a multiyear process where you cannot meaningfully make progress in days or hours. When you’re talking about a time frame of years, it’s definitely a marathon, not a sprint.

What are the important, but understudied topics in personality?

Any answer I think to give is super myopic and self-absorbed as my initial thought is, “Oh, my own research of course!” I think that there needs to be more research looking at individual differences beyond the Big Five and incorporating all those together in some systematic framework. Right now our work consists of islands. People research goals, people do traits, people do interests or IQ, and I think that there’s something to be had by combining all of those together. It’s difficult to do, so that’s probably why you don’t see much of it out there, but I think that’s really understudied.

What do you think are the most exciting developments in personality right now?

It’s exciting that there’s other fields getting interested in personality’s power to predict basically any sort of outcome that people find important: health, wealth, personal relationships. These other fields want to incorporate our measures, which will make us a little more popular, and they want us to incorporate their methods, which will help us expand as a discipline. I think some of the most exciting stuff is that economists want to try to train character skills in children because it could have such a cumulative effect on their life. They’re interested in it because it influences human capital -- their ability to get good jobs, make good money, and give back in terms of GDP. It is so exciting, I think, because for the longest time, I didn’t think on that scale.

Where do you see the field of personality going, 10 or 20 years from now? What’s the field going to look like?

I think it’s going to be more cross-disciplinary, both within psychology as well as across other disciplines. Where basically anything under the sun, there’s going to be some personality psychologist working in that domain. I think Bill Revelle has said it, how personality psychologists are the last kind of generalist in psychology. I think you’re going to see that more often, people are just going to expand in really interesting areas. It should make future ARP conferences really exciting.